The World Exists Outside Of The Internet.

You wake up in the morning and check your Instagram for new likes and followers. You check WhatsApp to see if you’ve received any important messages. You check your e-mail for any important work updates.

Then, you finally decide to get out of bed and shower. You decide to play some music on Spotify. You get dressed while listening to a podcast.

You open your laptop and spend half your day on a monotonous, never-ending online video conference. To pass the time, you scroll through your social media feed.

Work finally ends! You rightfully decide that you deserve a break. Hence you log onto Netflix. Spending time watching other people live life the way it’s meant to be lived.

You watch a thought-provoking documentary about why social media and the internet is evil and unnecessary. You tweet an interesting, inspiring quote from the documentary; reminding your followers to ‘stare at a tree’ or some equally pretentious bullshit.

You fall asleep, feeling guilty about not spending more time editing that Google Document.

Then you wake up the next day and do it all over again.

I don’t mean to be that judgemental person that calls you out for your excessive technology use; especially since it would be extremely hypocritical of me to do so. The above routine -for all intents and purposes- is pretty much what my life looks like right now.

All I’m trying to say is that “disconnecting,” isn’t just one of those trendy quotes you see people posting about. It’s extremely necessary at a certain point.

Obviously we can’t avoid video conferences- I’m not going to tell you to quit your job or drop out of school! At the same time, are you really fitting into the whole ‘college aesthetic’ if you don’t think about dropping out at least once a week?

I ain’t ever seen 2 mentally stable college students. Always one of em’ gotta be contemplating dropping out. (I’m sorry…but is it really one of my blog posts if I don’t have to apologise for at least one terrible joke?)

All I’m saying is that reducing your screen time doesn’t have to be as difficult as you think! Instead of using the daily newspaper as a coaster, try reading it!

Although Twitter can sometimes be a more dependable news source as it is updated in live time; I think there is a very fine line between staying updated and doom scrolling. I personally find it easier to read what the news that the newspaper provides me, and nothing else. Of course I still scroll through Twitter; but I try my absolute best not to see anymore “coronavirus updates” than I have to.

Set limits for yourself- once you’ve reached a certain number of hours at your screen, take a walk! Workout! Drink a cup of coffee! Do anything, but just give yourself that break. You deserve it.

There’s that cliché of technology taking over civilisation and humans being left defenceless. We’ve always said- that’ll never happen! Most technology is user-dependent and autonomous, meaning that we can’t be taken over unless we allow ourselves to be.

Therefore, the cliché is usually disregarded as ridiculous; but what would happen to you if your phone and laptop stopped working for a week?

Once again, I just want to clarify- I don’t mean to sound like an annoying motivational speaker. I’m also working on reducing my own screen time- it’s a bit of a clusterfuck; especially since my main source of creative expression is writing this blog!

Thank you for reading! Check out my last few posts here:

• The Scariest Things That Actually Exist
• borrowed poems from an anonymous- ‘Expressions of Love’ and ‘Experience’
• The Horror of Surveillance
• Pet Peeves
• Happy Panda- Random Blogger Interviews

Until Next Time.