24 hour no device challange.
It was 1:30pm in the afternoon, I got up late,I just had my brunch and I was so bored. My phone is locked inside the library charging station and it is a ten minute walk in the snow. I debated on whether I should get it or not because theoretically, it was not my digital detox day, the day I was so nervous about. Today happened to be my 24 hour detox day because since last night, I unintentionally forgot my phone charging inside the library and now the library was closed.
I decided to take a shower, and realised it won’t be as fun since I won’t have my shower music. I dislike silence or maybe more so the idea of sitting with my own thoughts or both.
It is the day after Thanksgiving and I am in my room. Most of my house mates have left so it was only three of us in the house. I did not want to interact with them. I am not sure why.
Since last night, I have not had a chance to see my friends’ annual thanksgiving posts on social media and especially those friends who don’t post at all otherwise. I did not celebrate, so now I am experiencing what the best way to put is this “itch” and surprising amount of FOMO (fear of missing out). While I do not celebrate thanksgiving, simply viewing my friends’ stories on Instagram, replying to maybe one or two or even liking them offers me a sense of confidence in our relationship. This may sound weird to an older generation but this is the new form of interaction and part of relationship building for Gen Z and Gen Alpha to some extent.
This reminded me of the podcast on Grind Culture and the pressures of social media (2024). One of the interviewees, Evelyn, shares that whenever she interacts on social media or engages in virtual interactions with friends, it offers her comfort despite the depth of communication or its weight. While one-to-one human interaction without digital interference is the best and most respectful form of maintaining and improving relationships, I recognized that structurally and culturally, it is impossible to seek that quality interaction with peers to establish a connection. That is because, with new forms of digital communication or engagement on social media, they carry a new weight and have become a new standard. For example, I would feel really bad if my close friends won’t like my social media posts and similarly, I feel the pressure of engaging and interacting with their seemingly “meaningless” humorous reels they shared via instagram messages. If there is one insight that came from my fear of missing out is also learning about the significance of this new form of social interaction. In other words, this form of interaction signifies commitment to the friendship such as, if I am a close, supportive and a genuine friend, I will like and even comment on my friends posts to “prove” to the quality and strength of our friendship.
It was 4pm now and I started cleaning my room after I flipped through the pages of Brand it like Serhant, a book by one of my favorite entrepreneurs and a real estate agent in NYC. I also took a nap in between. When I got up, I started planning my night out…1. Clean my room 2. Cook ramen 3. Journaling 4. 2026 vision board planning? Oh wait but I need my Pinterest (app) from my ipad to do so because I don’t remember when was the last time I have ever created a vision board for a new year without my ipad to scroll on Pinterest. So, do I cancel this vision board activity and do it tomorrow when I can get my phone back or even better, I can use my laptop or ipad right now and break a little bit of my 24 hour digital detox rule. So for the next few minutes, I decided to use my ipad!
While I was jotting down all these to-do lists, I was slightly proud of myself for being so productive or planning to be productive. But as I reflected back on my experience, I started thinking if writing all these to-do lists and plans to achieve is rather feeding my distractions than dealing with my incapacity to stay still without anything to do for 30 minutes, for an hour which feels like an extreme sport. Leisure was one of the topics we discussed in this course and in Popova’s article on Leisure, the Basis of Culture, the author uses the word, “productivity-fetishism” (Popova, 2017) which is essentially where I find myself in. It was my thanksgiving break, I do not have any overbearing assignments or anything urgent to finish. I was home and I subconsciously decided to write a list of all things I can do and even experienced the joy from my anticipation of completing these tasks. Popova (2017) writes, “we have come to see the very notion of “leisure” not as essential to the human spirit but as self-indulgent luxury reserved for the privileged or deplorable idleness reserved for the lazy.” Consistent with this argument, I never actively or subconsciously ever position myself in the same bucket with leisure. I did not want to not do anything since I feel terrible, hence replacement activities were a great addition to my empty calendar for the day. With that, I have to “finish” these tasks since I don’t have time otherwise to do these daily simple chores like cleaning and vision board design. While I was able to finish most of these tasks around 9pm or 10, I recognized that I would rather do these activities (primarily for distraction) than stare at the wall or in bed with my own thoughts for 2-3 hours.
Therefore, looking back at my experiences, I agree with Popova and Josef Pieper, quoted in the same article and our tendency to “commodify our aliveness” (Popova, 2017). I would rather do something than nothing and I used this 24 hour no-phone day to prove that I am willingly commodifying my being at my mental comfort of not wanting to become lazy or associated with that.
I went to bed earlier than ever. 11pm compared to my usual 2am after chatting with some house members before they went back to their rooms. I read three more pages of my Serhant book and decided that it’s time to sleep.
When I looked back at this day, it was not a normal day for me. I faced a lot of challenges starting from boredom to not being able to wake up to my alarm, not being able to wish my friends thanksgiving and view their social media content. I felt restricted in some capacities to fully function at my comfort and convenience. I was unable to call my family and it even challenged me in executing my replacement activities like “vision board planning”. If I look back, that day was not a sustainable technique of navigating my relationship with nature and by the evening, I was becoming more frustrated so I resorted to sleep.
All this to say, it was an ambitious plan yet a superficial one for me who uses technology for a lot of purposes beyond scrolling and entertainment. Some of my hobbies include using technology and I wrote that as part of my philosophy of technology and that is, using technology to fuel my creative energy. Whether it is editing photos or refining my YouTube video or a vision board planning, I am reliant on technology beyond its utilitarian purposes and I found it difficult to withdraw it from my life completely. When I first read The New York Times Article on Luddite teens (2025), I was slightly critical about their mission and commitments, especially with the pace at which the world is moving towards. My first judgement to their mission was critical. I found it almost superficial and had a very pessimistic view, but it was refreshing and also more realistic when some teens when they left for college had to suddenly make life changes to cater to the demands of technology to survive and avoid missing on important information. Therefore, from this reading on Luddite teens and after my digital detox experience, I am recognizing the need to push beyond binary view (abstinence or addiction) on digital device, such that they are neither necessary for survival nor something we can abstain from completely but rather, incorporating them and using when necessary and developing habits and relationships where it doesn’t overtake life. I like the word “neo-Luddite” which Ms.Lane uses in the article to describe her current experience with devices.
Citations:
TTL – grind culture: productivity pressures, social media, and burnout. (October 10, 2024). https://www.thisteenagelife.org/episodes/Grind_Culture%3A_Productivity_Pressures%2C_Social_Media%2C_and_Burnout
Popova, M. (2017, March 4). Leisure, the Basis of Culture: an obscure German philosopher’s timely 1948 manifesto for reclaiming our human dignity in a culture of workaholism. The Marginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper/
Vadukul, A. (2025, January 30). Luddite teens still don’t want your likes. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/style/luddite-teens-reunion.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wk8.DV2b.zmyTBVFBXbCu&smid=url-share