Connection Dependence

A Problem I Wasn’t Aware Of

Rianne Grace
4 min readJun 5, 2019
Photo by Hasan Albari from Pexels

This weekend, I spent three days in St. Louis for a friend’s graduation. It was lovely. The weather was perfect, the party was a blast, and as a bonus, the family we stayed with had three incredibly cute dogs.

There was only one downside: I had zero signal. None. Zilch. Nada.

I never thought I was one of “those kids”

I’ve seen headlines before warning of the death of conversation as we know it, lamenting the lack of social skills in younger generations, and proclaiming the dangers of allowing kids to stare at a screen for too long. We all have.

But that wasn’t me.

Sure, I carried my phone everywhere with me. So did everyone else.

That didn’t mean I had a problem.

I wasn’t even using it that much, really. Plus it was never a big deal if I forgot my phone (or forgot to charge it) and was without it for a few hours.

Then I went into withdrawal

We pulled into our host’s driveway shortly before 2 a.m. Even before collapsing onto the hide-a-bed, I had checked my phone, realized I had no signal, and asked for the WiFi password so I could check my notifications.

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Rianne Grace

Writes passionately about writing, reading, and mental health. Cheers for new writers and marks up the newspaper with red pen.