Most of us have, for years now, never been disconnected from social media or the Internet in general for a significant amount of time. We are constantly checking our smart phones for new messages or notifications of any kind. Being termed as dependence, or further; an addiction when it first started to amass millions of users around the globe, the use of social media has now become the norm, so much that not being a user is often, if not always, seen as odd by most.
The digital disconnect provided me with an opportunity to do something I had not done in many years; cut off from the internet and my smart phone for 24 hours. It was firstly an opportunity to go back in time, when the social media phenomenon had not yet taken over the whole world, when social life had not yet been transferred to the boundaries of our screens. It is important for me to say here that I have become, over the years, addicted to social media, be it Facebook, Whatsapp, and more recently Instagram, or as I like to call it; the photo gallery of daily happenings.
Another important part of the day was the fact that I decided to go out. I first went trekking with a group of friends, followed by a stop at the beach before getting back home. What was one of the most difficult things to do on this very particular day was resisting the urge to ‘check-in’ wherever I went, and of course taking pictures to post them to Instagram instantly. I should add here that I did not even take pictures of the places we visited. I left my mobile phone in the car, just to make sure I would not be tempted to do so at any moment. It definitely allowed me to connect more to the people around, with conversations being paid much more attention to, and feelings about what we were experiencing being much easily shared with each other than if we would be hanging on to our phones every minute.
Settling back into my room after dinner when I got back home was yet another challenge, as I still had to keep off my phone. I chose to read some passages from my favourite book; L’Etranger by Albert Camus, one of the main themes of which is human relationships. It brought me to realise how much the digital turn mankind has taken has lead us to believe that face to face interactions are now a thing of the past, and how wrong this assumption is.
References:
1. http://busyteacher.org/images/no-cell-phones-poster-full.jpg.
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