Digital Detox forthcoming

I'm addicted to the internet.

Not as bad as some other people seem to be (not that I'm trying to feel superior), but it's at a point where I feel like I'm headed in that direction. Mostly social media, but just internet distractions in general. It's affecting my sleep (yes, I take my smartphone to bed), my ability to concentrate at work (my job requires tremendous mental focus and attention), my posture (hello, tech neck), and my creativity (not cool when I sit down to write or make art and I spend 20-40 minutes scrolling through Insta reels).

This is not the way I want to live.

In 2016 I did a 48 hour digital detox. Punkt, a European electronic company, designed a very beautiful, high-quality but low-tech "dumbphone" and was looking for people to try it out for a 48 hour detox. If you undertook the experiment and wrote about your experience, you got to keep the phone. I wrote about my experience here.

While I eventually went back to my smartphone (an Android at the time), I felt as though I had things under control. I would occasionally go back to the Punkt or a cheap flip phone for a weekend or two, but my relationship to online media was manageable... or at least I thought.

A few years later, I got a job managing a fitness studio and my company required all the managers to use company iPhones; this reintroduction to the Apple ecosystem (since I was already using a Macbook and an iPad) made the online experience more pleasant, and therefore, more addictive.

Even after I was laid off from my job in 2020, I went back full-time to iPhone ownership. It was like rock bottom. My old Punkt was running on 2G, which was no longer supported by my carrier, so it wasn't a fallback option for a digital cleanse; then about a year or so ago, I noticed on Twitter that the makers of the Lightphone II (another device I had my eye on for a while) were also running a contest for a free LP2 device. Of course, I entered ("ya gotta be in it to win it", as they used to say on the NY Lottery commercials) and sure enough, I tweeted the right hashtag and shortly received a DM that I had won.

Is the universe trying to tell me something, sending me all these featureless phones?

It certainly seems to be, as a book by Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism, also came across my radar recently. I've already read his book "Deep Work", so I knew ahead of time the quality of the thoughts and the writing. Newport, in case you haven't heard his TED talk or podcast or are otherwise familiar with him, is a millennial university professor who has never had a social media account.

Since I'm part of a generation who has lived their entire lives up to adulthood without the internet, mobile phones, personal computers or social media, I must've known how to do this once--what happened?

Cal Newport explains how "it" happened and how the design of modern technology and ways of digital interaction have made us dependent and even addicted. He also proposes a solution that doesn't necessarily require total rejection of technology, which he believes (and I am inclined to agree) is not sustainable. He does, however, outline steps for a "digital detox"; which is not a complete renunciation of media but rather a diet, if you will.

My 30-Day Digital Detox includes:

• Switching my SIM card from my iPhone to my very old Android.
• No social media apps on my phone: no Twitter, no Instagram, no FB, no Messenger, no TikTok, no Discord.
• No YouTube. No Tumblr. No MarcoPolo.
• Because I'm an artist, I plan to keep my social accounts online, and will allow myself the option of posting no more than once a week and only using the Meta Business Suite page. No browsing (as Cal Newport writes, "stop hitting 'like'").
• The reason I'm not going all the way featureless with the LP2 just yet, is because: 1. I really love taking photos, and don't have the patience to try and find a place near me who'll develop box camera films, and 2. I am dependent on a few apps to survive: Uber, because I don't own a car, and PayRange to do laundry. I also have a couple of friends whom I only communicate with on WhatsApp, but not enough for it to be distracting, so I'm keeping that one.
• Newport says you can keep apps that make a legitimate improvement or benefit to your life (not an imagined one). Therefore, I'll continue to use Duolingo and Twitch, but only on my iPad. The former will help me to learn a new language, and the latter helps me to focus on work (I only listen to DJs, and barely interact in the chat).
• I'm also paring down streaming services: I've paused or unsubscribed to everything except Amazon Prime, which I have an annual membership for anyway. These streaming services add up, and I never watch them enough to warrant having so many at once. Also, I'm hoping that the less that I watch, the less inclined I am to want to bitch about programs on the socials!
• Giving up my iPhone also will render my Apple Watch pretty useless except as a timepiece: however, since tracking my health, sleep and fitness metrics is very important to me, I'm switching back to a FitBit. I actually bought a new one just for this detox. Yep, a drastic measure, but I think it's warranted.
• On the topic of ironically spending more to consume less, I should be getting my new Kindle Reader any day now. I justified this purchase by reasoning that I was only paying for half of it (the other half came from a gift card courtesy of my brother and his wife). At least this will give me a reason not to bring my smartphone to bed. Hey, people pay tens of thousands to go to rehab, right?

Yes, I plan to keep updating my blog and newsletter; one of my reasons for doing this is to liberate me to write more, so I need to keep doing that.

I go scorched-earth on January 1, 2023. Can I keep it up until February 1? Let's find out.