What I learned from dropping my phone down the toilet

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another video for the British Council’s LearnEnglish Teens website and their YouTube channel. Yes, you read the title right. This video is going to be about the lessons that I learned when I unfortunately dropped my phone down the toilet. I’ve let some time pass since then before making this video so I’m not as upset as I was when this first happened and that’s why you can see I’m smiling, because I guess the whole point of this video is to look on the bright side of things and to see the positive in this situation. So, I thought I could do that by sharing with you some of the lessons that I’ve learned from this experience.

So, my number-one lesson that I’ve learned from dropping my phone down the toilet is some very healthy and much-needed detachment from my phone. I think it’s safe to say that people my age, perhaps slightly younger and older, are very much the technological generation. We’re very much attached to our phones, to our laptops, to the TV, to our gaming consoles, you name it. So for me, dropping the phone, or my phone, down the toilet was actually a good way to take some time out and not be so attached to my phone, because after I dropped it down the toilet, as you can imagine, it didn’t work, and as you can imagine, I had to save up for a new phone, so I didn’t have a phone, or a fully functioning phone, for about two weeks.

And what that meant is that I spent less time actually attached to technology. I went outside. I did things that I wouldn’t usually do because I’d probably be on my phone, like, watching YouTube or browsing Facebook or whatever. I was one of those people who would literally have Facebook up as I was walking down the street, as I was sitting in class, you know. So it was a good lesson for me to take a breather away from my phone.

The second lesson I learned is in line with the first one. That, basically, phones are just material things and sometimes material things break. Now, what I mean by this is basically that I learned that we get attached to material things a lot more than we really should. You know, phones at the end of the day are just blocks of minerals that help us communicate, sure, but they break down, and they’re not forever, and that’s like anything that’s material, you know. Sometimes, when I was younger, I used to get really obsessed with trainers, in particular, and, like, always want the latest pair of trainers, but that just goes out of fashion or they get old, so I guess my point is that we shouldn’t get so attached to material things. There’s much bigger purposes in life, and life is much greater than just having the latest iPhone or the latest pair of shoes.

So, the third lesson is that patience is a virtue. And I’m sure that this is a very much-needed lesson for many of us. It definitely is one that I had to really embrace because I basically searched up loads of home remedies to try and fix my phone situation and loads of them required you to wait twenty-four hours – even up to a week – to see if these home remedies had any effect. And I’m a very impatient person, so just the fact that I knew that I couldn’t have my phone for a week really taught me how to be patient.

Speaking of searching for home remedies on the internet, the fourth lesson that I learned is: don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Some of the home remedies I came across were quite weird and strange and I’m not even sure if they’re technically safe to do by yourself at home. And this doesn’t just apply to mobile phones, but with everything. If you’re researching for a homework project, for example, make sure you’re using reliable sources and not just anyone’s opinion, because anyone can write anything on the internet nowadays. It doesn’t mean it’s true.

And the last and final lesson that I learned, which is the whole point of this video, is to look on the bright side of things. We will inevitably have situations or experiences in life which are negative or things just don’t turn out your way, and you can either look at that and see that as a loss or as a failure, or you can look on the bright side of things and see what you can learn from that situation. I think our attitudes towards different experiences is ultimately what makes an experience good or bad, and you can definitely turn around a bad experience and make it good by, you know, sharing your lessons that you learned with people on the internet.

So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this video. Please comment below. Let me know what good lessons you learned from a bad experience. Hopefully you guys never have to actually drop your phone in the toilet to learn these lessons. Hopefully I’ve learned this for all of us, but if you do, then come back to this video as a point of reference, and remember that there is the bright side of dropping your phone in water. The lessons I’ve really learned from this is not to bring your phone near water in the first place. That’s probably a safe bet. But, anyway, I hope you’re having a lovely day and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye bye!