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Jornal Escolar AE Muralhas do Minho | 2024-2025

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How to Embrace Life Without Wi-Fi: Lessons from Green Bank

Welcome to Green Bank, the tiny West Virginia town where Wi-Fi is unavailable and mobile phone signals are nonexistent.

Going to Green Bank is like travelling back in time: you can’t use your mobile phone to text your friends or research information, check out the latest TikTok videos or post photos on social media.

While a lot of American teens face issues related to social media, like cyberbullying and stress, the digital limitations around Green Bank have created a different lifestyle, showing what it means to grow up without the constant buzz of texting and social media.

And for most teens in this town, that’s OK.

Charity, 18, has a smartphone, but she uses it mostly as a clock and a calculator. She makes phone calls from a landline and she rarely texts her friends. “Spending evenings with our family is very pleasant because we are not distracted by technology,” she says.

Brycen, 14, explained: “I sometimes play video games after school, but I prefer to explore the wilderness. I don’t like to keep my face in my phone all the time.”

The Baxters decided to move here last summer with their daughter Jenna, 13. “I don’t miss my phone, Instagram or really anything else about my old life. I like to spend my time reading and riding my family’s all-terrain vehicle across the fields,” she said.

When she is able to connect to Wi-Fi, she scrolls through social media or watches YouTube videos. But, she said, “it just doesn’t feel real anymore.”

However, the radio silence has its disadvantages. If there are accidents, people can’t call for help from their mobile phones. There is internet in home computers connected through a direct line, but it is extremely slow, which has created problems for students when sending applications for college scholarships, for example.

While the absence of a mobile phone signal and the limited Wi-Fi may be very positive for many here, the quiet zone has scared away some outsiders. “Even relatives avoid coming to visit us because teens stress out when they don’t have internet at all times,” said Dr Karen O’Neil, the director of the observatory.

Source: www.nytimes.com