Living Offline in 2020
The Pandemic
We’re now officially nine months into the pandemic and well, 2020 sure just keeps on delivering. But rather than getting into what has happened this year, let’s take a look at something that hasn’t been too spoken about: the amount of time we’ve been spending looking at our screens.
Even before the pandemic, our society has been getting more and more attached to technology. Our phone use went up from an average 32 minutes a day in 2011 to 132 minutes in 2019, while our desktop use only decreased by 4 minutes. Now that we’ve been stuck in all of our homes, our technology use has only skyrocketed since March.
We no longer meet in person. We now talk to our co-workers through Zoom. We order our food through DoorDash. Board game nights are all spoken through Discord. Everything is simply online.
Our eyes (and sanity) can only take so much being online. We are constantly bombarded with information, and sometimes we simply just need to disconnect.
So what is there to do?
Well, if you’re tired of playing video games, making Tik Toks, or binging your favorite shows on Netflix, there are surprisingly a good amount of things to do off of the screen.
Quarantine has crowned new bread makers (literally). People have been trying to get in shape in their new home gyms or are just running around the park. Puzzles and board games with the family has been a go to activity.
Everyone started making dalgonas out of the blue. Home improvement projects have become a must. I’ve even seen some of my friends start knitting (and they’re in their early 20s)!
But humans are naturally social creatures. We always want to check in on our friends and family, especially during these times. We cling onto technology for one of these very reasons, even though it might not be the healthiest (check out Netflix’s The Social Dilemma for a great dive into the ups and downs of our technological based lives). So, is there even a way to stay connected without technology?
Making Postcards in 2020
I recently was talking with my roommate and said that one thing he appreciates from a childhood friend is that, no matter where they were in the world, they would always send a postcard. It’s his little checkup to see what his friend has been up to.
Sure, he could go on social media and just message, but it just feels different. I actually read an article from the New York times called “Why You Should Write Postcards, Even From Home”, and in it a few words stuck out to me.
“A postcard is just a hello, an ‘I’m thinking of you.’ It doesn’t ask for a response. It functions outside the language of emails, calls, letters.”
It’s so simple, but it can mean a lot to people. It’s easy to just be able to give status updates to friends, away from all the scary content that there is online. A form of writing that was more popular in the past, this pandemic may just illicit that old behavior.
Sure, you may need to ask people for their addresses, but hey, just tell them it’ll be worth it in the end.
Speaking of postcards, we’ll get you started with a few!
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