Disconnect

It was seven-ish in the evening, I was on my way home, caught in the middle of rush hour traffic. The traffic light had just turned red; its timer started counting down. 95, 94, 93… Ten seconds passed and I had enough. I reached for my phone, unlocked it, and began scrolling through Facebook. It didn’t matter that there is a law which bans the use of mobile phones while inside the car, it didn’t matter that there was a traffic enforcer standing not more than five feet away from my car. I needed to use my phone, consequences be damned.

Another scenario. I had this story in my head I’ve been meaning to write. So when I finally had the time to do it, I opened up my laptop and started typing down the words. Ten minutes in, I decided to do some research online about shrubberies found in the moorland. Five minutes into my research and I found myself neck deep in YouTube, watching travel vlogs and game walkthroughs. I then moved on to Facebook until eventually I lost the drive to write. The story eventually ended up being piled on top of the other unfinished stories pile.

I have a problem.

Our lives have been so intertwined with the Internet that it’s almost impossible to separate oneself from it. From Waze to aid us in our everyday drive, to reserving movie tickets online, to chatting with a loved one half a world away. There is no denying that the Internet has become an integral part of our day to day living. According to an article published by The Verge, about a quarter of the world’s population has a Facebook account. 1.94 billion users all connected via one single app. With the seemingly unstoppable expansion of the Internet and the advent of social media, the world has drastically shrunk. An immeasurable amount of information is only a Google search away.

An article published in the journal Memory talks about something called “cognitive offloading”. An experiment was done where participants were divided into two groups. Both groups were asked challenging trivia questions — one group was limited to just using their memory to answer the questions, while the other group was allowed to use Google. The second part of the experiment had both groups answer another set of questions, but this time both were allowed to use the Internet. The study showed that the previous group who were allowed to use Google were more likely to reach for their phones and Google the answer to each question, no matter how easy the questions became. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are slowly becoming more and more reliant on the Internet.

In my own personal experience, I can see how being connected to the Internet and my addiction to social media has affected my everyday living. I spend less and less time reading books and writing stories. When I do manage to read, it would only last for about twenty minutes before I start itching for my iPhone. Every drive to and from work, I find my hand reaching for my phone whenever the light turns red (or even if it’s not). Unlike before, where I try to solve a work-related problem on my own using the skills I’ve learned, now I’ll just Google search the solution. I can honestly say that my memory and my focus has diminished. It is difficult for me to recall the details of something I read not more than an hour ago. As a matter of fact, as I write this post my mind wanders off to my phone, itching to read the new messages that just came in.

I obey the every whim of my phone, each bell it rings I must answer.

That is why I have decided to disconnect myself from the Internet for two weeks.

Of course, I know that completely disconnecting myself from the Internet is impossible. For one thing, I still need to do my work and that involves reading and answering emails and talking to my co-workers via Viber.

So for my little experiment, I laid out some rules:

NO SOCIAL MEDIA OF ANY KIND.

My internet usage is only limited to emails, Viber, and the occasional Google search for work related things (and this is limited only during office hours which, in my case, normally runs around from 9am to 6pm).

I’ll be turning off all notifications from my phone to avoid temptations.

I will be recording my day-to-day experience for these two weeks, and I will be posting them once the experiment ends.

Don’t get me wrong, the Internet is not a bad thing. It has an abundance of benefits and it has made our lives undoubtedly easier. But, like all things, it needs to be done with moderation. Hopefully, with the help of this little experiment, I’ll be able to detoxify myself from my tech problem.

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