In today’s digital society our lives revolve around, are controlled by, and in many cases depend on our smartphones, our heavy dependence on the electronic equivalent of the proverbial “wunderkind” have led to the point of complete addiction for many. Chances are you’ve been for one reason or another tethered to your smartphone since shortly after waking this morning, the odds are also excellent that you may have started reading this article on your smartphone.
Apps for social networking platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook also make up some of the main drivers behind society’s reliance as well as an addiction to smartphones which grew in leaps and bounds since the launch of Apple’s first iPhone on the 29th of June 2007. Considering that and having reached the current point in your life, could you go through an entire day without your smartphone?
Would you and could you avoid using your smartphone for a full year if someone challenged you and offered to pay you $100,000 in return should you successfully complete the challenge?
Well, recently a mineral water brand threw down the gauntlet, challenging all takers to forego the use of all smartphone devices for a one-year period. As a reward for their achievement, the company undertook to pay them the princely sum of $100,000. However, before receiving any money, contestants will have to undergo and pass a polygraph test, just to prove they actually had the inhuman strength of will to complete this gruelling test of endurance.
However, one simple caveat prevents contestants from totally regressing back to the stone-age, they may still continue using the older pre smart-era cell phones, just to allow them to still remain contactable if that is any consolation.
Remember, this means not being able to access any of your favourite online streaming services, social media, casino entertainment, or sportsbook websites to pass the time while waiting for a meeting to start, a client to arrive, or your dinner date to arrive. Once the competition starts, you will need to wait until you can sit in front of your PC before visiting one of the online sportsbook affiliates such as Betenemy whenever you want to find additional forms of online action.
To compete, contestants had to enter the Vitaminwater challenge before the 8th of January 2019 by posting a photo of themselves to Instagram or Twitter and include the qualifying hashtags #contest and #nophoneforayear, followed by a story about what they planned to do and how they intended to spend all the additional time they would have freed up over the following year.
Once selected contestants must completely forego using their own, a friend’s, or someone else’s smartphone for the entire year, you may not even take a peek or quickly flutter off a quick text, except on one of the old low-tech ones that is.
Moreover, at the end of an entire year without having even taken a small, short glance at your smartphone, should you fail the lie detector test all your self-denial be in vain. However just maybe, perhaps not, you might just discover having personal contact with people other than your close friends makes you a much happier, more relaxed person.