{ unplug } Why we should take a holiday from our networks

{ by } Aleks Krotoski

{ source } The Observer, 2011.05.29

{ topics } unplugging, holiday, multi-tasking, boredom,
pleasure principle, conditioning , digital hermit, internet addicts,

conspicuous consumption, re-hab, de-tox, relaxation 

The web has been described by anthropologists as the modern water cooler, and it is increasingly where we hang out. So we head to our technologies in order to be part of the party.

A digital break will do you good. Switch off and try it.

It's the Sabbath, and I do hope you're reading the dead tree version of this column. After all, it's a long weekend, and isn't it time you had a holiday from the web? Even the ultimate how-to guides to life, the doctrines of the major world religions, recommend at least one day off a week. And by off, they mean nothing, nada, zilch. Not a peep. Not even a tweet. And don't even think about touching your BlackBerry.

Yet so many of us – myself included – have an incredibly hard time letting go of our devices. What is it that compels us to maintain our vice-like grips on our digital realities?

The web has made it feel impossible not to be connected all the time simply because it connects us. As social creatures, we are keen to belong, and we perform our belonging – online and offline – by reaching out and touching someone. One of the important ways we demonstrate connection is by sharing information with one another, deepening our relationships and making them more enduring. The web has been described by anthropologists as the modern water cooler, and it is increasingly where we hang out. So we head to our technologies in order to be part of the party.

It's a mistake to assume that your friendships will suffer if you take a break from conversing online.
Photograph: Westend61 GmbH/Alamy

There's also a sense that the online world moves at speed, constantly transforming and redefining itself. Its very size and malleability reinforces the compulsion to participate, lest we miss out on something that we want – and are compelled – to be part of. Even more so, as our online lives increasingly integrate with our offline lives due in part to networks such as Facebook, our social and professional reputations become tied in to our web connections. We have to feed and water these online relationships by responding to emails and tweets, by staying on top of the seemingly endless information at our fingertips, and producing worthwhile online material. There's only so much time in a day, so the only way we can do all of this is to pay attention to there as much as here.

But that's all academic. Really, it's a nice ego rub to feel like there are plans forming around us. The compulsive beck and call of the rumble of a phone, a text message or an invite to an event makes us feel like we're part of something. Unfortunately, these rewards are as difficult to predict as the weather, and it's this that keeps us obsessively checking in. (Psychologist BF Skinner described this "variable-interval schedule" in his 1950s behavioural model of classical conditioning.) The random reinforcement you get from an email landing in your inbox – enhanced by the expectation that it will if you check it immediately after you wake up or come back into signal range – means that the outcome becomes more important than the process. Susan Maushart, author of The Winter of Our Disconnect, says, "We like to think that they are tools and we are the masters. If only life were that simple!" { see previous article: 'I took my kids offline' }

In a move that's becoming increasingly popular among the hyper-connected middle classes, who are often most concerned with the cognitive effects of long-term partial attention, Maushart decided that she and her family needed a digital detox. { see interview below } She took herself and her family offline for six months. They had no access to the web or to their mobile phones. Of course, her greatest fear was losing social ties.

This isn't surprising; a large part of taking a break means letting go of the connections that are mediated by technologies. A week or even a few days away from it all creates an information gap replete with reference points that we don't understand, and risks cutting off an important interpersonal channel of communication. Turning it back on again demands that we be active to sift through a flood of input cached when we were away in order to figure out what will be important in the future. But because we're doing it with an archive rather than while it's happening, we don't have the emotional context and we may not be able to distinguish what's important between an email, a status update or a photo of a cat.

Maushart's fears were unfounded. "My colleagues initially panicked, assuming that I was having a midlife crisis or maybe a good old-fashioned breakdown," she says. "But relationships remained intact – and most of the important ones not only did not deteriorate, they deepened." She attributes this to the tenor of her new communication platforms: "When all you can do is communicate by letter, or face to face, or via landline, you cease to connect in soundbytes. You can't any more. It's rude. So the slowing down entails a drilling down."

Since her experiment ended, Maushart has returned to her devices, but not in the same way as before. "Having been through such a lengthy period of 'detox', there is no way you can ever go back to using media uncritically again," she says. "The biggest change for all of us is the recognition that one needs to use media – and live life – deliberately." Indeed, the reality is that becoming a digital hermit isn't a viable option for most of us. This is perhaps why the relapse rate for so-called internet addicts is incredibly high.

We do get some kind of psychological reward from connecting with one another online. But we must be mindful that we are in the driver's seat, and that everything needs to shut down every once in a while. Have a break. Turn off your BlackBerry and enjoy the sunshine. The web will be there when you get back, but your life may be passing you by.

{ by } Aleks Krotoski

{ source } Untangling the Web, 2011.05.23

{ Interview } 
Susan Maushart (author, The Winter of Our Disconnect)

Journalist Susan Maushart disconnected herself (and her family) from smartphones, email and the Web for six months to find out just how hooked she was on technology. It’s a prospect that, frankly, gives me great terror, but after six months off, Maushart, who lives in New York, lived to tell the tale.

She wrote about her experience in a book released earlier this year called The Winter of Our Disconnect: How One Family Pulled the Plug on their Technology and Lived to Tell/Text/Tweet the Tale. Curious about the highs and lows of a life without technology, I contacted her for Untangling the Web.

Which incidents/events/observations specifically inspired you to take a digital detox?

The short answer is simply that I was worried about my kids – how they seemed to be living their lives “screened,” literally, from what my son with no irony whatsoever called RL (Real Life). To be honest, I wasn’t that far behind them. My relationship with my iPhone had all the intensity of an illicit affair. I even gave it a pet name and started buying it outfits … And then I re-read Walden, my favorite book in the universe, and that experience – plus the fact that I was  menopausal (lol!) – pretty much pushed me over the edge. You know how you’re not ready to go to re-hab ‘til you reach rock bottom? Well, we’d reached it. It was a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures.

What do you feel are the greatest pressures to stay connected?

There’s our guilt as parents. There’s the matter of our turbo-charged work-ethic, which has convinced us it’s a good thing to blur the boundaries between work and home. There’s the pleasure principle – getting intermittent “updates” in the form of information or entertainment stimulates the pleasure centers in our brains in the same way that playing a slot machine does. There’s the seldom-discussed but ever-insistent siren song of conspicuous consumption, whereby s/he who was the latest upgrade wins. We abjure this tendency in our kids – but as adults we are every bit as susceptible. There’s the fear of boredom – which is culturally constructed of course and at present has reached epidemic proportions.  And then there are the biases of the devices themselves. We like to think that they are tools and we are the masters. If only life were that simple! As the proverb reminds us, “To a man with a hammer, the whole world looks like nail.”

How have your relationships with people you were used to communicating with via technology change in the short term, and how have they changed in the long-term? How did they adapt to your offline status?

My colleagues initially panicked, assuming that I was having a midlife crisis or maybe a good old fashioned breakdown. (Because, come on. No email? No PHONE? Who does that?!) Even my family were pretty alarmed at first. But relationships remained intact – and most of the important ones not only did not deteriorate. They deepened. When all you can do is communicate by letter, or face to face, or via landline you cease to connect in soundbytes. You can’t anymore. It’s rude. So the slowing down entails a drilling down. Our relationships with one another as a family were changed dramatically because of this. We went from a family that basically transmitted data (“come to the dinner table”, “sign this”, “get in the car now” ) to a family that communicated. And by that I don’t mean that we sat around having D&Ms all day. On the contrary in some ways. We regained the lost art of hanging out and shooting the breeze.

Can you give me an example of how you feel you (and/or a member of your family) have changed cognitively because of your holiday from digital technologies?

Our attention spans definitely grew. We remembered how to read whole books – all of us. My kids forcible retirement from multi-tasking, I am convinced, enabled them to be soooo much more efficient at completing schoolwork. My youngest daughter in particular underwent a massive mood stabilization experience … almost certainly the result of repaying a long-standing sleep debt. I think we all became more reflective – I know I did – simply because we’d cleared a little headspace for our own use. I also think we experienced deeper levels of relaxation, physical relaxation, which helped us cognitively as well. I remember watching my son in his bedroom, staring at the shadows on the wall and listening to jazz … a very different cognitive environment from zapping targets in a first-person shooter game.

How have you integrated what you learned during your time away from tech into a life that once again includes tech?

It’s ironic that, for me, the biggest outcome of The Experiment was making the decision to move back home to New York (after 25 years in Australia) – and as a result I feel like I LIVE on Skype! My youngest daughter, still in high school, is here with me on Long Island. But my two older kids are in university in Australia, and literally not a day goes by without multiple texts, MMSes, phonecalls, emails and Facebook messages – and often all of the above! I am terribly grateful to be living at time and in a place where such things are possible. Having said that, you can’t step in the same river twice.  Having been through such a lengthy period of ‘de-tox’, there is no way you can ever go back to using media uncritically again. The biggest change for all of us, I think it’s fair to say, is the recognition that one needs to use media – and live life - deliberately (to use one of Thoreau’s favourite words).