Week 4 Commentary

Ben Winnell
Sep 9, 2018 · 2 min read

Deciding to undertake a ‘digital detox’ is an increasingly popular trend among people who typically live in advanced urban societies. To have feel the need to be cleansed of your digital habits is not the same as going on a planned diet. It represents a type of thinking and the belief that overuse of computers, mobile phones etc. is having a negative impact on your health. What is significant is that this seems to be a trend aligned more closely with the mobile side of digital usage and not just technology in general. There was no ‘analog detox’ for people in the 1970s who felt like they were watching too much television. A digital detox is the want to escape from the constant connectivity of having your phone alert you to the slightest change in your social media paradigm at all hours of the day. Paul Miller writing for the verge undertook one such detox for a whole year and reported back saying that while he had enjoyed some of the benefits it had not fundamentally changed him and he felt was not inexorably missing out on any major aspect of life by having previously been online for most of it (Miller, 2013).

While this is an extreme example it is significant to show what the effects of a total ‘detoxifying’ can have on a regular user. Not all results will be the same of course but many thoughts on detoxifying seem to revolve around the idea that a ‘true self’ will emerge from behind the screen and that by sacrificing modern conveniences and returning to the ‘natural’ we gain self-knowledge (Jurgenson, 2013). For some this is too much and a few days without constantly checking Facebook can act as a mental refresher of sorts and is not necessarily aimed at them being boggled down by constant connectivity but more so to have a break from a constant task that society requires of them.

REFERENCES

Jurgenson, Nathan. 2013. ‘The Disconnectionists’. The New Inquiry.

Miller, Paul. 2013. ‘I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet’. The Verge. Viewed 9/9/18. Online: <https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet>