by Katherine Stievater
After the fall semester, I spend time with our students downloading their learnings, and making sure their spring plan is in good shape. I was surprised (and encouraged) to hear a consistent theme emerge from these calls over the last few weeks. A number of students who had traveled this fall expressed strong feelings about being separated from their smartphones. Not, however, in the way you might be thinking.
These students, it turns out, were affected in a positive way from having no cell phone for all or part of their Gap Year experience! I immediately began writing this post in my head because I knew I wanted to share their experience. The more students I spoke with, the more excited I got to publish this note.
The students who were required by Gap Year programs to give up their phones for all or a part of the time had similar reactions. The said they felt free and authentic, at peace, and less anxious. They loved the human connection created by not having an easy way to be isolated from others, by sitting there getting lost in doom scrolling, posting, going down rabbit holes, and otherwise just living on their phone.
Here are some of their comments:
James
“By far the hardest time of the trip was the week we got our phones back…we all started sifting through what we hadn’t seen in four weeks.”
“When we got our phones back, all of sudden the dinners were silent.”
“Having no phones was great. I would have liked no phones the entire time!”
Ava
“Yes we had no phones but I loved it! We were all getting more sleep, learning more games, there was less drama, people were way more connected, and we all bonded as a group.”
Noah
“No cell phones was amazing! I’m trying to stay off it now.”
“When they first took our phones, it was a sense of fear but also excitement. I felt like a six year old again, knocking on kid’s doors saying ‘come outside and play!’ ”
“By the end of the first week, our group was best friends, we felt like we had known each other forever.”
“Back home, you need it for communication, but it sucks that it has the rest of the apps that distract you and waste your time.”
“On the program, without the phone, not a single bit of my day was wasted. I was always present – just being in the moment.”
“With my phone, I sit there scrolling and always ‘busy’ – it just consumes so much time.”
“Journaling became a part of my life – I went through two 200 page notebooks, sometimes I wrote 12 pages a night.”(Note from Katherine: WOW on that one!)
“When we finally got our phones back, we realized how glad we had been to be without them.”
Charli
“Without phones it was hard for the first couple of days. We ended up going four and a half weeks in a row without our phones. Then we had them back, but still had to put them away at meal times.”
“Overall it was amazing without phones. When we got them back I felt more anxious.”
“Maybe it would be good to take the phones, but then give back one day a week.”
So what is this telling us? These kids – and all of our teens – need phone-free time! Their brains need to decompress. In addition to encouraging our students to journal, we are suggesting they put their phones down for a week or two weeks during their Gap time. This way they can be more present in the moment, and not be constantly worried about what they’re missing on Tik Tok, or scrolling on YouTube.
Interestingly, while personally having just lived through, and still appreciating the benefits of a phone-free experience, one of these students admitted that if they knew that they were going on a program with a complete phone restriction for the full program duration, they probably wouldn’t select that program. Smartphones really are today’s crack cocaine. They create such a strong addiction for users that is nearly impossible to break without purposeful intervention.
