Why I am tired
of screen time and disconnection
I was born in 1993, which makes me one of the last generation that wasn’t a ‘ digital native’. Of the few memories I have from when I was really really young, I never even catch a glimpse of my parents being on their phones, I don’t remember them distracted or busy, hunched over a device that sucked all of their attention. I see them working or listening to music, watching TV and most of all, meeting and talking to people in real life.
I recall, as a 12-year-old, spending hours in the afternoon attached to the landline, calling one friend after the other, talking about homework (instead of doing it), gossiping over boys and teachers we disliked, and getting shouted at by my Nonna for occupying the only line of contact we had with the external world. Even with the spreading access to the internet, a few years later, the technology we had back then was so big, clumsy and slow, that it was so not worth the wait of the loud PC turning on, loading a html page and email address, just to contact a friend. By that time I could have, indeed, already cycled to my friends house and, if the universe allowed, finding her and spending time with her.
When I decided to move abroad to study on a year abroad type exchange, I remember I had Skype. A very heavy laptop, with an even heavier charger. And a Facebook profile that allowed me to write on people’s feeds. That was it. For an entire year, I had to make sure I was home at an arranged time so that I could catch my boyfriend on the other side of the line, also having arranged a specific time slot to use his family’s PC.
And so things were hard. We were left wondering, we were left day dreaming, obsessing, our hearts aching for a sense of longing and closeness to the other person, with our imagination being the only tool we had to fulfil our answers and inquisitive questions. We were left with a lot of time to spend by ourselves, moulding and shaping our own inner landscape, learning our own personal language. Then there were moments in which our inner worlds got to pour outwards, amongst other outpouring worlds, among other souls. Those moments were precious, not only because we got to spend time with one another, but exactly because we deemed those moment precious. We were putting an effort to be with one another, defying the absurdity of the many possibility of time and space, that we could have not possibly known. The synchronicity that it had to happen for a friend to come home from school and decide to stay in, for the landline to be free, for the mind to remember the landline number by heart, for the mother to be willing to put you onto your friend, for them to accept to meet at the park in two hours and actually be there. With no phones, no exact location, no ‘I am sorry I am 40 minutes late, can we postpone?’, no distracting messages, no social media. Or shall I say ‘unsocial’ media?
And yes, things may have been hard. Yet they were so simple. Our headspace wasn’t filled with a thousands possible scenarios of ‘what-I-could-be-doing-right-now-instead’ or ‘I-have-seen-3-wars-for-breakfast-this-morning-but-now-I’m-going-to-get-on-with-my-life’. There was never a ‘have-you-seen-what-she-said/ she-did-the-other-day?’, all opinions stayed as flying comments who never got imprinted in the backlog of the infinite web. Ideas didn’t come back to haunt you, but most importantly we rarely had a sense of infinite impossibilities. Yes this is what I call when we are surrounded by a multitude of possibilities and yet they all feel incredibly immaterial.
Take your following number on social media; imagine these people in a room, all speaking at once; can you hear the noise? Do you feel surrounded by infinite impossibilities that you can’t even grasp, because everyone is being so loud that you can barely hear a full sentence? This is how I feel about my personal social media right now. I say personal because being on social media for work is an entirely different cake that I won’t bite into today. After years of being forced to be on it for work, and then getting addicted to scrolling once my reasons shifted, I had realised it had gotten so loud in my head that I couldn’t even hear myself thinking. That internal compass that we all have and display when we are children, that energetic field that pushes us towards and attracts the things we love, I feared I had completely lost it.
I was spending my subconscious time feeling less than, craving for things I never liked, getting opinionated on things I never cared about. Instead of creating, I was using my precious brain energy to clean up the mess that was left in my head day in and day out.
So I quit. Not drastically. I know I am not one for drastic resolutions. But slowly. Steadily. Deleting IG at the weekends, then reinstalling it during the day. Posting something that coming off it straight away, so not to consume all of the other thousands voices. Checking in from the browser, instead of the app, so not to feel compelled to scroll. I have been IG free for, more or less, a month and here’s what I discovered:
1- As an anxious person, some days are quite foggy and filled with a sense of dread for the world. These emotions were massively amplified when I used to get up, unconsciously hitting the IG app icon and scrolling for up to 40 minutes. Before I could even get a sense of my own self after waking, I was already feeding my brain with random catchy songs and dis-information and strong climbers and Palestine war and fertility ads. Nice mix wouldn't you say? A mix that I am happily leaving behind
2- I started meditating again. Again, not in the most rigorous, committed of sense. More so like I find myself gazing into the distance, or closing my eyes more often, or sitting in silence with a cup of tea. Sometimes I even meditate with Headspace! (I have a free 30 days trial if you would like to try?) But it happens so that I find myself not filling those important zero moments that I would have otherwise used to absorb digital filth.
3- I am reading more. Simply because, at the contrary of before, I am putting an effort and intention into seeking content I truly want to absorb. Algorithm free? Probably not, as my kindle and google search are still doing a fantastic job in profiling me, but at least I have a sense of renewed interest, a sense that I have made a choice for myself. Moreover, I am happy to spend time on a screen-less surface, reading words that I chose to read.
4- I don’t know anything about my friends anymore. Before I was up to date with most individuals who have played an important role in my life in the UK and before that. I used Facebook for reminding me birthdays, Instagram to silently check-up on them, BeReal for daily mundane fun etc… And now….? I have WhatsApp. Of course it is still a major improvement for ease of communication, but it truly transpires what matters and what not. Whilst I allowed myself into the false sense of scrolling to keep in touch with people I loved, I now realise my social capacity is limited and it’s great that it is. Do I miss out on yet another instagram engagement? Probably. Do I really miss it? Probably not. I trust, like my wise friend Giulia from Italy, that if some news is important it will reach her. It is also sad to realise a lot of my relationship are very flimsy. But maybe this is part of the journey too?
5- I miss creating videos and sharing meaningful (for me) content online. I say this whilst you are reading yet another ‘meaningful’ content of mine online. I find myself in this new space, Substack, with very little idea on how to make my content reach the people who could be interested. On the other hand, I spent 5 years of my life learning all of the tips and tricks on how to allow my content to grow on IG and so sometimes, I find myself completely reliant on it, just like an old crutch, as I am trying to learn how to walk again by myself.
6- I have stopped all filming and videoing of climbing. Will I regret it? I used to record myself climb a lot. Me and my partner had so many conversation on the motivations behind the recording. I kept saying it was so that I could check my beta (for the non-climbers on here it means the individual moves required to complete a climb) but deep down I knew I was doing it for the potential glory of sharing my successes and also failures with the World Wide Web. To get the reassurance and confirmation that I belonged to the climbing world. That I, too, had my space in it and I was deserving of some external validation. Now I see, really, that I was just looking for external validation because I have zero internal self esteem about my climbing. (Work in progress, too!)
7- I am using my phone more or less the same. Shocker right? This is not something I am proud of but my screen time has not gone down that much, considering I am not doom scrolling anymore. I have replaced it with, of course I had to replace it right?; Doing the NYT games everyday, playing Wordle and Worldle (a sort of Wordle but for countries) and checking a thousands wedding attendee dresses. Wedding season is arriving and it’s the busiest year so far, another way of telling you’re getting older without telling you’re getting older.
8- I am constantly battling between wanting to be online and not wanting to be online. Whilst you have probably, by now, gathered the reasons of the latter, the former’s motivations is that I so do believe that one day, if I keep being vulnerable, and share my writing, and expose myself to the unknown I will be rewarded. In what ways, I don’t know. I would like to trust the process and putting in the graft for it. But I also do not want to become or , more accurately, relapse into being a dopamine addict, who finds sources of motivations only through likes and shares of her work. The work I do here, I do for myself. I love when people read it, it makes my heart melt, but I also don’t want to rely solely on the external validations others give me. Finally, to keep up the contradictions, some people I have met online have ended up being some of my best friends here in the UK, so am I just being ungrateful? It’s a fine balancing act and I still do not know where to place myself in order to keep it balanced.
This post, as the many other blogs I have written, never intends to be a ‘complete guide’ to anything. I simply have been thinking about these things a lot, and I wanted to place them on virtual paper, so that they trigger some thought process, or invite you to explore your own truth with it. I shall end my rant here. I would love, however, to hear your thoughts on this conundrum. Especially if you’re flirting with similar ideas to mine, or if you had completely different experiences. Perhaps you have some words of wisdom for me?