> Being present - Being in the Digitopian state usually means living on autopilot. Grabbing one thing after the other, trying to get through the day, distracting yourself at any negative emotion you face.
Yes, I've become aware that I am quite disconnected from "living in the moment" in a way that I was not when I was younger, a teenager.
I had begun to think that it was a result of getting older, taking on more responsibility (or just being more responsible, ha ha).
Losing my minimum wage job when I was in my teens, early 20's was not a huge deal. No mortgage but I did have rent — but if I couldn't make that there was probably a friend's mom's basement.
No kids then. No concerns about my health then. Friends to hang out with, commiserate with, bounce your problems off of.
It may still be "just growing up" but I suspect the degree to which I have supplanted the "running around" I did when I was young with browsing may be a big factor.
The author suggest meditation, walking, showering. I've showered daily since I was a teenager, started running daily (now walking) a decade ago.
Like flossing, meditation has come and gone with me. Perhaps I should do it regularly (and floss regularly).
Road trips seem to help me get back in touch with The Moment. No distractions...
Last Fall a high school friend and I rode the "Katy Trail" on our bikes for 6 days. Hauled camping gear, tents, stoves, water, food... It sucked right up until the moment we finished — and now I can't wait to do it again.
Reflecting on it, I think it recharged my soul and brought me back into The Moment for almost a week stretch.
We do need long vacations to recover from modern day digitopia. Living in the US though doesn’t confer much such a priviledge. With an average of 2 weeks of vacation per year I don’t think it’s enough to have enough escape time to fully recover from it
> Last Fall a high school friend and I rode the "Katy Trail" on our bikes for 6 days. Hauled camping gear, tents, stoves, water, food... It sucked right up until the moment we finished — and now I can't wait to do it again.
I don't even need to ride a trail for days, just spending more than an hour on the bike outside is plenty to return me to the 'right' state.
If you are going to do a context switch of this nature it’s best to do something random rather than routine. Sometimes the routine is the problem. Going for a walk every day may become a chore during winter but you feel obliged to do it because you feel like you should because of the routine you have developed. This is slave to the same thinking.
The only bit of advice I can give is spend more time with actual people in real life. That doesn’t necessarily mean close friends, just anyone you can connect with. Trade stories, ideas, experiences and importantly time with people. Be spontaneous and do things well outside your comfort zone.
Importantly though, turning off notifications and choosing when you interact with technology, not the other way round, is important.
It's interesting that, every time an article comes up like this, I wonder why I never seem to experience the same kind of digital addiction or negative feelings that other people do - and then it turns out I'm already doing almost everything the article suggests for "unplugging". I've taken an hour long walk every single day for the past 15 years, and shower, and make sure I'm not getting overwhelmed with notifications. Yet, I feel no desire to interact with the physical world. I prefer being online, perhaps because I know how to handle it properly. I wonder how much of our misery is caused by poor user-experience defaults that people don't think to change (like always-on notifications). We get used to a corporate-designed hellscape and think that's the only way to experience a digital existence.
Technology is just a delivery mechanism which can be used for good or bad interactions. The problem is some technology is optimised for delivering the bad interactions because it benefits the technology vendor. Use technology that you control and decide when to interact with.
What I see is a lot of people saying on the one hand “I want my privacy and to be left alone” then hiring a vendor that is motivated to take your data and bug the shit out of you because it’s cheaper and subsidised by this poor behaviour. On top of that they then install apps which damage multiply that.
Incidentally on notifications all my kit is set on do not disturb all the time apart from alarms when I need to get up.
> perhaps because I know how to handle it properly
A subset of people seem to share this sentiment. From their perspective, the rest of us are somehow just doing it wrong when it comes to being online. What they never seem to have, however, is a clear understanding of what it's like to be on the other side.
A little vignette: I've been entirely off of social media for about 10 years, as in no accounts. Very recently, however, a friend of mine went on a trip and said the best way to follow along was on Instagram. So, I created an account and followed just that person and one other close friend, who is a fan of posting pics. Straight away, I was bombarded with an endless repeat of advertisements in the feed for some kind of colon cleansing technique. I'm unaware of any problems with my colon, so just ignore it, right? It's not that easy. Now, I have ideas about colon difficulties implanted in my brain. And it's now crossed your mind, too.
Some major forms of digital media insert themselves between me and my friends, rather than simply facilitating communication. In doing so, they hijack the power of human relationships.
It bends people. I'm not sure how else to say it. From where I sit, progress likely means giving up on maximalist capitalism and developing online stuff that strikes a balance between everyone needing to make a living and everyone needing to be cared for as humans.
I'm happy to see that you are able to strike a good balance between those two worlds and, in an ideal world, that should be the ideal outcome, rather than going back into the stone age.
Noticed the same in myself and my numerate, STEM minded colleagues. There’s some research that suggests understanding how to spot and reason through why something is logical fallacy acts as an inoculant against fake news[1].
It’s a recent category of analysis but subsequent studies suggest it’s real.[2]
Knowing how the sausage is made lends to awareness this stuff isn’t divine mandate. Disabuses people of pseudo religious belief in politically contrived economics, etc. If you consider religion is not the content of a holy book but a state of belief in socialized babbles essentialness to existence, American Civic Life looks a whole lot like a religion.
I, as many of you, work in tech. And the last 3 years were mentally horrible. The constant information bombardment, working remotely and rarely leaving the apartment, isolation, and so on and so forth, have left me scarred.
If anyone feels the same way, I hope that the pieces I'm shipping are helpful as I truly want to help a million people on overcoming the 21st century pandemic.
For those who are curious, I describe Digitopia as: an idealized but ultimately isolating and detached state induced by excessive digital interaction.
Thank you for writing this! I often feel the same way.
My relationship with Slack kind of summarizes things neatly. I enjoy using Slack and it is far and away my preferred method of communication with work colleagues and even work friends. At the same time, seeing slack messages or even the number of slack messages waiting for me is anxiety inducing. There is a false sense of urgency. Zoom is worse, on basically all counts. But Slack is a great idea and tool that is somehow awful for my mental health. I don't know what the solution is. I guess unplug and take a walk. No one has ever complained that I don't reply to a Slack message fast enough.
Recently, as an experiment, I've begun compartmentalizing my digital tools.
I've set up different system accounts for different tasks, then I configured each account with its own privoxy proxy that blocks websites that are not related to that task. The proxies are there basically as a reminder, since a lot of these tabs tend to open without thinking of it.
So for example, on my work account, I can't use social media and news; on my social media account, I can't access github, access dashboards, or check my mail. Phone's on the work privoxy too.
The idea being that distracted context-switching, e.g. opening a hacker news tab any time there's a moment's pause in what you're doing, a moment of frustration, of boredom, any negative motion; that this is a major part of the problem.
This doesn't prevent me from checking up on social media (I'm doing it right now!), but it does mean I can't do so while supposedly working. To use social media, I need to log off the work account, closing anything I'm doing, and log into a different user. That's a lot of friction, and as a result, is something I do maybe once or twice a day for ten to fiteen minutes. I usually don't really find much to engage with and then log off.
I do find myself needing to make active choices a lot more. Like if I find I don't know what to do next, I need to decide on something. I can't just default to grabbing my phone and start cycling through the usual tabs. It's taken a while to get used to reading these moments as cues for getting off my ass and doing something, but it's also incredibly impactful.
The critical part of the regimen is that it does not have many of the drawbacks you get with going offline completely (or using a dumbphone), where you can't park your car because you need an app for that, or people try to get ahold of you and messenger isn't working on your brick.
That's almost the same strategy I used to get a better work/life balance. I created a new user account on my computer and then connecting to services I used for work on it. Switching accounts is a pain (I logged off after using one), so that added enough friction for me. Similar things with social media. I allowed myself to use them, but only through a private tabs. It reduced the urge to visit them.
I generally agree with the defined problem, but when a prescription is provided then that becomes the new goal rather than the initial desired outcome (no more negative effects of digitopia). Your progress is compared against your adherence to the protocol firstly, then the initial desired outcome secondly.
With that being said, to be a bit hypocritical, and with the disclaimer that this is non-exhaustive and different things work for different people, the protocol that has worked for me is as follows:
Delete all social media
Meditate hour a day
Gym (weights, cardio) 5x a week
Good sleep
Proper diet and supplementation
Have job that pays good enough and be good at it
Live well below my means and take on no debt
I think once you remove basically everything, and you’ve listened and quieted all of your thoughts and sophisticated ape urges, you come to understand things truthfully, and wisdom + stoicism + peace naturally ensues.
I think there's like a confusion here, where people think tech is the direct cause of many of these symptoms. In reality, I think that pervasive tech can be a cause of depression, but it's the depression itself that in turn wreaks havoc on your brain and produces the myriad other symptoms mentioned.
Not being able to concentrate, escapism (fixation on superficial things/people, buying things online, imagining some perfect life you deserve to be living), sleep/restfulness disturbance (do you stay up to all hours and then frustratingly wake up early anyway? how about get in a solid 8 hours but wake up feeling like dogshit?)
I sounds recognizable and also insightful and as such perhaps the beginnings of a research question and hypothesis… I’d advice against making it more than that for now. We need real research, scientific recommendations. Something real. Otherwise it could just be a reflection of the human state as it always was. Similar to blogs claiming: “Stuff is not fun anymore, when I was young…” Yeah that’s it, you’re now old and you’re not having fun anymore. It says nothing about the world.
What I mean is that OP is presenting a story, not a scientifically proven methods for mental health improvement. And perhaps some things worked for them. This is different from scientifically proven methods. Although useful, it is certainly not a given that the methods will work for you, it could even be so that they will have a negative effect on the majority of people. Still, there is value in these pieces, everyone is different, hence social science being difficult. One could use them to experiment, harm is unlikely to be caused. But, reading to much about self-help and just not getting started with it for whatever reason can also make you feel bad. It starts with acceptance imho. Anyway, just be careful with pieces like this is my advice. It worked for one person, OP. And there are a trillion more pieces with either similar of very different advice.
And of course it's entirely the responsibility of the individual consumer to discipline themselves and fight against digitopia, and not at all of the tech companies who pour unprecedented amounts of engineering effort, psychological skill and money into causing digitopia in the name of "engagement maximisation".
When it comes to protecting yourself from danger, you can’t leave it up to others. It doesn’t matter if it should be their responsibility to do xyz in your interest.
An example: when you are crossing the street in front of cars that are stopped at a red or stop sign, YOU have to watch the cars even though it’s technically entirely their responsibility to follow the traffic signs, be watchful for pedestrians, etc. If they were being perfectly responsible, you could just trust your walk sign and walk in front of cars without worrying about them. But that’s not wise. You have to watch the cars anyway in case one of the drivers screws up. If you don’t watch them, you’re putting your life in other people’s hands.
It’s not easy to control other people. You can’t control the government or large corporations. What you can do is take charge of the things you can control, and that’s where you can make by far the biggest impact.
Ultimately, I think the entire approach of this article undermines its success. A person has depression, lack of focus and anxiety and this manifests itself through screen addiction.
Screens are ubiquitous, cheap and effective forms of distraction that generally do a good job guiding you from your problems and making those underlying problems worse.
Tackling the underlying issues should be the focus and the “digital” aspect of it should be relegated to being symptomatic and not a root cause. I say this s as someone who wrote “ditching my dumbphone” blog posts a decade ago.
Yep, that's true. I can only give a philosophical reply to this; we feel as we are in an utopia when utilizing tech to distract us from the negative thoughts/feelings that we are experiencing!
Why not digistopia? (digi-topia to me really sounds like digital utopia, which I'm all for... erm, actually I think a real utopia needs to acknowledge the real world, so it can't be fully digital)
I'm not the person you asked, but alienation was a major theme for early 20th century sociologists who studied the ugly effects of urbanization in those days.
Alienation means the breakdown of social ties and the fragmentation of identity. Durkheim published theories on this stuff well over 100 years ago. He also studied suicide.
I agree that we're probably seeing a continuation of trends that began long ago and that are tied in with capitalism, urbanization, and the decline of religion.
I mean this not to imply a structural sense of our society, only the shock that his prediction is insanely accurate given the time and technology separating us.
But speaking of this specific line from the text, “frequency” would be “daily”, and the amount of time probably “duration” so this could perhaps be more exactly expressed as:
> Frequency and duration: 30-70 minutes a day
(Yes. Opposite order so not quite perfect either, heh.)
Yes, I've become aware that I am quite disconnected from "living in the moment" in a way that I was not when I was younger, a teenager.
I had begun to think that it was a result of getting older, taking on more responsibility (or just being more responsible, ha ha).
Losing my minimum wage job when I was in my teens, early 20's was not a huge deal. No mortgage but I did have rent — but if I couldn't make that there was probably a friend's mom's basement.
No kids then. No concerns about my health then. Friends to hang out with, commiserate with, bounce your problems off of.
It may still be "just growing up" but I suspect the degree to which I have supplanted the "running around" I did when I was young with browsing may be a big factor.
The author suggest meditation, walking, showering. I've showered daily since I was a teenager, started running daily (now walking) a decade ago.
Like flossing, meditation has come and gone with me. Perhaps I should do it regularly (and floss regularly).
Road trips seem to help me get back in touch with The Moment. No distractions...
Last Fall a high school friend and I rode the "Katy Trail" on our bikes for 6 days. Hauled camping gear, tents, stoves, water, food... It sucked right up until the moment we finished — and now I can't wait to do it again.
Reflecting on it, I think it recharged my soul and brought me back into The Moment for almost a week stretch.