Emily Meakin
For my hour of media intoxication, I sat on my bed and opened the app that has a death grip on my time, TikTok. Even writing now, I couldn’t tell you what I was watching. I probably scrolled through a thousand videos in one sitting, just mindlessly scrolling. I went down a few rabbit holes, D.C. TikTok, single mom TikTok, and probably a few others. Ironically, as I was on the app I got a notification on my phone, telling me my screen time was up 21%, at 11 hours a day. 11 hours. A day. 46% of my day is spent on my phone, or at least with my phone turned on. It was an embarrassing statistic. While scrolling, I noticed my contacts start to irritate me. My eyes were dry and stressed from looking at my screen so close to my face without a break. Even though I was already sick, after my hour timer went off, I sat up and was even a little dizzy. Being so vegetative had such a negative effect on me I had to go to the roof of the parking deck, and just stand in the sun to try and make up for my laziness.
For my hour of media isolation, I choose to do a solitary hike at Great Falls Virginia state park. I drove about 30 minutes north and parked at my favorite trail head. It wasn’t unbearably hot yet, and the breeze had an inviting sense of urgency to get me to lace up my hiking boots. I started on my usual trail, which had an easy flat walk for the first mile, following the meandering water the waterfalls I was heading towards emptied into. My only hiking companions were the turtles and pumpkinseed fish in the basin below. I spotted a rat snake making his way off the path, his black body glistening in the early afternoon sun. After about a mile of walking uphill, I started to hear rushing water that told me I was getting closer to my destination. My trail came out to a small sandy beach cove, where I would be going up from there. The billy goat climb always made me the tiniest bit nervous, but on the one day I went by myself, there was a small blue skink, climbing up as well on the rocks in front of me. I followed the tiny climber until the top of the bluff, where our paths diverged. I carried on, taking a mental count of how many lizards I saw the rest of the way (the total count ended up being 6). Walking along the cliffs edge I could see the white water below swirling and tossing kayakers around. There was an impressive pair of blue herons standing hundreds of feet below, at the edge of the water fishing for their lunch. After another mile or so had gone by, I had reached my destination, the cliffs directly above the most impressive waterfall of the trail. I sat and ate my lunch under the scrub pines and watched the world go by. When I was done (and more sunburnt than I would like to admit) I walked down the rocks and along the shortcut back to the parking lot, where my loving boyfriend was waiting for me. We had done opposite trails and decided to meet each other back when we had finished our respective solitary walks. I was kissed by the sun and got to leave with a clear head.
I do not mind my name being included in the class’s blog post. After embarking on this little experimental journey, I reinforced what I already knew, I spend way too much time on my phone and I genuinely feel better, mentally, and physically, when I am outside. Having an excuse to go out in nature and just be reminded of why I chose this major, this field to spend the rest of my life in. Because I love it. I love being able to identify species as I see them in their natural habitat, I love being able to act as an observer to their natural world, not as an intruder. Being out in the world without being burdened by my device has a sense of freedom with it. A sense of accomplishment, like I can in fact disconnect if I try, I just have to put it down. I will admit, I did cheat and take a picture of my scenery, but I promise, I put my phone back in my backpack as soon as the moment was captured.