In todays world of information everywhere and people have to know what your dog is upto its good to have a digital detox. What is one of those you ask, well its detoxing your mind from digital living. Thats not to say you go full nomad lifestyle and live out in a cabin in full off grid mode but making a few simple changes to your life that will make you feel better.
I was born in the 1980s and saw the evolution of technology, from the mobile phone through to AI and there has been some real big changes this is the epoches of society. People used to think that technology would bring people together, and in the early days of the internet it did, but the internet has gone bad and is rewiring peoples brains in a bad way. Everything has to be instant, online all together but the human mind and body was never designed for this. This has created loads of problems in todays always on instant society. From warped perceptions of reality through to mental health problems.
What do i mean by this, well, think of the human attention span, people used to be able to read lengthy Articles, instead we evolved into only being able to read a couple of paragraphs of information as supposed to lengthy Articles and the quality has got worse. But you might be asking how is this in relation to a digital detox, well, your brain is being rewired to this way of living filling your mind with lots of information all of the time with notifications left right and center. But ask your self this, do i need to know all of this information and the way its consumed is different now as well. With the likes of social media including Facebook, twitter and tiktok its all constantly in your mind. That space in your mind is filled with extra information that it struggles to process. Sleep is a prime example, you see a comment someone has made on social media and it plays on your mind and you can't switch off until to get a reply or some form of closure but you have to ask yourself what are you doing it for, to people a couple of people who are your "friends". Ask yourself if you come off all forms of social media tomorrow would anyone reach out to you over a text or phone call probably not. Its not that you are not popular but ask yourself when was the last time one of your 300 plus friends online actually you met up with and did something IRL, never or hardly ever. You then have to realise that these so called friends arent your friends but digital chat buddies. For example i used to be on facebook for years and got drawn into he so called social connections and got into doom scrolling because social media makes you feel like you have no other option of connecting with people and this is wrong. Most people only have 3-4 people that are IRL friends. Like with AI assistants people get sucked into them, gemini to name one of them. But they arent real, do they truely care about your feelings no. There is a real danger of this becoming more common place in society.
When i left facebook around 2022 i had a hack to unplug myself from it which a good friend is trying and it seems to be working wonders. Turn off the notifications on your phone and email notifications. I found this really helped, when i realised that most of the notifications were just rubbish from pages and adverts i found this a lot easier to unplug. I would log into facebook on my phone via the browser and this also helped to start my digital detox. As soon as i started this process and was feeling loads better i deleted the apps off my phone and boy, did i notice a difference i started to spend my spare time doing activities and things i wanted to do. I ventured into doing Digital Art, fishing, photography hobbies i stopped after i left facebook. My time became my own again. I was more social with my family and friends, i started to go out more, go to the cinema and visit places i havent been or not been in a long time. Fast forward a couple of years and i feel great. I realised there is so much to life and it got me thinking about the bigger picture, When, like anyone, you leave this world, what will happen, the world will keep on spinning, your friends and family will be sad, but life goes on.
You only get a limited time on this earth roughly 80 years and its the experiences you take with you and those memories you leave behind with friends and family. I found that by detoxing digitally imy sleep improved i wasnt feeling like my mind was awake and firing up like blackpool illuminations i was able to unwind and get a good nights kip. My focus at work improved and on other things i was doing as well. I found i was no longer checking my socials whilst on meals out i actually started to enjoy spending more time in deep engaged conversation with those i was eating was and its so good like the days pre internet.
Another couple of things i did to help with my digital detox is to turn off as many notifications on my phone as possible and unsubscribed from as many websites as possible and limit the number of apps on my phone. This again helps as i only pick up my smart phone when i need to use i didnt feel urged to see what someone has had for dinner or how a favourite celebrity was doing. I also found that I didnt spend as much money by getting sucked into buying stuff i didnt need helping to save money. Another hack is turn off the facebook features in your favourite music apps like spotify, do people really need to know right that second what song youve listened to, nope, they probably don't even care.
Another hack i've tried recently is on whatsapp, to turn off the notification settings again. This works wonders and even put my phone on silent at night so you don't get tempted to reply to a message sent late at night.
Through doing all of this I started to appreciated the finer things in life, my time and my mind and its worked wonders, you never know, is there a hobby that you used to like doing but socials got in the way. Maybe its time to pick it up again.
