The Effects of a 10-Day Tech Sabbath
I had arrived at the secret entrance.
A bit sweaty, and with a rag-tag backpack held together with bungee cords attached to me, I checked to see if the coast was clear. If caught, I could be punished for trespassing. Worse, my secret spot would be exposed to the rest of the world and the solitude I so often sought would be shattered.
I looked up and down the street, then stealthily peeked by the windows in the surrounding homes.
No one was around to see. Perfect.
I stepped off the road and made my way down an unmarked path worn by anonymous travelers. Within a few yards I was hidden from the world by an elevated pond. No footprints left behind. Not a trace to be found. A perfect escape from society.
Wandering up the field, I passed all the classic landmarks: the connector path to Matt’s house. The pavilion. The pooping spot. The creek.
Eventually I had reached my destination. Slowly I peeled off the backpack to ensure the bungee cords would stay in place. The pack was heavy, overstuffed with an unnecessary amount of food and creature comforts. Once on the ground, I began the operation with surgical precision.
Out came the tent, the sleeping bag, the yoga mat. This would be my home for the night.
When the tent was set up to satisfaction I wandered to an ancient circle of cinder blocks filled with endless stories and memories. I grabbed a bundle of sticks and began breaking them into the smallest pieces I could, after which they were delicately placed in the middle of the ash in a square formation. Then came the strike. A match from my back pocket was held to some tinder, the heat of which nipped my fingers. I placed the bundle into the sticks and watched the fire grow. Carefully, I added to my creation piece by piece to ensure its survival. Once it was roaring at a sustainable pace I wandered over to the hillside to find the flattest log I could. After a few minutes my victim was selected and hoisted upon my shoulder. I plopped it next to the firepit and dusted off the top.
I sat on the log and stared at the fire in silence.
I did not have a phone with me. Even if I did, it would have been a flip phone with no internet connection. My friends would not arrive for another four hours. All I had was the fire in front of me, the creek behind me, and the wilderness on the edges of my own little village. And hours with nothing to do but simply sit and think.
I wandered around that tiny plot of land all afternoon, alone, solely in the company of my imagination and ideas. Why I came this early with no stimulation, I still don’t know. What I found, though, was that time moved more slowly than it ever had before in my entire life. Those hours felt like days. At some points it was freeing and felt like I was on the edge of spiritual enlightenment. Then, at other moments, the boredom was excruciating and borderline unbearable. But there I sat, diligently, absorbing myself in the present moment.
The sun moved across the sky. My mind softened. The anxiety I felt as an insecure teenage boy began to melt away and was replaced with a deep sense of calm. Without the constant stimulation I had become accustomed to I felt like I was moving with the world instead of outside it. Time lost its meaning. All that existed was the everlasting present. Past and future were mere concepts that didn’t jive with the wave I was riding in the moment. The peace was intense once I accepted it. I felt like maybe I could have a breakthrough, that I could truly calm down and for once…
All of a sudden I heard footsteps in the distance. I turned around to see that my friend had arrived at the site. I almost didn’t want to break the silence I had fostered over the previous hours. What started as unbearable became something that I didn’t want to end. It had become a part of me in just a single afternoon. When my throat vibrated with a soft “Hey”, it came out with serenity. So that’s what it feels like to be in a timeless world, I thought.
The evening went on as planned. More friends arrived. Stories were swapped. We laughed all night. We did stupid shit. And that sense of quiet calm remained within me throughout the night. And for many days afterwards.
—
If I may, permission to go on a bit of an unhinged rant?
Yes? Okay. Cool. Here we go:
The way we use our phones is ruining our lives.
Yes, I know that they get us to where we need to be, help us connect with distant family members, make shopping easier, and provide access to information that makes our lives easier. They’re an absolutely incredible tool that makes many aspects of modern life easier and better. I get it. No argument there.
What I would argue is that the costs of how we currently use them greatly outweigh the benefits.
It’s not necessarily the phones themselves, but rather how they’re being used as a vehicle to manipulate, brainwash, distract, radicalize, stress-out, and destroy the self-esteem of entire generations. By now, about a decade-and-a-half into this civilization-sized experiment, many of us can no longer sit still for a few minutes, perhaps even seconds, without impulsively checking our email or social media accounts. We struggle to focus and our memory is getting worse by the year. We have a shorter attention span than a goldfish (the previous record-holder for world’s shortest) and are increasingly stressed-out and anxious despite having more free time than ever and living in the safest time in human history.
Kids are impacted the most, which is doubly sad because it’s not even their fault. Rates of teen suicides, as well as overall instances of depression and anxiety, began increasing dramatically right at the time that social media apps became ubiquitous and the iPhone introduced a front-facing camera (2012, for those who are curious). As a teacher, I see the effects on education in a pronounced and concerning way. My students now struggle more with memory, focus, self-regulation, self-esteem, and behavior than any previous generation. Most of them can barely go a few seconds without compulsively checking their phones, and often act out when they’re denied the opportunity. They are never satisfied or content with themselves; they must check and compare their status against others at every second, which is exactly how the social media companies planned it (in what I imagine to be an evil lair underground while they swim in their billions of dollars at the expense of children’s health and safety). The results have been a mental health crisis amongst youth that is getting worse by the year and plummeting test scores, reading levels, writing abilities, and logical thinking globally. These tech-bros in Silicon Valley have robbed an entire generation of their ability to focus, think, and live a content life all for their own obscene profit. It’s a crime. We should be outraged.
The dangers of how our phones are being designed have, thankfully, become more well-known in recent years. The phone itself is a tool. And an amazing one at that. When used properly it greatly enhances our experience of life. So the technology itself isn’t the issue. It’s the software; the fact that companies desperately seek to capture as much of our attention as possible so we scroll longer and longer, seeing more and more ads, leading to more and more profit. That’s where the danger lies. Our attention (and our data, for that matter) is gold. The more attention they can steal, the more ads they can sell, and the more money they make while we waste our lives mindlessly scrolling through rubbish, knowing that we shouldn’t but unable to pull away regardless. We are all victims here.
Tech-ethicist Tristan Harris, who once worked for Google and resigned over concerns regarding their practices, has pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of the industry. As it turns out, according to Harris, the primary goal of social media companies is to “hack” our psychology in order to gain as much of our attention as possible. Using gambling psychology as a guide, they use tricks like bright colors, red notifications, fanciful noises, timed notifications, likes, views, and subscribers as ways to keep us coming back for more against our better judgment. All of these prey on our brain’s vulnerabilities to make the apps irresistible.
The “like” button, a seemingly innocuous feature developed at Facebook, is arguably the most problematic. According to journalist Max Fischer, once the “like” button was implemented Facebook saw dramatic increases in site activity and retention time due to its users obsessively seeking social validation and acceptance. If a post isn’t “liked” it physically hurts; we’ve been socially rejected. And so we post more, or at least more acceptable, content in hopes that the next post will validate us with the in-group. The tool itself is a brilliant exploitation of our innate need for social validation and inclusion. It may be the single most impactful innovation that social media has ever seen. Once Facebook started seeing the results, other apps began copying the idea with similar results in tow. The reason the “like” button, something so simple and stupid, can hook us so easily? It taps into the core of what journalist Michael Easter refers to as “scarcity brain”. The strategy works like this:
As humans, we evolved in tribes and required community in order to survive. This meant we needed to be “liked”, or at least useful, to the group. Otherwise they could kick us out as dead weight and our chances of survival would decrease dramatically.
Therefore, as a result, we spend much of our time trying to be useful and get others to like us. We follow trends, we say nice things when we’d rather not, we share opinions of dominant group members, all in the name of increasing our value for the community. Which, our brain thinks, makes us safe.
So when we post on social media, the “like” button is a very public way of seeing if the community values what we are doing. Get a bunch of likes, and suddenly we get a rush of feel-good chemicals because our brain interprets it as increased odds of survival. But what if no one likes our post? Well, then we feel the psychological pain that comes with being ostracized. This often leads to a doubling-down of efforts to acquire more likes and boost our social standing. Typically, this may look like following a trend that’s guaranteed to garner positive attention, even if it’s not creative, unique, or all that great. At its darkest, this can lead people to turn their outrage towards another person/group to boost their own reputation at anothers’ expense. They flip the script by raging against an “in-group”, thus creating their own alternative “in-group” whose sole purpose is to point their rage and distaste towards the other. Outrage captures our attention more than anything else, which is why it’s so encouraged on these platforms. We see this with the clear increase in political polarization and the tendency for social media apps to nudge us down rabbit holes of increasingly extreme political ideologies.
The result of all this is the toxic, scarcity-triggered outrage loop of mediocre content that has become the norm of our online existence.
So, as you can probably tell by now, I really dislike the tricks Internet companies have used to get us to spend more of our precious time on their platforms. I’d go as far to say I hate it and I want it all gone immediately.
And yet I can’t pull myself away from these apps. That is what scares me so much.
I know all these horrible things and yet I still can’t resist the pull. Even as I write this sentence I am feeling an immense urge to check if anyone liked my last Instagram post (almost certainly not) or if there’s a new video on YouTube that will completely improve my life (realistically it will probably be something about tiny homes). These programs have cut so deep into my brain that they feel inescapable. And the results for my own life are concerning.
Life seems to be moving faster lately. Really, it’s been in the past six or seven years that I’ve noticed time melding together into one amorphous blur; about the amount of time I have had a smartphone. Sure, the common wisdom is that time tends to speed up as we get older. However, I suspect that the amount of time we spend online plays a large role in this sudden acceleration. The amount of times I’ve gone down a rabbit hole on my phone or computer and looked up to see that hours have gone by is scary. My ability to focus has been compromised (re: urge to watch new tiny house videos), my memory has gone a bit to shit, and I generally feel like I do less in the course of a day. Plus, each day feels less memorable. Which means each week, each month, each year does as well. Hence the blur of time speeding by in my screen-doped existence.
When I shut the computer I immediately reach for my phone because I don’t know what to do with myself otherwise. I go from screen to screen to screen. It may just be me, but judging by how quiet restaurants have become with most tables consisting of people sitting next to one another silently while staring into the glow of their addiction, I doubt it.
My hunch is that my tech-habit is the key factor in time moving too quickly. And in this fast-paced world of convenience, I have been looking for a slow-paced life of meaningful challenge. Logically, in order to slow my life down, kicking my tech habit to the curb would be a necessary requirement.
But how? When the world now necessitates access to and attention on this technology, how can I navigate modern life without it?
If there’s one thing I had learned at this point in my year-long experiment, it was this:
The only way to find out anything is to just do it and figure it out as you go.
—
Initially I thought this experiment to hopefully break my screen addiction would fall squarely into the “slow” bucket. But my immediate twitching and disease at the thought of losing this technology showed that it would also fit quite nicely into the “strenuous” category. I’m embarrassed to admit that going without Internet for a few days, as much as possible anyway, could be labeled in the same category as a massive and brutal backcountry hike or scaling a cliff-face in spite of my intense fear of heights. But here we are. The pathetic reality of life in 2024.
For this challenge I would use my week off from work as a strategic tech sabbath. Without needing to be on the computer to check emails, join meetings, and get my work done, I could truly disconnect while at home. I asked Gab if she’d like to join me on the challenge. She laughed in my face and went back to watching TikToks. I was on my own here.
The plan was simple yet difficult. First, I would spend 72 long, grueling hours without engaging in any screen-based technology whatsoever. No computer, no phone, no TV even. Complete disconnect from the world I had been so wired to. A full, cold-turkey detox that was sure to leave me miserable and twitching. Even if Gab wanted to show me a meme, I’d have to resist and have her describe it to me verbally. Perhaps, if I was lucky, that would make it even more entertaining.
While the full cut-off was necessary and challenging, I fully understood that I wouldn’t be able to stay off screens forever. Like any extreme diet, it may have short-term benefits in a controlled environment. Once we return to the real world, though, those extreme plans fall away and often result in strong relapses. While the idea of never looking at a screen again felt oddly freeing, it wasn’t realistic. And I needed to account for that.
Once the 72 hour screen fast ended, I would spend the rest of the week only using my devices as the tool they were meant to be and only when absolutely necessary. For example, I knew that mid-week I’d have to transfer some money to pay for the mortgage (I wasn’t about to lose the house over a simple experiment. I’m dedicated, but not stupid). I would also need to call my parents, confirm plans with friends, and use the GPS app for our travels. All that, to me, is perfectly fine. If my phone and computer help me take care of business, connect with loved ones, and get to new places then that’s all well and good. I see no need to eliminate those benefits from my life.
Instead, this rule was intended to keep me from the addictive features of my screens. This naturally meant that I wouldn’t be able to log-on to check Instagram, scroll Reddit, obsessively look at my inbox, or look for the next golden nugget on YouTube. The stuff that took away from my experience of life instead of adding to it. And, of course, the stuff that was the most addictive and hardest to do without. The biggest challenge would be opening my laptop to look up directions to a new restaurant, or instructions for a home-improvement project, and resist the alluring pull of the attention hackers. Or to keep my phone on airplane mode throughout an entire day and lock it away in my drawer, hoping its invisibility would reduce its seductive allure.
This was the key to the whole plan. My hope was this experiment would foster a healthier relationship with this technology, not to eliminate it. If I couldn’t get rid of my screens entirely out of modern necessity, I’d need to learn to live with it in a meaningful way that fostered growth instead of addiction. Rebellion in this day in age appears to be resisting the pull that comes with addictive social media, the fear of missing out, and the obsession over being as informed as possible. Resistance comes in the form of staring at the window, content with just being, wholly unproductive, and engaging in the real world. It all sounds so simple, since it’s what we all did not that long ago. Boy, how aggressive, encompassing, and destabilizing this long tech-fueled society-wide drug trip has been. We can’t even remember who we were a mere fifteen years ago.
Time to sober up.
—
No new emails. No new notifications. No breaking news I had to be aware of. No unread or unresponded to texts. I was all caught up.
I shut my computer and slid it under the table. With a bit of dread, I put my phone on Airplane Mode and locked it away in a dresser drawer.
My fast had begun.
Almost immediately the reality of how hooked I’d become on these things became painfully apparent. Knowing that I couldn’t engage with my devices, I felt very anxious without them. There arose a terrifying pull to get sucked back into the warm, comfortable vortex of an infinite scroll; where time didn’t matter and my mind could be sedated and numbed. YouTube. Instagram. Reddit. Email. What could possibly be on there? What if I received a life-changing message about my small business? What if an outdoor company found my photography and wanted to collaborate, but only gave me a 24-hour window to respond? What was I to do with myself without seeing hundreds of short videos that make no memories?
Who am I without this?
—
Mimetic desire occurs when we desire something simply because other people desire it. We all fall prey to this phenomenon. The neighbor comes home with a new car, and suddenly our perfectly fine and practical vehicle seems like an old junker that needs to be replaced. A TV at a Super Bowl party is way bigger than ours, so naturally we must go get our own big-ass TV, otherwise there’s no point in watching anything. The phrase “Keeping up with the Jones’” is real and extremely powerful.
Nowhere is the pull of mimetic desire more intoxicating than on social media. Open your feed and you’ll see thousands of different ways you could possibly be living your life. Aesthetics, products, trips, jobs, experiences, philosophies; we get a window into what everyone else wants and what some of them, albeit very few, actually have. They’ll tell you how great it is running an online business and how it’s given them the life they wanted. Suddenly, you start to consider if that’s also the life that you want. You’ll see a couple sipping drinks by a poolside in a country you’ve never heard of, and before you know it you’re the one yearning to be there. And boy, does that couple seem to be so happy all the time. How come they get to travel full-time and “live fully” while your daily existence consists mostly of washing, drying, and folding the same laundry day after day? If only we had that, then things would be different…
By spending hours a day on digital media (the current running average for Americans is roughly 13 hours per day in front of a screen) we are fully immersed in a world of mimetic desire on a daily basis. We see what others want, what they have, and what they strive for. Subconsciously, we begin to want and strive for the same things, even if we don’t actually want it. We’ve all been there: we see a couple traveling in a van and think “Man, that seems so free and fun and better than my boring desk job. Maybe I should get us a van so we can travel.”
But do you really want that life? Do you really want to live day-to-day with no security about where your next paycheck will come from? Do you want to flush gray water and have no clue where you’re going to shit each day? Is it really that glamorous to live in a portable box so small that it’s impossible to escape the wretched scent of your own worst farts? A prison of your own making?
This is the conversation I had with myself after falling down a van-life rabbit hole. But it doesn’t have to be that specifically. Pick any one of the thousands of lifestyles we encounter online and it’s just as easy to slide into that spiral of mimetic desire. And it’s so difficult to recognize that that’s what’s happening; that we don’t actually want the thing we see. We only think we want it because others do. Such is the curse of a social species. And it’s a curse that social media companies have exploited brilliantly.
With enough time and lack of discipline, too much of our personality can become what we see online. I’ve noticed this when listening to some of the vloggers my wife watches on YouTube. It seems like every third sentence is something to the effect of, “I got this because I saw it on TikTok.” Oh, okay. Do you actually want it though? How does it enhance your life? Does it align with your values? Or is your entire personality just what you see on TikTok?
Let me ask you this: how often do you catch yourself saying, “People online said (insert random opinion here)”? I found myself saying this all the time in conversations, citing with certainty discussion threads I saw on Reddit. But there are problems with that: Who are these people? What are their names? Where do they live? What’s their background? Why should I give a flying you-know-what about what they have to say? It’s almost gotten to the point where “someone online” is my most quoted friend, more so than the actual friends that I love and value in my life.
We’re all susceptible to this, myself included. Which is why I felt so uneasy just hours into this experiment. Without people telling me what to want, what to do, what to work towards, what do I actually want to want? To do? To strive for? It had been so long since I had considered that for myself instead of letting others tell me hour-after-hour, day-after-day.
It’s easy to be confronted with this deep, uncertain reality of being human and hide back in the glow of the screen to avoid actually answering those questions. Confronting them, working through them, and forging imperfect but meaningful answers is the hard part. But it’s the key to a meaningful life of value.
—
Twenty-four hours in I was still feeling twitchy and unsettled. Gab was prepping lunch in the kitchen while I laid on the couch with nothing in particular to do. A luxury, normally, but without being able to waste the luxury by scrolling I felt more anxious than relaxed. In an attempt to calm down I resolved to take my first nap in as long as I can remember. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe deeply, and slowly slipped out of consciousness.
Right as I was about to drift off to sleep I snapped up like father in the old Don’t Wake Daddy board game. Gasping for air, an intrusive thought popped into my head:
“There’s so much I could be doing right now!”
In that moment I uncovered the core of my escapist tendencies that built the foundation of my unsettled, anxious state. I was quite literally on vacation, taking a nap as the sun peeked through the window while my wife was making a delicious meal for us. It should have been the epitome of relaxation. Yet I was stressed about not checking emails, writing this book, editing photos, studying self-improvement topics, or watching videos on how others had changed their lives with this one simple system that we all need to know about in order to be “unstoppable”. Why was all that more important than simply being in a lovely moment?
We are human beings, not human doings, for a reason. As Alan Watts put it: the purpose of life is to simply be alive. Nothing more. Nothing less. We can accomplish this feat without accomplishing another single thing. And yet “just being” is incredibly difficult to, well, do. It feels incredibly unsettling, especially in today’s day and age, to sit and just be. Rebellious, perhaps. Maybe even a bit naughty.
In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman argues that one of the primary sources of this guilt and unease surrounding being unproductive are the forces of intensive capitalism. Growing up in a capitalist society, we are told from birth (both explicitly and implicitly) that our value in life comes from what we produce. Without producing for society we cannot make money, we cannot build a stable life, we cannot survive. Therefore the more we produce, the better off we are. And if we ever stop to rest then we risk losing it all. People who choose not to produce are “drop-outs”, “tramps”, “lazy”, “freeloaders”, “un-American”. Couple the pressure to survive in a neoliberal capitalist society that contains a minimal social safety net with a culturally ingrained Puritan work-ethic (we must work our whole lives or burn in Hell otherwise), and it makes sense why there is such anxiety surrounding the idea of doing nothing.
And what numbs that anxiety, if only for a moment? Mindlessly scrolling through content. It keeps us from confronting the uncomfortable reality that we are who we are in this moment, and that that is enough to be satisfied if we’re willing to acknowledge that.
There was absolutely nothing I needed to do in that sweaty, breathless moment on the couch. And if I succumbed to the urge of scrolling then I wouldn’t actually be doing anything of worth anyway. It’d be a complete waste of time, energy, and effort. It would be a waste of this lovely moment in my life, I thought. Immediately after this idea processed, my eyes widened.
How much of my busy-ness, stress, and packed calendar was really just indulging in the falsehood that “I have many important things I should be doing”? Am I actually that important? Or am I afraid to admit that the world would continue spinning on just fine if I threw it all to the wind and stopped producing anything? Which, of course it would. If I spent all day lying on a hill instead of responding to emails, posting on social media, and being a good, productive neoliberal capitalist, would my whole world collapse into anarchy because I did nothing for an afternoon? Of course not.
Life would go on just fine. And, I knew deep down, I’d be better off for it.
Professor Cal Newport, one of the leading thinkers in the world of digital minimalism and reducing time on technology, has stated that one of the biggest benefits of getting off social media is recalibrating our sense of importance in the world. When we’re always on, always informed, always posting, it makes it seem in our own minds that what we do online and what we say is quite important; that many people care deeply about our thoughts, opinions, and activities. It sounds ridiculous to say out loud, but before we post anything, subconsciously we’re just sure that everyone in our circle has been waiting to see our vacation photos, to hear our thoughts on the latest political blunder, and to see what we’re having for dinner. They’ll love it, we think, and they won’t be settled until I show them.
That is, of course, not the case. The reality is we could all stop engaging with anything online for a month and no one would notice or think twice about it. Quick: think of 5 recent posts from your friends that you’ve seen in the past few days. Can you even think of 5? If you were able to, congrats. Now, how different would your life have been if you never saw those posts? Would your day be shattered? Incomplete? For perspective, how different would your day have been if you called your friend and asked them about their life instead of passively acknowledging it online? How would that have altered the trajectory of your time, mood, and satisfaction with life?
These were all questions I asked myself as I remained upright on the couch, suddenly and rapidly coming to terms with my own insignificance. Yet instead of feeling crushed or depressed by this realization, I felt free. Underneath the churning desire to pull-out my computer and see if anyone missed me, I felt a sense of liberation at the ability to not do just that. To be hidden. Unseen. To live quietly and beautifully. As Sean Penn’s magnificent character said in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty:
“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.”
—
A day later what initially felt like withdrawal began trending more towards abundance. Suddenly I had heaps of time to do whatever I wanted with. There was no feeling of being rushed or like I had to cram a bunch of activities into a small space. While it may seem inconsequential in the moment, logging on and immediately checking a few different emails, a couple social media sites, and scrolling through the news takes a toll on our brain. This practice prevents us from focusing deeply and instead results in our mind scattering in many different directions very quickly. Rather than being a relaxing way to wake up or pass some time, psychologically it’s actually an exhausting habit. Plus, it is easy to spend far more time than anticipated just “checking in”. I realized this when my mornings began appearing like a vast refuge of possibility instead of a cramped period desperate for more time.
The innate urge to hop on my devices still existed (I often found my hands curled in tension at the thought of grabbing my phone), however my ability to resist was improving. I wrote out a list of activities to do instead of scrolling that served as an emergency plan when I was left with nothing to do and unable to accept that that was okay. One of which was stretching, which put me supremely in tune with my body and mind. It had been awhile since I truly checked in with myself. Spending twenty or so minutes a day feeling my muscles, being aware of my breath, and moving my body mindfully went a long way towards feeling more centered and balanced.
On the final day of the full fast I went down to my office and pulled out a dusty, clunky keyboard that had been sitting in the closet for the past three years. In college there was a beautiful electric piano in the common room of our dorm. I had never played the piano before (I’m a drummer by trade), but I found myself entranced by the keys in that room. The piano sat by a large window overlooking beautiful Lake Ontario in an incredibly serene setup for a dormitory. In my free time I often found myself sitting at that piano, messing around with the sounds while nobody else was around to hear. Within a year I was spending hours per week in that spot learning songs I loved and, eventually, writing my own music. At one point I even learned how to play a song with one hand on the piano while my other limbs played on my electric drum kit to the right. It became an unexpected and joyful hobby.
Then I got a smartphone. Instead of coming back from class with nothing to do, I found myself getting sucked into the void in my dorm room. I played the piano less and less. Eventually I moved out of the dorm and continued playing on a crappy beginner’s keyboard from the late 90s that I scavenged from my parents’ house. It wasn’t as inspiring but it did the trick. Still, though, I was playing much less than the days when a flip phone didn’t provide enough stimulation to amuse and entertain me.
Once I finished college and moved back home the little keyboard sat in a corner collecting dust. I brought it with me wherever I lived, hoping I’d find the spark to start playing again. That spark, though, was often dampened by mindless screen time. I used to come back from class and sit by that window excited to express my emotions through song. Now, whether consciously or not, I was seeking to numb those emotions through content. Or at least find content that could magically make those feelings go away.
This keyboard, as I quite literally wiped the dust off, represented more than a hobby. It was a symbol of my emotional awareness and the type of person I once chose to be. It came at a time when I was someone who was willing to be bored, to try new things, to really feel and express my emotions in a meaningful way. A period when an empty swath of time was filled with wonder and pride. I missed it.
There was no guarantee that the keyboard would actually work once plugged in. I connected the wires and pressed as hard as I could on the power button. At first, nothing. Then, suddenly, a light flicked on. It worked. What do I play? So much time had passed. How do I reintroduce myself?
After messing around the keys for a few minutes, I began to wonder if I could still pull off the most difficult song I had learned back in college. It was one of my favorite tunes. To learn it, though, I had to sit in my bedroom with a YouTube video of someone playing the song with the camera placed above their hands. After each note I would pause the video and write down which key they had hit (I couldn’t, and still can’t, read sheet music). Once I had cracked the code I painstakingly attempted to get my fingers to move in the same pattern. After a few hours it stuck, and I’d practice that song a couple of days per week until the movement became fluent. Hours upon hours of sitting on a floor staring at a keyboard instead of a screen led to my greatest accomplishment on the instrument and something I’m still proud of to this day.
Shaking off the cobwebs, I started by clumsily playing the chords of the tune; not too bad after a few tries. Then I hit a half-dozen out of tune keys in search of the main melody. It felt like I was digging deep within my psyche, pulling out discarded memories out of forgotten boxes. One by one, note by note, the melody started to emerge from the dust. Once I remembered most of the basic parts I put my hands in the proper position, closed my eyes, and began to play.
Suddenly it all came rushing back. The arpeggio, the melody, the movement. Immersed in the moment my hands smoothly glided along the keys. The notes rang out with accuracy and beauty. Eyes closed, alone in my little office, I imagined myself back by that window in college when I thought anything was possible. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt connected to that version of myself. He was still here, within me, just waiting to come back out. A huge smile broke out on my face as I continued to play. Boundless joy, in the flow, fully present. This is what I had missed. That feeling of being truly, fully alive in an otherwise mundane moment.
And all of it in the time it normally took me to “check” my Instagram.
—
Once the 72 hours were up I prepared to reenter the world of technology.
At this point I was feeling calmer and more at peace than I had in awhile. While the experiment was bumpy and uncomfortable at first, it did not take terribly long for my brain to adjust to, and eventually enjoy, the lack of stimulation. Life became slower. Time moved by more smoothly. I was more in tune with myself physically, mentally, and emotionally. I told Gab that this was the best I had felt in quite a long time and that, truly, I didn’t want to get back onto my devices. I wanted to go full analog, or simply use them as a tool when absolutely necessary. I had no real desire to get back on social media and see what I had missed.
To confirm this, though, I’d need to log on and face the beast.
I pulled my computer out from the drawer, plopped it on my lap, took a deep breath, and opened it up. The plan was simple: First, I’d check my email (all four accounts…which I realized was an unnecessary number). Then Instagram. Then I’d see if anyone left comments on my YouTube channel while simultaneously looking at what the algorithm had served up for me as a way to spend my time. A normal morning.
As soon as the laptop opened it was as if a vortex had sprung out of the screen and sucked me and everything nearby in it. Immediately I was hit with a rush of activity in my brain. Dozens of emails waiting to be opened greeted me in my inbox. A couple were newsletters I enjoy reading once a week. Others were receipts for purchases over the past few days. A company was doing everything in its power to keep charging my credit card with a subscription regardless of how many times I attempted to cancel. A rush of anxiety flowed over me as I combed through the messages. I couldn’t decide whether to deal with the company, read the newsletters, or to sort through the banking statements. So I did what any rational person would do: all of it at once. As one website was loading I’d pop open an article and read a few lines before shifting over to a different tab. After playing around with that for a few seconds I’d return to a different task, fittle away for a moment, then switch again. It was as if my monkey-mind was back in full force, completely inept at paying attention to any one thing beyond a few mere seconds of semi-lucidity.
When email became too stressful, I popped over to Instagram to see what I had missed. My brother-in-law posted dozens of stories from his music tour in Europe. My best friend just got back from vacation and had pictures to share. A company I had collaborated with posted new material which was just waiting to be studied. I clicked through it all furiously, trying to catch up on what had gone by as quickly as possible. The thought popped into my head: why don’t I just call everyone to see what’s been going on? A nice idea, but hard to act on in the middle of a social media binge. The algorithm had pulled me back in with fury and was not about to let me go now that I was back in its grasp.
YouTube did nothing to soften the rising swell of stress. A few trolling, mean, or completely ignorant comments had been posted on old videos from my business channel. Sure, they were strangers who didn’t really matter. But the comments still hurt my feelings. It dawned on me that my feelings hadn’t been hurt in the slightest in the previous 72 hours. The strangers in line at the grocery store withheld whatever rude comments they had about my appearance, voice, or mannerisms, unlike the friendly folks on YouTube who made their opinions of me known publicly.
At this point I slammed the laptop shut and noticed how rapid my breathing had become. Was this normal? Was the stress I was feeling always there, but numbed in the habit? I did nothing but go through my normal morning scroll (imagine how different a morning stroll would make me feel). Having been away for even just a few days brought clarity to what this habit actually did to me. I didn’t leave feeling more informed, more prepared for the day, relaxed and ready to move forward. I felt anxious. Worried. On edge. Hurt.
When on Earth did this become normal?
Unable to handle it anymore I went back into the living room, where Gab was seated on the couch.
“How’d it go?” she asked, which made me realize I had been suffering without a sound on the other side of the wall.
“Awful” I quipped. “I don’t want to be on anymore. Not now, maybe not ever. I don’t know. Can we work on our wedding thank yous? I need something analog.”
The next hour was spent signing names, finding addresses, and stamping envelopes for loved ones as the morning sun peered through the living room window. Specks of dust floated in the sunbeams. Gabby’s face was serene. Her handwriting, as usual, impeccable. The faces in the photos we included with each card were full of joy, laughter, and love. Sheer presence in a beautiful moment, shared together in our memories. My breathing slowed, my head stopped spinning. The mind returned to a more placid state, free from the rushing river that was unleashed once I broke the dam.
Once all the cards were signed and stamped I mosied over to the kitchen and started some pancakes. As the bubbles formed on each batch I stood and stared, mesmerized by the process. I could hear birds singing through the window; an early sign of spring. The scent of cinnamon and vanilla filled the kitchen as the sizzle of the griddle deafened any external noise that was still buzzing from my morning scroll. This is how a morning should be spent, I thought. Now that I’ve stepped away, I see.
—
On a cool June evening in 2016 I used all of my strength to get out of bed. It had been a brutal couple of weeks where I felt more miserable than ever before. A dual case of mononucleosis and strep throat had left me writhing in pain with every swallow and barely able to move from the bed to the bathroom. Each moment, for days on end, left me in excruciating agony. Sleep was minimal. All I could think of was how I couldn’t wait to realize at some point that I was no longer in desperation for relief; that all of this was temporary.
This evening was one of those moments. While the intense pain from the infection had subsided, my fatigue was all encompassing. Tired of lying in bed I summoned the strength to stumble out into the kitchen, then onto the back deck, my first time being vertical for more than a minute in weeks. The air wrapped around my weary body and refreshed me with a slight breeze. On the horizon, between the silhouettes of dying ash trees, a full super moon was rising in the distance. Brilliant, gigantic, and with an orange hue, the Strawberry Moon dominated the night sky as it inched slowly upwards. Propping myself up against the deck railing, I stared in awe at the silent spectacle. Minutes passed as the moon raised itself into the stars. Without warning, a thought popped into my mind:
When I’m on my deathbed, which it feels like I am, will I wish I had more nights like this? Or that I saw just a few more posts on my phone?
It was an honest question, and one I knew the answer to. I just wish I had followed through.
Unfortunately, in the years since, I had missed too many “nights like this” in favor of attending to the artificial glow of a screen. While that moonrise, like my day at the campsite, appeared to take an eternity, nights online rushed by swiftly and thoughtlessly. What was supposed to be a tool ended up becoming a way of life, or better yet an escape from life. And it wasn’t going away. But if I didn’t learn to use it as the tool it is, and soon, I’d end up regretting it on my deathbed. I knew that for a fact.
The days following the full tech fast were spent doing just that: learning how to only log onto my devices when a specific task needed to be completed. I paid our mortgage, ordered some house necessities, and FaceTimed my parents. All worthy causes. When installing our new blinds in the basement I hesitated to reach for my computer once I realized how useless the poorly animated directions that came in the box would be. I knew that a generous YouTube video offering detailed instructions was my only option, but I feared what would happen if I signed back on. The thought of getting sucked back into the algorithm made me anxious. But it needed to be done. After a few deep breaths I opened the computer and popped onto YouTube. My feelings upon arrival surprised me.
When I looked at the homepage in this state, more relaxed than my first foray back online, I was able to see what was being offered with a more critical eye. What I realized rather quickly was that most of the content being pushed to me was complete and utter shit. Flashy titles like “How to make MILLIONS in your 30s” (spoiler alert: already be rich and invest in real estate in a perfect market) or “You need THIS to break through a slump” (shocker: discipline) seemed silly and ridiculous after not engaging with them for a time. Other videos just seemed weirdly pathetic (the sad-looking guy with the title “Why I’m Single” easily won the category of “Things I Couldn’t Care Less About”).
There’s an old saying that a fish doesn’t realize it’s in water. Well, when we’re in the algorithm, it’s pretty hard to realize we’re in a bunch of garbage, mostly useless content that we’d be better off without and that doesn’t truly enhance our lives. For every bit of helpful content out there we have to sift through mounds of junk that waste our time, energy, and brainpower. When we’re in it, though, that’s hard to see; we’re buried and miss the forest for the flashy trees. But zoom out, get some perspective, and it becomes clear how ridiculous the content we waste our time on has become.
I chuckled at this realization and entered the blinds we purchased plus “instructions” into the search bar. Like the tool it was meant to be, YouTube came through with a solid how-to video that helped me actually enhance my living experience. The difference, once realized, is stark.
As the week progressed the insatiable tug of these programs became less persuasive. Like not having dairy for a while then downing a huge ice cream cone, if I did slip into scrolling it would leave me feeling gross and guilty rather than numbed and satisfied, which helped me resist completely. Mere acceptance became an active distaste and aversion; the spell was being broken.
By the end of the week I was confident in the benefits of this experiment. Relaying it to Gab one night, I explained how much calmer I felt. My mind wasn’t racing like it normally was. Life truly had slowed down in pace and I was more capable of appreciating the slower passing of time instead of constantly feeling anxious that I wasn’t doing something. In other words, becoming a human being had gotten easier, and more appealing, by the day. I was more in tune with my body, my emotions, and my old hobbies. Tons of projects had been completed around the house and a sense of innate satisfaction welled within me at the work that had been accomplished throughout the week. And beneath all this was a sense of, dare I say, happiness. A calm, quiet happiness that existed where there was usually a mildly churning sense of general dissatisfaction. Feelings of capability, competence, and acceptance had merged into a general state of contentment. It was an alien but welcome encounter.
The discipline, unfortunately, did not last without extreme effort. Like any addiction (if you may allow me to call it that), slips happen. At times over the following weeks the pull became too strong. I’d harmlessly pull out my phone and, next thing I knew, I was sucked back into a vortex that actively harmed my psyche and quality of life, and that I didn’t want to be in, yet couldn’t resist. And each time I would leave the vortex feeling stressed, unsettled, unhappy with myself. But each slip made me more determined to fully break free. Because I’ve been reminded of the life I could be living on the other side.
As I type this it’s currently 2:00 in the morning. I am in the midst of a bout of insomnia, most likely brought on by the exceptionally excessive amount of mindless scrolling I did today. Sitting on the floor I am exhausted, strung-out, and unable to settle my mind. Today, for no reason in particular, was the worst day since I resisted the pull for an entire week. Perhaps I became too comfortable, or too confident. Maybe old habits need more time to obliterate. But I know one thing for certain: This is the final straw. Enough is enough.
When such great benefits were gained in such a short amount of time, it’s clear that life is better without incessant, mindless, pointless scrolling on algorithmically-driven websites and apps designed to steal as much of our attention as possible. If even one weekend without these screens generates such a sense of peace, and one week of mindful, minimal use elicits such happiness, then it’s worth the struggle to break free from the alluring pull. That week felt like an eternity in the best way possible. For the first time in years I was forced to truly embrace slow living and all the benefits that came with it. Time was no longer a blur; rather it was a mindful and deliberate experience that I moved with, not through. Each moment was a blessing to be noticed, not an inconvenience to be wasted. Personally, I do not think it is possible to slow down the pace of life and soak in its beauty without also ridding ourselves from mindless technology use. We can try all the journaling, morning routines, and gardening we want. But if those activities are bookended with a phone on one end and a laptop on the other, then all the efforts are for naught.
—
Maybe it was the lack of sleep that night, or maybe it was the realization that came to me in the moment, but the morning after my bout of insomnia I experienced an unexpectedly powerful moment. After arriving at work I sat at my desk and began to plan lessons for the week ahead. Serendipitously, onto my playlist and into my ears came Lives by Modest Mouse: a song about the fleeting, unique, precious nature of our first and only incredible life. I stopped typing, closed my eyes, and felt the music pulse through my brain. I thought of how much time I had wasted these past few years looking at endless content that I don’t even remember and that added no value to my life. I wondered how many precious moments I could have appreciated and enjoyed, but instead lost because I wasn’t paying attention. I took a moment to fear how little time I might have left. How many times I could have called my friend, or Nanny, before they were gone. How many relationships I could save by texting someone right now instead of “liking” their posts. How I could possibly make up as much ground as I could with however many days I have left. How I could live more fully, starting right now, in this moment.
Sitting there at my desk, I chose to live fully and let the emotions overtake me. Surrounded by colleagues, and quite frankly not giving a damn, I began to cry silently. Tears of sorrow for the time I’ve lost. Of nostalgia for the wonderful times I’ve had. Of release from the techno-prison I created for myself. And, beneath it all, tears of joy. Joy of how lucky I’ve been up to now, how beautiful life has been, and how beautiful it will continue to be. And how, with God as my witness, I will be present to see and appreciate it all. I swear by it. And I’ll thank myself when my deathbed arrives.
It’s hard to remember, we’re alive for the first time. It’s hard to remember, we’re alive for the last time.
