A whole month without a computer sounds like it could be challenging, especially in this day and age. For the students at Charleston, I think it felt more like a withdrawal than an inconvenience.
At the beginning of the documentary, the students seemed annoyed that they couldn't use their computers for anything, and I think I would be too, considering we have a hard time going day to day without having to log onto D2L, MyPoint, or our Outlook emails. Its almost impossible to function in college without having to get onto a computer. Similarly, the students in the documentary also ran into this problem. Some of them had to choose between giving up the challenge or waiting until it was over to complete all of their assignments at once.
During the first few days without computers, the students realized how bored they were and how they really didn't have anything to do. Instead, they decided to study more and go out and do more things. I think that this really shows how much time we dedicate ourselves to the online world. I can barely stand an hour of studying, yet I can be on my laptop all night long and hardly notice it. I also think that if we didn't have so many options online that more clubs and organizations would start popping up to help with all the free time that would have if we didn't have the option of a computer.
When the students finally checked their emails, they had over hundreds of them. I think that's crazy that so many people would send emails in that short of time. I thought it was also interesting how the students realized that most of the emails were boring and they were lost with what to do now that they had a computer again. I think it comes to show that even though we have to use computers from day to day, we don't necessarily need them to function (aside from mandatory work).
When we did our own logging of how much we used electronics, I was kind of surprised how many times I checked my phone or opened and reopened apps over a day. On average, I was checking my phone over 100 times a day and I can't remember any of those times being significant. I think checking my phone is a huge habit I developed over time and it's crazy how much I pay attention to it. Most of the time when I'm on my phone, its because I have an hour or two to kill before a class and my phone is just sitting there.
I think it would be hard to reenact the experiment that the students tried in the documentary because nowadays our phones are our computers, and most of our social networks are on our phone, making them a lot easier to access. I give the students a lot of credit for being able to do it.
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