If this Queens woman stays on the phone for a full year, she wins $ 100,000
Could you survive for a whole year without access to Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram or any other app?
What if someone paid you $ 100,000 to do it?
Elana Mugdan, a 29-year-old fiction writer from Queens, New York, has taken that challenge in hopes of having a great payday.
In December, Vitaminwater selected Mugdan from a pool of more than 100,000 applicants for its “Scroll Free for one year challenge. If she can go a whole year without using a smartphone or tablet, she gets the money.
To ensure she plays fair, the Vitaminwater iPhone 5s replaced a Kyocera flip phone that she can only use to call and text. The beverage company plans to give her a lie detector test in February 2020, when the challenge ends.
During the challenge, she confines herself to cell phones, laptops or desktops and voice-activated devices that are not smartphones like Amazon Echo.
Nearly eight months into the challenge ̵[ads1]1; and still going strong – Mugdan says it has been one of the best adventures of her life.
“Getting away from the smartphone has been free, and it has opened my eyes and made me more aware of some of my other bad health habits. "Mugdan told CNN.
" Now I'm working to turn my life around, slowly but surely, day by day. "
Living without a smartphone has not been easy
Mugdan says she was happy to accept the challenge, but immediately encountered unexpected difficulties.
" Once upon a time, I was almost stranded at the SeaTac airport because the phone number I had written down was wrong, and I had no way to look up the right o ne, no way to call a cab or Uber, and no one in the state who can help me, "Mugdan said.
Another time, the car's check engine light hit while driving late in the evening in an unfamiliar area. Without internet access or her GPS app, Mugdan had no way of finding out what the light meant or where to seek help. She didn't even know how close she was to the nearest rest stop.
The challenge has affected her social life, because she can't exchange photos and videos with friends or browse social media profiles, Mugdan said she sometimes feels "disconnected."
"Being out with people constantly checking their phones and showing each other their phones and taking selfies really highlights how addicted everyone is, and now I feel like an outsider looking at something strange and a little disturbing, "she said.
Yet she never goes back
Despite some frustration and difficulty, Mugdan says giving up the smartphone has been one of the best decisions she has ever made, and the key to productivity.
Since taking on the challenge, she has made significant strides in the boxing series "The Shadow War Saga" – recording an audio version of her first book, in which she quits and publishes her second and finishes editing on her third.
Mugdan is so impressed with her smartphone-free life that she plans to continue living without a reward after the "Scroll Free for a Year" challenge has ended.
"I have decided that I will never go back to smartphone use when the one-year competition is up," she said.
"I don't think I can trust the technology – if I have access to a smartphone, I suspect I'll go back to abusing it, wasting time, staying up all night on it and become addicted to social media, and I really don't want to go back to all that. "
If Mugdan continues to hold strong, $ 100,000 will be money in the bank.
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