She's read more than 30 books, sleeps better and is '125% more productive' without it.
She’s single, in debt, and recently moved back in with her parents in Queens, N.Y. She works part-time jobs while writing fantasy novels. She’s blocked the president on Twitter TWTR, +0.90% and, despite her parlous financial condition, she hopes to eventually be in a position to donate to a charity fighting global warming.
Last winter, Mugdan won the “No Phone For A Year” contest run by Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater. She’s agreed to go a year without using a smartphone or any similar device, like a tablet. She’s stuck with a flip phone. When she looks back on her smartphone use, she is aghast. “I was wasting time. I was basically doing nothing. I wasn’t aware of how badly I was behaving with my smartphone until I had to relinquish [it]],” she says. “I was addicted to it. I definitely abused it.”
It’s one thing to go without a smartphone if you don’t stray far from your neighborhood. But Mugdan recently went on a cross-country book tour to promote Dragon Child, the latest novel in her fantasy series. It’s fewer than 13 years since Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. But smartphones are now so ingrained in our life that, when Mugdan tells people she’d dumped hers, they are typically stunned.
“The technology is so useful when it’s used correctly,” she says. “The problem is, I didn’t use it correctly, I abused it, and I suspect most other people do the same. You sacrifice a lot of freedom, privacy, individuality and thinking abilities for this small bit of convenience.”
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