My digital wonderland

I never know what to tell people when they ask me what my comforting place is—you know, my “happy place.” How do you explain to someone that your place of comfort is not the sandy North Coast, a quiet European forest, Disneyland, or even your bedroom? How do you tell people that your place of solace is a small, four-edged screen attached to a metal body? My comforting place is one that I rarely have to leave and can take with me wherever I go. As unconventional as it sounds, my phone has, for as long as I can remember, been my happy place.

I remember the first time I found true solace in my phone: when I received a not-so satisfactory mark on a math test and went home crying. I remember going into my room with tear-streaked cheeks, trying to think of something that would comfort me. I wracked my brain, trying to think of a place I could go to forget my distress, if only for a while. My racing thoughts were brought to a halt when I heard the soft, barely audible buzzing sound of my phone. Slowly, I reached for my phone, unlocked it, and felt myself being transported into a new world. That was the moment I knew that I had finally discovered my comforting place.

You must think I’m pathetic to be so dependent on an inanimate object for comfort. Believe me, in the brief moments it takes my phone to finish loading, I stare at its black mirror and wonder the same thing… but then the screen lights up, and I am transported again into another world—my world. It’s funny how a place labeled by most as “fake” can bring a person more joy and comfort than reality ever could.

Of course, my parents weren’t too thrilled either, constantly bombarding me with never-ending requests to “spend less time on my phone”—but they didn’t understand. They couldn’t possibly grasp how much my phone meant to me, nor the joy it brought me to know that I could forever stay in the digital world that it created. The knowledge that I could never get bored or run out of things to do fueled a spark of joy in me that could not and would not be extinguished. My phone was like Lucy’s Narnia or Alice’s Wonderland to me: I knew I could always depend on it, that it would always be there whenever I needed comfort, entertainment, or simply a distraction. After all, isn’t that what a happy place is for?

I don’t remember a time when my phone wasn’t my source of consolation, one that I sought out before a friend. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t rely on a black screen for comfort, sheltering myself in its fluorescent light instead of in the arms of a family member. I don’t remember a time when my phone wasn’t my home—I don’t think a time like that has ever existed.