Catch You on the Flip Side
March 10, 2023
Author: Carolyn Berryman
Editor: Maddie Canter and Maureen Diehl
In college, we are often so obsessed with capturing our night out with our friends to desperately relieve every aspect the next day. I didn’t even realize how attached I was to documenting every single detail of my night- both the parts I wanted to remember in the morning and the parts I wanted to forget. To me, it’s integral to be able to take my phone out and hold up a song request I typed out on Snapchat or take a video of my friends doing something embarrassing. I never really thought about how sharing my night with everyone on social media was actually taking away from my ability to live in the moment.
I came up with the idea to ditch my phone for a flip phone, after coming across a TikTok by @skzzolno. Immediately, I shared it with the group chat of me and my friends, thinking I had just come up with the next best thing. When I told my friends about wanting to ditch my phone at home for the night, they were initially a little hesitant. We worried that we would potentially lose each other during the night as we went back and forth about getting these phones or that we would not see the late night texts from our other friends. The solution to a night free of social media and continuous posting while still being able to communicate with each other was simple: little flip phones off of Amazon. You know, the ones that your parents had when you were younger that could only text, talk, and take low-quality pictures.
The rules for the night were simple: we would ditch our phones at home during our weekly Thursday night out and we would only carry money for the bar cover and our tiny little flip phones. Now, I’ll admit: it was a little daunting to embark on a Thursday night with no way to track if our friends got home from the bar or if they ran off. But, that’s what also gave us a sense of adventure; we had no idea what the night would hold. Not feeling tied down seeing what everyone else was doing, texting that person you shouldn’t be texting, or having major FOMO from watching your friends post a picture with that guy you like. While the fear of losing my friends was high, the rush of not knowing what the night had in store for me was exciting. There was no pressure to take the perfect photo or to record my friends running around in the street on the walk home, only the pure bliss of a college night out with the people I love.
Little did I know that my pink flip phone covered in stickers would hold memories from my favorite night at college. We spent the night snapping pictures, taking videos, and simply living our lives, wondering where everyone was, only to run into them in the bathroom line two minutes later. Running into friends we haven’t seen in forever, and for one of my friend’s- avoiding a late-night text from a freshman year hook-up.
This lone night of disconnect from my phone, which constantly pings with updates of what my friends are doing, class notifications, and unwanted disruptions, gave me an opportunity to truly live. There was a sense of freedom that came from leaving my phone at home. In fact, it left me with one of the best morning debriefs with my friends. We laughed and reminisced but never once felt awkward or ashamed of the night we had. That pink phone gave me one of the best nights I have had in college, and I wouldn’t want to have it any other way. See you on my next Thursday night adventure; I'll catch you on the flip-phone side.
