I am 16-years-old, and I don’t use my phone. Well, that’s not strictly true. I do use my phone, but not often, and I certainly do have one. Unlikely as that may sound to you folks out there, it’s true: there are some of us who don’t have to “just check this real quick” or “lemme just reply to this” or “selfie!” every two minutes. No, I just don’t feel the need to do that. And not for a lack of having people to text or Snapchat or Instagram and such. Believe me, I’m not saying I don’t talk to people because “only my cat really understands me and who needs friends anyway”. I’ve got lots of friends, but that doesn’t mean I have to have endless text conversations about nothing with them all day. I do plenty of that when I see them at school, in person, and I quite enjoy it, but I really don’t want to – and can’t – keep up my extremely witty and brilliant comments all day via various electronics. And by the way, in case you’re wondering, no, I’m not some kind of hipster who shuns all kinds of modern communication in favour of the good old-fashioned telegraph, or at most a rotary phone. I’m on Facebook, I even have an email account, but getting the latest phone that’s better or newer or bigger than my basic LG model with only one camera – a rear-facing one (no non-terrible selfies for me, even if I wanted to take them) – has no interest for me. Quite simply, I just don’t care what every single person I know is up to at every given moment, and I don’t feel like sharing that same information with them. I’ve always been the kind of person who likes a separation between my personal and social lives. I like to have some time where I don’t have to be “on” and always thinking of the next joke to tell. I suppose that’s why I so rarely have my phone on. If you text me later than 4 o’clock, don’t expect a reply for about, oh, 24 hours or so. Because if I don’t have any unresolved issues by the time I get home from school, the phone is getting turned off. Despite all this, I don’t really mind when my parents make me take my phone with me places. It provides some balance with the wallet in my other pocket.
Yannick Grignon and his father, Denis, share this column space. Denis’s column will appear next in a coming issue of the Millbrook Times.
