Confessions of a Digital Backslider

I used to be a religious journaler. I started when I was in middle school and kept the practice up through my 30s. I stopped journaling a while back and explained why over on AoM.

When I turned 40 a few years ago, I decided to rent a hotel room for the night and take all the journals that I had and read through them to do an accounting of my life as I entered midlife. It was a fun exercise.

I definitely picked up on themes that I regularly wrote about during the first 20 years of my adult life. A lot of my entries were about my Eeyoreness and making resolutions to quit being a mope.

Another theme that popped up in my entries was my relationship with technology and distraction.

From March 2, 2002, when I was a 20-year-old freshman in college:

I fear that the confusion of memory is occurring all over our country and will only increase as the number of people raised surrounded by mass media increases . . . What happens when a culture’s collective memory begins to fade? Our minds are so distracted by the spectacle and constant bombardment of stimulus. It is hard for anything to sink in and burn a lasting impression in our minds.

I went on:

One of the challenges of today’s individual is sorting out what is useful, what is substance, and what is garbage. Perhaps we aren’t capable, or maybe some are, but I feel the majority of us aren’t. The answer to the problem is reducing the flow of information. Be it TV, internet, movies, or magazines. These things distract the mind from the more noble pursuits of wisdom and knowledge.

And then, with the earnest resolve that only a 20-year-old can muster:

Today I’ll begin a TV and internet fast for one week. I will call it an experiment, and as is proper with experiments, I’ll record data (qualitative, of course) on how my mind and even body react to the lack of constant bombardment.

Five days into that 2002 experiment, I wrote that I was experiencing “more mental clarity” and that “my overall mood has been uplifted. It is as though a fog has lifted from me, and the sun is shining brightly.” The experiment worked.

But I fell off the wagon. In November 2004 (when I was approaching my 22nd birthday), I wrote this:

I’ve become everything I never wanted to become. I sit and watch TV, or play video games, or surf the web. I’m a tech addict. I’m consumed by all the gadgets and gizmos and by being on the cutting edge of knowledge. As Thoreau said, I’ve become a tool of my tools.

The melodrama is hilarious. “I’ve become everything I never wanted to become!” Oh, Brett.

But I appreciate the sincerity of my 22-year-old self. I admire how he dropped Henry David Thoreau quotes in his journaling. I can also see the beginning of my thinking about technology as being deterministic and not merely instrumental.

I even wrote a terrible poem about my struggle with digital distraction:

I am connected to wires; they chain me down.
They promise me freedom; I am let down by battery failure.

A month later, December 2004: “I got rid of cable. I’m going to get rid of my DVDs, and I’m not going to buy a book ever again. [I planned on only checking them out from the library.] I’m also going to cut down on the amount of time I spend online. I want my life to be simple.”

I did get rid of cable. That part stuck. But “never buy a book ever again”? I like owning books, and I’ve got a ton of them in my personal library. And the time I spend online has increased dramatically since 2004. Heck, I make my living online.

Getting On and Falling Off the Digital Abstinence Wagon

This cycle of getting fed up with being overly distracted by digital technology and resolving to cut down on my screen time, only to find myself returning to the cold glow of my devices, has gone on for the past two decades. I can describe it with embarrassing precision:

I notice that I’m spending too much time on distracting websites, Reddit, The Daily Mail (I’m a sucker for yellow journalism), and Twitter (yes, I still call it Twitter). I feel the brain fog rolling in. I can’t focus on work. I compulsively reach for my phone. I feel dumb, flat, and numb.

So I resolve to change. By jove, this time it will be different!

I install some kind of blocker or limiter on my desktop browser and phone. And it works! My screentime plummets. I experience the same mental clarity and mood uplift that I encountered during my first digital fast as a 20-year-old. This digital-distraction-free high lasts for a few weeks. Maybe a few months.

And then something happens. Maybe I need to check a specific subreddit for an answer to a question. Maybe I really want to read a comment thread on Twitter.

So I uninstall the blocker, override the parental controls, or breeze through the “wait 10 seconds before proceeding” screen that apps like Clear Space put up.

“Just this once,” I tell myself.

But it’s never just this once. After consuming the info that I overrode my screen blockers for, I begin a digital binge. “Well, while I got Reddit unblocked, might as well stop by r/utahinfluencerdrama to see what those cringey Mormon housewife influencers have been up to.” I don’t stop there. I check the Daily Mail and see another article about some healthy 30-something getting colon cancer, and then I’m checking out Colorguard’s website, and contemplating taking a dump in a box like a cat and mailing it to get it checked out. I’m right back on the treadmill of mindless surfing.

Then the spiritual and mental fog returns. I reach a point where I feel like garbage, and then vow to stop being a tool of my tools. I reinstall the blocker apps. The cycle begins again.

I’ve got a graveyard of digital tools I’ve tried over the years — Freedom, HeyFocus, FocusMe, and half a dozen others whose names I can’t even remember.

I even tried a Light Phone. It’s a minimalist e-ink phone that can only make calls and send texts. I had high hopes for it, but the reception was lousy, and the texting painful. That only lasted a few months.

I’m not proud of any of this. I’ve been stuck on a wheel for a quarter of a century, and it’s not flattering: resolve, install, comply, rationalize, override, binge, regret, repeat. I’ve been running this exact loop since before Facebook existed.

My name is Brett. And I’m a digital backslider.