This article was originally posted in full on LinkedIn

In September, Neal Taylor and I decided to embark on a month of Digital Detox (here is the orignal ‘Why’ piece)! The following are my reflections on that month, which cover: the busyness of modern life, possible interventions for problematic tech use, bio-augmentation, cyborgs, the brain and our sense of self, the nature of addiction and bad incentives, dopamine, meta-awareness and mindfulness-based approaches to addiction. If you are more interested in the key takeaways, please jump to the to the last section for a bullet point summary!

Reflections on interventions for digital tech use

For many of us, life in the 21st century is, for a large part, experienced through digital technologies. We are living through the ‘Digital era’. A digital detox, on the face of it, is a rejection of fundamental tenets of the era we live in, but, in reality, it is just one of the many approaches to building a healthier relationship with digital technologies.

The frenetic pace of modern life is a major factor influencing our approaches to digital technology use. We seamlessly move between spheres of work, family and social life, all of which are to some degree mediated by digital technologies. It is necessary that we move our attention between screens and devices with our attention often fragmented. In short, we are busy and tech is weaved into our existence in various ways from the benign to the parasitic; it is hard to find time to reflect and it is hard to know where to begin.

I was reminded of this frenetic pace in week one, juggling two screen-based jobs, making arrangements at distance for a friend’s wedding, attending various online appointments etc. etc. The first reflection for me was ‘how much of our life fundamentally requires digital engagement?’ It certainly felt like a lot! Although not the purpose of the digital detox, what would not engaging look like? Can we imagine the life of a digital hermit?

Prompted by this and Geraldine’s comment on the first piece we shared, I began to think of models for tech abstinence, or tech addiction therapy. How might this work? What are the key factors we need to consider when exploring possible options? Could something like the below be useful?

It is challenging to put numbers to it, but my assumption is that patterns of digital technology use, on a large enough population scale, will approximate a normal distribution (bell curve). This means that a few will have a perfectly balanced relationship with digital technology, existing in a stable equilibrium where they use tech and not the other way around. For these lucky few, there is probably no need to take action. On the other extreme, there will be people for which digital technology usage has a seriously negative effect on multiple aspects of their life (e.g. health, relationships). Here interventions that are more drastic may be called for and we should consider the vast literature on addiction-based therapies ranging from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and other talking therapies to abstinence-based approaches (although abstinence is likely to be challenging in the Digital Era!)

For most, including me, we will be somewhere in the middle, perhaps oscillating between periods where we feel we are genuinely being served by the digital tech we use and times where we feel their pull is negatively impacting the quality of our life. Here it makes sense to consider ‘softer’ techniques from active self-monitoring and mindful usage, to a principle informed Digital Detox (the one we embarked on) and perhaps periodic abstinence from digital tech using therapeutic retreat-based models found in wellness and meditation communities.

Having had some exposure to Buddhist and meditation communities, it feels like an area ripe to explore, particularly as most retreats strongly encourage and facilitate tech abstinence. Although many will benefit from this type of short, sharp break from digital technologies, it feels to me that there are challenges on either side of the break, i.e. at the outset (initiation) and at the end (re-integration). Essentially, how can we make a temporary hiatus from a digitally saturated life more integrated into the rest of our lives?

Here, I think it is useful to consider combining periods of abstinence with an underlying set of principles (or philosophy) and to frame efforts as a path towards a healthier relationship with tech. Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism is an excellent starting point here, emphasising an individualised approach to using technology in a way that best serves our core values.

Are we bio-augmented?

As the month unfolded, I found myself reflecting on more radical aspects of our relationship with digital technologies. Our lives in the Digital Era are saturated by tech use. Our usage, alongside the rapid pace of new developments, appears to catalyse the pace of our existence in the modern era. As has been the case throughout human history, we are changing tech and tech is changing us. This rolling symbiosis may be at the very core of what makes us human. As Andy Clark suggests in Natural-Born Cyborgs, the combination of the technologies we use and our brain’s inherent plasticity mean our minds are extended – we think and feel differently because of technologies, in fact in some sense we think through these technologies.

As digital technologies become more and more refined, more closely adapted to our biology, it will become increasingly difficult to draw the line between where we begin and end. Technologies using virtual and augmented realities will challenge this distinction further than we thought possible. For more on this please see my website.

The sensory cortical homunculus (image below) illustrates how much space different parts of our body represents in our brain’s neurological ‘map’ of sensory regions. There is more space dedicated to sensations from our hands, so this area is depicted as larger, relative to areas such as our body’s trunk that takes up less space. I have naively overlaid some common tech devices to illustrate my observation that our brain re-maps and re-wires in a constant exchange with the digital technologies we use. This ‘Digital Homunculus’ can perhaps help us think through questions such as: how might objects such as smartphones that are so seamlessly integrated into our actions and sensations be neurologically mapped? If these technologies are fundamentally part of us, then does damage or theft to them count as injury to self as well as to property? How much of our selves do we lose if our Facebook account is blocked?

As I share the experiences from my digital detox, I hear stories of mothers giving birth, refusing to let go of their phone – the dual comforts of a partners hand and our other omnipresent companion. Of teenagers born in the smartphone era who when deprived of their devices become unwell. As well as many accounts of the common phenomena of phantom phone vibrations and ringing noises. Each story reinforces what we all feel: an ever-closer union between our selves and our technologies – we are increasingly bio-augmented.

As each generation looks forward, the contours of a brave new world have the power to both excite and unnerve. I sit on the uneasy frontier remaining agnostic as to the shape of what unfolds and the range of ethical implications. Two constants are likely to be (1) the rolling progress of technology and (2) our brain’s near infinite ability to adapt. Beyond this, we should be extremely cautious of bad incentives and the race for our attention pushing technologies in directions that may result in maladaptation and erode our sense of free will. Perhaps, as per the principle informed approach to digital detox, there are values that we want to hold onto through the maelstrom of progress that mal-aligned incentives may disrupt.

How did it feel? Reflections on the nature of addiction

What lies behind our urge to reach for our phone, to load an application or to engage with other digital technologies in a compulsive way? For me, this question, around the nature of first-hand experience, was crucial to examine during the digital detox. To what extent was Cal Newport correct in suggesting that a permanent, low-level sense of disease and anxiety permeated existence in the modern era? A reality in which small hits of dopamine from a continual stream of digital interactions temporarily distract us from this unpleasant background. To what extent is this background malaise driven by lower baseline levels of dopamine resulting from chronic exposure through addictive habits? Is it therefore self-perpetuating?

With these questions in mind and pre-loaded with the principles from our digital detox, I made a point of examining my urge to pick up my phone or to load social media – what did it feel like? The first point to make is that without already having decided to keep my phone away from my bedroom, and work area, I may well have not noticed whatsoever. I simply would have carried on as usual, unaware.

Even with these pre-decided policies, the first week or so felt like a period of gradually noticing how things felt. I became more aware of the discomfort behind an urge to pick up my phone. This felt like the first step to restoring a degree of meta-awareness – to pay deliberate attention toward the contents of my mind whatever was there.

At work, it felt like moments of boredom, frustration or inability to concentrate drove my search for novelty. I realised I crave quite high levels of stimulation, get bored and frustrated very quickly and my focus either moves on, or I attempt to multitask (unsuccessfully). These patterns of experience are enhanced when I’m tired, when I’m more anxious or am in pain, but fundamentally it does feel like my baseline, auto-pilot response is to crave novel stimuli and for there to be an uneasiness and discomfort behind experience.

Towards the end of the first week, I would ‘catch’ myself moving towards my phone or a new browser tab to load social media. It started to feel as though I had additional ‘space’ to act, as though I had, in some modest way, enhanced my willpower and control over cravings. This made me think about the nature of addiction as an erosion of meta-awareness and free will over conscious action. A disquieting thought when paired with the efforts of various technology companies to capture our attention and create cycles of repeated behaviours in an enclosed system.

The second step was around how to use this enhanced meta-awareness and space to act contrary to an urge. To not just watch myself go through with an action, but to become aware of the urge and to make another choice. I experimented with moving my body, stretching and just sitting. Again, it felt like meditative traditions have wisdom to offer here – to sit with non-judgemental, open awareness and watch things come and go from experience realising that things change. When I stopped to look at the contents of my mind, the dis-ease would either morph or dissipate and later in the process was less evident at all.

The steps of: (1) adopting a policy (i.e. having principles and practices of the detox in mind), (2) noticing and following experience and (3) noticing and changing response felt like a kind of patchy progression over the month. It was certainly not a steady progression though and there were patches of regression on days and weeks where I had to engage in something requiring more digital tech use (some examples below).

Interestingly I found the process revealing for an occasional smoking habit that I had not intended to inspect. It felt to me that the feelings underlying an urge to roll a cigarette were one in the same thing as those driving my urge to pick up my phone – there was a cross-addiction. As discussed in our first piece, the mechanisms behind behavioural and substance addictions are, to a large degree, inseparable, operating through the reward pathways of our brain. Nonetheless, it was interesting to appreciate this at an experiential level and it has enhanced my appreciation for the digital declutter methodology, which may provide some benefits for an array of addictions.

Key takeaways

Some wins along the way:

• Journaling my experience was useful to embed reflections
• Having a support network was crucial and made the whole endeavour social, more interesting and meaningful
• Phone outside of bedroom – a tech free zone – not checking before sleeping or first thing in the morning
• Down time on phone – between 9pm and 9am – sometimes lapsed on this
• More time for reading, reading in the day and before bed opened up possibility to have a non-fiction book and novel on the go!
• Earlier nights – slept longer, felt more refreshed and not artificially kept up by screen light several more hours
• More genuine interactions and the detox itself opened up some good discussions and resonated with people
• Enjoying the ritual of picking up a newspaper at the weekend to catch up instead of looking at the same news at multiple points in the day on apps

Clarified some Digital things I really value:

• Special nights for watching a series or film – these stand out more in time
• The wonder of this modern age and the amount of excellent content available – valuing listening to conversations and podcasts to learn and explore
• New and exciting technologies like VR and how they can add flavour in novel ways and enhance life: quick and fun exercise, exploring new worlds

Clarified some Digital things I find most problematic:

• Unintentional tech use – scrolling, going to phone with no intention
• The feeling of being buffeted between screens and devices and having to arrange so much for modern life via phone
• A ‘maximalist’ approach as the norm, i.e. the tendency to try and extract some benefit from any piece of technology rather than selectively choose technology that serves deep-seated values

Core reflections:

• Importance of a guiding philosophy and set of principles that evolve and are clarified over time – it’s not about throwing out tech or escaping the modern world