Unplugged: Week One
It’s been one week since I began my “unplugged” experiment. This experiment was prompted by a feeling that screen time had taken over too much of my life-especially social media-and I finally decided to change it. My experiment runs as follows through the month of February:
- No social media of any kind
- No headphones (unless at the gym)
- No texting
- Check personal email once a day.
Week 1: Recovery
If I could use one word to categorize this week, I would say it was one of Recovery. When I logged out of Facebook last Sunday night, I thought I’d miss it, or have some feeling of withdrawal after seven years of regular (at times, constant) use. But that didn’t happen. Monday went like normal, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, all without a second thought. This is nice, I thought. I don’t miss facebook at all. Note: It’s not that I didn’t miss my friends on facebook. But I didn’t miss the clickbait, the constant barrage of status updates, news headlines, memes, or the constant ping of likes and tags that kept me coming back. I had increased mental clarity, and I had the distinct feeling that my brain was somehow being decluttered.
Frankly, it was a wonderful feeling, the way gloomy fog gives way to a crystal clear sky. This feeling of clarity especially hit home when I went to a work conference this week in Detroit. In each session I noticed that I was one of the few paying undivided attention to the speakers. People to my right and my left were all on some device. Granted, some might have been checking on their students (as I did for a bit) but mostly, it was constant. Really? I thought. Was this really what I looked like only last week? And I cringed.
But the best part was what has happened between my wife and I. One of the coolest instances occurred one morning this week when I plugged in a podcast to the speakers (instead of my usual headphones) while Emily was in the other room. Interestingly, it started a really great conversation that lasted quite a while. With headphones, this conversation would never have happened, and I would have closed myself off from my wife. She in her world, and me in mine.
All in all, it’s been a net positive. Better conversations, more mental clarity, and deeper relationships. So if this was how people were back in the 20th Century, then I’ll take it!
Room For Improvement
Nonetheless, I discovered some room for improvement. For instance, I might not be on facebook. But on Tuesday, I realized that I had been perusing news websites waaaay more than I should have. I justified it to myself at first, saying that it was part of my job (I’m a civics teacher) to stay up on the Iowa Caucuses. But an hour and a half after dinner was a tad excessive. There were times where I didn’t feel like I was truly “unplugged” from the world around me as much as I should have been. So I decided to limit myself to about an hour of online news each day.
I am also going to try some of the following this week:
- Leaving my laptop at work so that I can’t access a computer at all
- Calling someone I haven’t spoken to in awhile
- Writing a letter.
With that said, let the experiment continue, and have a great week!
John Patrick Nicka 