Again my favourite topic; Digital Detox.
This time, I would like to focus on the negative side of digital detox and those are...
- You can not contact anyone
- It will take some time to get used to non-digital time
- Possibility of the side effect if you are heavily addicted
1. You can not contact anyone
The first downside of digital detox is you cannot contact anyone via phone or computer.
To me, this is actually a good point of doing a digital detox, but if you are living alone far away from your family and friends, then it will be sad to not be able to contact anyone.
However, you can think of a different approach when it comes to digital detox because nowadays so many people are trapped in the small squared device.
The overuse of digital detox is considered to be one of the reasons for decision fatigue, and the only way to avoid decision fatigue in this century is to try not to use any digital devices for a certain amount of time.
If you don’t know what decision fatigue is, please refer to the above articles to know about it.
Decision fatigue is happening to you every day unconsciously, so it is good to know what it is and how to avoid it.
2. It will take some time to get used to non-digital time
This happened to me when I tried to do the first digital detox day, I was just not used to the time itself without digital devices.
When I started the digital detox habit, for the first week I didn’t know what to do without using the digital device.
However as I have written in the above article, there is always a way to spend your time without the devices; such as going to the nearest park by yourself, turning off all the devices and reading a paper book ( not kindle ), or simply go out to meet your friends.
More detail is written in the below blog post.
According to the below article “ Alarming Average Screen Time Statistics (2023)”, the average screen time is almost 7 hours a day.
If your job is something to do with computers or devices, that’s totally fine because you make living by doing it so if your screen time for work is 7 to 8 hours a day, that’s not a big problem.
However, when it comes to the people whose job is not with computers or devices and who still they use tons of their time with digital devices, that’s not something good for their health.
3. Possibility of the side effect if you are heavily addicted
The downside of doing digital detox is that if you are heavy, I mean extremely, addicted to digital devices, or most commonly social media, the commencement of digital detox will hurt you.
Since social media is developed to make people addicted to it, so if you do not control yourself on social media or even Internet surfing, you can spend tons of hours, the worst cases tons of weeks, in the virtual world.
According to the article from Social Media Victims Law Centre, possible side-effects that you might get from staying away from social media are...
- Strong urges to use social media
- Increased boredom
- Significant shifts in mood
Also as spoken in this YouTube video, you can know about yourself how heavily you are addicted to social media or digital devices when those are to be taken away.
When I was 22 to 23 years old, I was heavily addicted to social m, media especially Instagram.
I was working at a Japanese company in Tokyo and, my job was something to do with the computer so for my work, I used 8 to 9 hours my time in front of the computer, and what I was doing was right after I finish working, I opened up my personal smartphone and started using Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the lists goes on.
Looking back at my devices-addicted age, probably my screen time per day was almost 14 hours a day which is definately insane.
The reason why I started digital detox was I felt the exhaustion of using digital devices and I was the one who felt I had to do something with this uncomfortable exhaustion.
Then I realised that there is a method called to get yourself away from all devices and so as the Internet; Digital Detox.
I also had side effects when I first tried the digital detox challenge, and I always had this emotion that I wanted to go back to the “comfortable” Internet world.
I resisted so hard on myself who wants to go back to the Internet but then, gradually I started feeling that the real world is much more comfortable, safer and actually slower done the Internet world.
Now I am writing blog posts about digital detox, so if you are seriously looking for some change in yourself, please take a look at my other blog posts about digital detox.
I hope my blog posts are informative to you those who want to start the challenge for a better life.
Thanks for reading