Repercussions of a forced ‘Digital Detox’
I am sure many of you would have come across the incident of a farmers’ protest and a politican’s rally going wrong, wherein 8 people were killed — both farmers and supporters of the political party. The incident took place in the district of Lakhimpur Kheri which is very close to the state capital, Lucknow and as a result of the flared tempers and potential mishap, the government ordered the shutdown of internet and telephonic messaging services. I happened to reach that town moments before the incident and the following internet blackout.
The moment I reached, I saw an unusually high number of convoys of police jeeps with sirens blowing pass by, not realizing the gravity of the situation. such scenarios, ideally, one immediately opens the phone to see what is happening. But here, the phone was rendered pretty much useless.
The internet was shut down and herein lies the story of my forced detox for a period of 2.5 days.
The first realization — You are so used to simply getting that notification on your news apps, or a notification on WhatsApp from a friend or relative and so on and then you go and google if you really want to get into the details. Even if someone tells you about some current affairs on your face, you simply open your phone and check it out on Google. But here, there was nothing, all of sudden people were asking for television sets to be switched on. While TV cannot just be discarded, deliberately switching it on for a news event seemed a little outdated. You could have it on and see something, not switch it on to check on something happening at the moment.
Feeling of anxiety — You then realize how addicted you are to the phone, to the emails, to the multiple social apps and just to that random act of picking up your phone and jumping across apps aimlessly. Now you just dont know what to do. Maybe people who smoke cigarettes can associate with the feeling when they quit, everything just seems so empty and aimless.
What? This building was here before!! — Then you plan to go outside, take a stroll or a ride or just go and catch up with someone FACE TO FACE. If you are being driven around by someone else, you start to notice things on the streets, those very same things which you would have passed a million times but might have missed it because you were staring at the screen. Things seem new despite being ancient old.
Real Conversations — You make conversations with people, you always do, but here these conversations are not punctuated by you or the other person staring into the phone and then coming back to the conversation with a slight apology. This one is without the breaks but conversations are often punctuated with — I will show you when the net comes back, I will forward that once the net is back on. That anticipation/feeling of ‘when’ is always hanging in the air.
The continuing emptiness — Given the fact that my work involved being on the net, I was left with nothing to do as well. So while sleeping in the early afternoon was a good option, it was just that half an hour — 45 minutes of sleep. Then you wake up and start figuring out mentally how to deal with that anxiety. It is all happening on a sub-conscious level. You pick up that newspaper, that odd lying book which you have been thinking of reading for a lot of time or anything random to look at and read. You are trying to find an offline replacement for that screen. During this entire episode, time and again, out of habit you pick up that phone to scroll though and then you realize the emptiness again.
The real disconnect — While the internet and its tools have made work from any location an amazing possibility, you soon realize that you are ‘always’ available even if your workspace doesnt need you. You switch on your laptop/phone and invariably check the office mail or internal chats, just for the heck for it. You are never really disconnected, even if you are on a vacation. This time however, the feeling of being dis-connected was real. You simply had no way to connect.
Was it worth it? Maybe ‘Yes, maybe ‘No’. I guess I would have found out better had I gone through this for that coveted period of 21 days.
