Digital Burnout

Shortly after quarantine began in March, I was burnt-out from the amount of technology I was engaging with everyday. Although I cherished spending time with my family, talking with my friends, and being a general consumer of some of the amazing, hilarious, wonderful opportunities that the Internet provides us, I was horrified when I saw that my screentime was creeping past the 7 hour mark. I was having nearly 4 hour conversations with two friends a day, obsessively scrolling Instagram for news about classmates, and watching Netflix and Youtube to “relax” and for entertainment.

I would constantly make excuses for my behavior. I loved talking with my friends! It was normal during quarantine that we would all have more free time and would want to catch up. I deserved to relax. I was always the first in the know. I was keeping up with the news, especially during the Black Lives Matter protests.

Yet, I would find that despite being inundated with all of this information, I wasn’t actually learning more or becoming a better person. Although I find the Black Lives Matter movement incredibly important and I am a huge supporter, swiping compulsively through people reposting the same post on five different stories wasn’t really helping me become a better activist; that time would honestly have been much better spent donating to a charity helping support Black businesses or attending a protest (safely). With my friends, most of our conversations could have been spread out over a longer period of time or quickly divulged into aimless sessions of chatter that would keep me up to 2 AM.

Granted, it was summer, but I found myself constantly tired and my head oversaturated with all of this digital stuff. Yet, I was still making the same excuses. It was important, it was necessary. Especially during this time, when we are cut off from our neighbors, friends, and world in so many other ways.

And I still stand by that. I am no technology hater. I could not survive for a month in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere with just a cabinet of board games. I still enjoy calling friends, playing Wii games with family, and watching Netflix. However, the key was striking a balance and defining my technology use in a way that really served me.

I know we all say that; heck, I ironically used to watch YouTube videos with titles like “going a week without my phone,” in order to feel inspired to take a digital detox. By the way, how ironic are those videos? While I admire their efforts to take a break from social media and raise awareness about those issues, ultimately their job and lifestyle restricts them from making any serious changes. And you know, I was like that as well. I would see classmates who would be on their phones throughout the entire school day, picking up their phone at any spare moment, so when I compared my usage to theirs, I convinced myself that I didn’t have a problem.

It wasn’t until I read Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport, that I decided to try a serious detox. (By the way, The Social Dilemma on Netflix is also a great resource). We all know someone who’s tried to hop off social media for a week or goes on a retreat for a day where they don’t touch their phone. That’s all well and good, but the truth is, if you’re serious about changing your behavior, a 30 day detox is a must. Of course, going off Instagram totally cold turkey for those 30 days might not be possible for someone whose business is solely conducted through Instagram. But the point Newport makes is to identify your problem areas, establish parameters to address them (for instance, sometimes classmates and friends contact me through Instagram DMs, so I decided that once a day, I would check my Instagram DMs, but I wouldn’t scroll or look at the explore page). He also encourages people to decide on a hobby before they start their detox, in order to fill that free time. A big tip for people who have problems with social media is simply to delete the apps off of your phone and only check on your laptop; it seriously takes most of the appeal out of it. Another tip for people who are addicted to checking the news is to simply your news sources. I am subscribed to Daily Skimm, which is an incredible news service that provides a quick summary of the most important national and international events of the day (every weekday, except for holidays), including links to articles, in case I want to do further research. I have now completed a 30 day detox from social media and I am a week from completing a 30 day detox from watching YouTube.

As I am kind of on the other end of it, these detoxes have really helped change my life. It sounds like a cliche, but it made me realize how much time and energy I was wasting on negative chatter, things that didn’t matter, people I didn’t necessarily want or need to hear from constantly. It really helped me declutter my mind and I felt more creative and had much more time for hobbies, like learning French, reading, and writing. For instance, I found I had so much more time for getting ahead on homework and projects, now that I had limited my avenues of procrastination. I was able to spend more time on friends and family and I felt much more present in my own life.

With social media, I realized that for a while, I had felt like this hamster on a wheel, where I felt pressured to continually consume more and more digital information, in order to fit in, to belong. I felt like that was the only one I could connect with people, which absolutely wasn’t true. With YouTube, I became sucked down this rabbit hole of self-improvement and productivity videos, where it even got to this point where I believed I couldn’t be productive without watching a video before starting my homework. I found myself so invested in these people’s lives that I forgot to make time for myself. I realized that I was using social media and YouTube as a way to escape my thoughts and to make excuses for things that I was afraid of doing. I also found ways to make technology work for me, such as downloading apps where I could check out books from my local libraries, so that I could spend time I would normally waste on social media listening to an audiobook or reading a digital book.   I was afraid of taking the time to write a poem, because I was scared to fail. Thus, if I just never made the time to do so, then I never had to find out if it was bad. But that’s truly no way to live.

Since finishing my social media detox in August, although I have gone back on social media and scrolled around a bit, I have never really plunged back into my old habits of deep diving in the explore page and people’s feed. Whenever I do find myself spending more time than I would like on the app, I am always able to catch myself. I feel detached from everything happening there and the detox and my desire to really focus on intentional use, has outweighed everything those apps had to offer me. Although it’s true I may miss out on a few opportunities, as Cal Newport mentioned in his book, a few pieces of chocolate is not worth having to sift through a whole bag of trash (okay, I adapted that metaphor). It has been really freeing and if you are in the position to do a similar detox or have found yourself nodding along to everything I have been saying, I encourage you too, to give it a try and change your life. ❦

Sophia Chiu is an award-winning writer who has been published in numerous literary magazines. She enjoys all things film and writing- related. Currently, she is on the executive teams of the Inklings Literary Magazine, Wallflower Poetry Club, and Political Awareness Clubs at her school, and co-hosts a podcast analyzing young adult literature and film. When Sophia is not writing, you can find her reading anything she can get her hands on, adjusting her Spotify playlists, and practicing her French (merci!)