How To Enjoy Real Life — When Real Life Is Online
Like my fellow Gen-Z members, I grew up online. From enthusiastically adopting smartphones and social media apps to embracing a new age of livestreaming, we’ve been conditioned since birth to welcome rapid changes in technology. This has helped many of us — in the midst of today’s pandemic and economic crisis — quickly adapt to remote learning and working.
Of course, the digital divide still hurts many students and workers, especially people of color and low-income families who lack access to laptops and reliable internet connections. I’m lucky to have both, as well as a quiet space to do my work. This has allowed me to take advantage of innovations such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams to stay in touch and stay productive.
People my age often hear older adults telling us get off our phones and get back to the “real world.” To me, the internet is the real world — especially now, when it’s our best way to connect and contribute. In difficult times like these, the internet has become essential for information sharing, community organizing, and relationship building.
But I can’t deny that virtual life has overtaken my life. Before COVID-19, I could excuse the amount of screen time when it was split by in-person classes, work, and a social life. Now, I spend my eight-hour workday staring at a screen. When work ends, I’m left staring at even more screens.
Watching movies, talking to friends, and catching up on the news — all of these take place online. I realized this was a problem one evening when I decided to eat dinner on my porch, leaving my phone inside. I touched the wooden railing, and was taken aback at how it felt after a day of tapping at my keyboard. I was surprised at how tangible and rough the wood felt in comparison to the glass of my smartphone. Mildly concerned about my brain development, I vowed to spend more time in the “real world.”
Setting boundaries works. Here are a few that help me:
- Use a social media blocker. For those of us with less-than-perfect self-control, a social media blocker is a good way to set limits on distracting websites. Cold Turkey Blocker is my favorite. Despite my best efforts, I still haven’t found a way to work around the timed blocks. And believe me, I’ve tried.
- Make mornings technology-free. Using my phone as an alarm makes it challenging not to immediately start scrolling, but I’ve come to appreciate peaceful, technology-free mornings. I do my best not to open social media or respond to messages until I’m sitting at my work desk.
- Find screen-less hobbies. While most of my entertainment comes from podcast episodes and streaming movies, I’ve turned to reading paperbacks and attempting to make bubble tea to enjoy my free time more.
We can’t predict the lasting effects of our world’s sudden shift to virtual learning and work. But, one thing is for sure — this is the new normal. We’ve realized that remote technology can help us complete more tasks than we ever imagined. Now, it’s up to us to set firm boundaries on our personal relationships with technology. I, for one, have found that getting outside is a real breath of fresh air.
[Kara Bowen is a summer intern in communications for Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis which is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Stay tuned to follow Kara Bowen’s summer intern journey.]
