After endless midnights of staring at blaring emissions from my laptop in the dark of my room, I began to wonder how my life would differ if I reduced my screen time. Reducing my screen time would be a challenge given that most of my university coursework and assignments were delivered online, and this usually takes up… all of my time. But the challenge was a welcome one.
While it’s not an experiment in the traditional sense, I set out to record my moods, adjustments and experiences over a week of reduced screen time. More specifically, the goal was to abstain from all electronic use in the hour before bed. Instead, I would refocus this hour on nurturing neglected hobbies, practicing self-care or decompressing from the day. While the effort had its merits, the observational trial was unsuccessful.
On the first night, I planned an activity to keep me occupied in the hour before sleep. It kept me busy, guarding my brain from the boredom it was not familiar with. My mind was seemingly stimulated and distracted enough not to crave the technology that it used as a dopamine crutch. That night, my mind buzzed with activity but did not feel altogether restless.
During the second night, I read the book that had been sitting on my dust-covered bookshelf for a year, and for the first time in a long time, I wrote in the margins for a reason other than assigned annotations. This felt gratifying as it reinforced my sense of competence and intention. Not only this, but the act of reading allowed me to decompress and prepare for sleep. As someone who struggles to fall asleep at night, I found the ease with which sleep came that night unexpected.
By the third night, I was becoming more familiar with the routine of disengaging from my devices. When I sat in silence, realizing I had nothing planned for my hour offline, I grew disillusioned. I couldn’t think of anything to do, and I felt compelled to grab my phone to search for a list of technology-free activities. This is where the frustration began. I realized that so many of my hobbies had been abandoned because of my university schedule, or they were simply subsumed by some digital version. Instead of surrendering, I took my frustration to the one place that has always helped me: pen and paper. That night, I did my skincare routine, put my kettle on the stove and grabbed my journal.
Whether it was a symptom of my own life or of living in a larger technological era, on the fourth day, I didn’t spend the full hour offline. Because of this lapse, I realized how pervasive technology is in academic settings, social spaces and with new forms of electronic payment. It is undeniable that technology is becoming more and more embedded in our scholastic, social and economic routines, a somewhat terrifying thought.
All of this isn’t to say that disengaging with technology is impossible. In fact, at the end of the week, I began to resume my hour offline, and felt great improvements in my life. I felt like I was revisiting my hobbies and reconnecting with a part of me that had been lost to the endless scroll of social media and stream of communication with peers and professors. Therefore, I would actually suggest trying a digital detox and taking this experience as a sign that not all progress is linear.