More than a decade ago, I went on a personal retreat. For seven days, I wasn’t allowed to use a mobile phone.
The first few days were difficult. It took discipline not to reach for a phone, check a message, or wonder what was happening outside. But as the days passed, I got used to the silence.
Looking back, those seven days were some of the most peaceful and calm moments of my life. If I were given the chance to experience that again, I wouldn’t hesitate.
Lately, I’ve found myself missing something I never thought I would: life without a mobile phone. Not because life was necessarily better then, but because it felt less demanding.
I grew up at a time when having a phone in your pocket wasn’t normal. My first personal communication device was a pager. Then came mobile phones that could only make calls and send text messages. Mobile internet followed and then social media. Slowly, the mobile phone went from being something we used when we needed it to something that seems to be with us every waking hour.
I know many people today can’t imagine leaving home without their phones. I’m one of them. If I realise I’ve left mine behind, I will probably go back and get it.
But sometimes I wonder whether being connected all the time has actually made us feel more connected.
Life feels more chaotic now. There is less privacy, more distraction and an expectation that we should always be reachable. Despite having so many ways to communicate, sometimes it feels as if we are paying less attention to the people right in front of us.
I often see families or groups of friends eating together in restaurants while everyone is looking at their own phone. Couples sit across from each other scrolling through separate screens. Sometimes you’re talking to someone and realise they’re only half-listening because they’re also checking their phone.
And I’m guilty of it, too.
I know I spend more time on my phone than I should. Lately, I’ve been undergoing physiotherapy because of poor posture, and back and neck pain. My doctor mentioned that constantly using a mobile phone can contribute to these problems. It made me realise just how much time I spend looking down at a screen without even noticing it.
But apart from the physical effects, there are smaller things about life before mobile phones became such a big part of our day that I miss.
One is the simplicity of being unreachable.
If someone called your house on the old landline and you weren’t home, they simply called again later. There was no anxiety about blue ticks, missed messages or being left on read. Nobody wondered why you hadn’t replied after 20 minutes. You didn’t need to explain where you were or why you hadn’t answered.
Being unreachable was normal.
We made plans and trusted people to show up. If someone said, “I’ll meet you there at 3pm”, you had to make an effort to be there because you couldn’t easily send a last-minute message saying you were running late.
We memorised phone numbers and asked people for directions. If we were waiting for a bus, sitting alone in a cafe or standing in a queue, we simply waited. We watched people, looked around or let our minds wander.
Sometimes we were bored and that was fine.
Today, the moment there is nothing to do, it’s almost automatic to reach for a phone. A few minutes waiting for an appointment or standing in a queue is enough to start scrolling.
I also miss how private life used to feel. Not every meal, holiday, birthday or ordinary moment needed to be photographed and shared. We took pictures because we wanted to remember something, not because we felt other people needed to see what we were doing.
We went to concerts and watched the stage instead of watching the performance through a phone screen. A holiday could simply be a holiday and a meal could just be a meal. Some memories belonged only to the people who were there.
Of course, I’m not pretending everything was better before mobile phones. Far from it.
I certainly don’t miss getting lost because I didn’t have Google Maps. I don’t miss searching for a payphone when I needed to call someone or physically going to a bank just to transfer money or pay a bill.
Today, we can do all those things in seconds. Maps, banking, cameras, news, music, messaging and video calls are all available through one device in our pocket.
For me, being able to communicate easily with people far away is particularly important.
I am the daughter of a retired Overseas Filipino Worker, and I later became an OFW myself. For families like ours, mobile phones and the internet have completely changed what it means to live far away from the people we love.
When my father was working overseas, communicating with him was nothing like it is today. We wrote letters that could take what felt like ages to arrive. Sometimes we recorded our voices on cassette tapes. We would put the tape in a package and send it to him, and he would do the same for us.
Then we waited.
There was always something exciting about receiving those packages. You had waited so long to hear that familiar voice. Communication required patience because there was no way to simply pick up a phone and make a video call.
For OFWs today, that distance can feel very different. Someone can finish work, open an app, and immediately see their family back home. Parents working abroad can watch their children grow through video calls. Families can be part of birthdays, celebrations, and even ordinary days despite living thousands of kilometres apart.
That is something I would never want to lose.
But I think convenience has also changed us. We are connected for almost every waking hour. Messages arrive throughout the day. Social media gives us an endless view of other people’s lives. Even when we have nothing to do, we rarely allow ourselves to do nothing.
Somewhere along the way, being constantly available became normal.
I don’t really want to go back to the days of payphones, paper maps or waiting weeks for a letter. What I miss is much simpler. There was a time when I could sit with someone and have a conversation without a phone sitting on the table between us. If I was waiting for a friend, I waited. Maybe I watched people passing by or just looked around. I didn’t feel that every empty minute had to be filled with something.
I suppose that is one reason I still remember my seven-day retreat so clearly. In the beginning, not having my phone was uncomfortable. I kept thinking about what I might be missing. But after a few days, I got used to it and eventually stopped looking for it.
I’m not saying I want to get rid of my mobile phone. I don’t. I just want to become better at knowing when to put it down.
Because I miss the way we lived when they didn’t take up so much of our attention. I miss being unreachable for a few hours and nobody finding that unusual. I miss going home at the end of the day and feeling that the day was actually over.
There was no endless scrolling before bed, no last check of messages and no need to see what everyone else was doing. Whatever was happening could wait until the next day.
And we were perfectly fine with that.