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Milk and vitamins help promote the physical growth of young people, while a moderate regiment of solitude and reflection can help promote the intellectual growth of everybody.

I’m not exactly young by cultural standards – I’m 25, but so long as intellectual growth doesn’t stop when acne fades away, I’ll still consider myself young and always considering myself young even if I’m in dentures.

I find that life less distracting when my pants aren’t vibrating, so I don’t have a cell phone.

Not having a cell phone has given me the freedom of being inaccessible when I want to be.

There’s not fretting about checking for text messages, voicemails, Facebook updates and so forth.

Some have told me they envy not having a cell phone, but think that it’d adversely effect their social lives.

I’m here to say, “Worry not; I’m happy to report that not having a cell phone won’t turn you into a monk, unless monks sometimes wake up on Sunday morning wondering what happened to their ATM card.”

It hasn’t turned me into a social leper, it just means I can’t exchange numbers with people because I don’t have phone number.

During lulls in conversation I don’t text; I think about weighty issues like Will Brad divorce Angelina?

My friends can’t text me, they can however smoke signal me. My coordinates are 39* latitude, 75* longitude.

When it’s windy they can courier pigeon me.

Sometimes I use payphones – most of which haven’t been properly cleaned since Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet topped the charts.

Pay phones are scarce in Philadelphia and across America. There is roughly one payphone in our country for every 27 advertisements that feature a Geico caveman.

Without access to Google Maps on the road, I get to see parts of our country that I never knew existed, like the Millville Starbucks on route 47 in New Jersey. 

I ditched the cell phone two years ago. Not to rebel against technology, I just lost it in a cab.

It was the fourth cell phone I’d lost in 3 months – if losing cell phones were a super power, I’d be a super hero.

Subconsciously I either didn’t want a phone or really enjoyed buying new ones.

I figured I didn’t want a cell phone because I liked to read, and more than just sentences that are punctuated by LOL.

Living off the grid keeps me on a straight and narrow path to reading more.

I’m slightly disconnected from the hyper-connectivity of modern times. 

As an outsider, I can appreciate Facebook status updates. Before them I’d need a bigger house and nicer clothes to update my social status, whereas now all I’d need is a personal statement of less than 140 characters.

Twitter is the optimal medium for publishing in one-sentence installments. But don’t feel I’m missing anything.

If I had something of marginal utility to say, I’d let it be known on Twitter. For celebrities who want to share their sushi order with the world, Twitter is perfect.

I’d submerge myself in social media if I liked talking to people’s avatars, more than I liked talking to people in person.

I feel a lot of social tugs, or maybe it’s one big cultural tug to have a cell phone, join Facebook, join a group, send a message, respond to a message.

It’s not a bad tug. There are practical and joyful social benefits in wireless communication. But it doesn’t offer much solitude and the bounds of culture can limit one’s personal growth.