Kyra Fancey is the first to admit she was an addict.
"I was pretty much a poster child for cellphones," she told CBC Radio's Central Morning Show.
"I always had a phone in my hand. You really wouldn't catch me without one, and I wouldn't really willingly put it away. I guess you could say I was addicted. I was addicted to my cellphone."
Fancey, originally from Goose Bay and now living in St. John's, said she constantly felt the need to check in on social media.
"If I was sitting down at the supper table with my family, that's a time where it should be put away, but I would have it out, and my parents would look at me and say, 'Time to put the phone away.' It was an issue."
Even her friends — with phones of their own — would frequently have to ask if she'd heard what they'd just said.
I was thinking really hard about things that I really needed in life, what I wanted to pay for, what I could cut down on.- Kyra Fancey
"I wasn't fully involved in conversation," she said.
That, along with a couple of converging factors, prompted Fancey, 19, to go phoneless: hers broke, and she was moving out on her own and decided to forgo the expense of having a cellphone.
"I was thinking really hard about things that I really needed in life, what I wanted to pay for, what I could cut down on. I knew I wasn't born with a cellphone. I knew I could live without one, and it was an expensive bill. So I was thinking, maybe I just won't get another one."
It was a scary decision, she said. She didn't go completely dark — she has a landline — but it was still a tough adjustment.
"It was challenging trying to adjust to not having immediate access to internet, to communication from texting or calling. I didn't have a camera whenever I needed it. Just all these resourceful things that I was so used to having for the past five years, I had to adjust to living without that."
A year later, though, she's felt the benefits — she was freed from a constant source of anxiety and distraction, freed from feeling obligated to respond to everyone who had immediate access to her, freed from the urge to pull out her phone just to pass the time when, for example, waiting in line at the grocery store.
"I would try to look around me, take in my environment, be comfortable with my thoughts, and maybe if there was someone nearby, I'd have a conversation with them if they weren't on their cellphones," she said.
Improved relationships, conversations
"A majority of the time nowadays, you look around you, and everyone else is on their phones, so to spark up a conversation you almost feel like you're interrupting what they're doing," said Fancey.
She said her relationships and conversations have improved.
A year later, though, Fancey's ready to have that phone in her pocket again.
"I decided I had learned a really, really valuable lesson, and I learned how to use my phone with moderation. I realized around me how often others are using their phones, and I don't want to be like that again," she said.
"Moderation is key for anything to be healthy in your life," she said.