3 Reasons Why Digital Detox is So Enticing

3 Reasons Why Digital Detox is so Enticing

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I can honestly say I've never posted a picture of my mealtime food on Facebook or Instagram.  However, I can also honestly say that I've seen it done dozens of times.  What is the attraction of sharing our food, or our mundane activities such as watching the latest episode of Arrested Development, with quasi-total strangers?  I don't get it.  In this post, blogger Sam Hailes ponders 3 attractive reasons to give up our obsession with electronic connectedness.

Hailes likens quitting the Internet to quitting smoking in terms of its difficulty.  Still, he cites a recent event in the UK where as many as 600,000 people deleted their Facebook accounts, the first step in a total digital detox.  Another example Hailes provides is a restaurant which provides a 5% discount to patrons who give up their phones for the duration of their meals.  Brilliant.

The first reason for digital detox, according to Hailes, is the sheer size of the Internet and the breadth of information available.  It's overwhelming, he says, as nearly 450 million blogs are currently available in English alone.  With so much information, it's difficult to determine what sources are legitimate, which are scams, and which ones are outright dangerous.

Second, Hailes points to clogged brains resulting from the multitude of tasks and resources with which users are bombarded each day.  At some point, he says, we just have to shut it down.  Those of us who are guilty of having as many as ten tabs open at a time find little room for anything else.  And the portability of our devices means that those tabs, those social media sites, those e-mails, follow us wherever we go.  Our brains get clogged.

Finally, the author argues that the distractions caused by our devices and our electronic connection are very limiting.  When we are able to do so many things at once and with relative speed, it's difficult to do any one of them well.  Hailes ends his post with a call to action, a challenge to see if you (readers) have what it takes to turn off, power down, and detox from the digital distractions that clog our brains and prevent us from paying attention to the things that really matter, such as personal relationships or physical activity.

I'd like to say more, but I've been so moved by this post that I'm going to log off now and go for a walk. I'll see you on the other side.