Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.
Gustave Flaubert
I’ve got a confession to make.
I’ve not been the best dad of late. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there for my children. Every. Single. Day. But I haven’t always been present. And as you know from a cacophony of useless Zoom meetings, being present and being there are not the same thing.
Instead of encouraging my children’s mental and physical growth, strengthening their resilience and kicking the wolves of mental anguish from their door, I was clicking buttons. Reading Paragraph articles when I should have been reading fairy tales. As the world spiralled into a highly unlikeable dystopian version of its self, I found myself more and more… there but not.
Do you know what I mean?
"There is a subconscious reaction to the mere sight of a smartphone. Its presence causes those around you to feel less important than they otherwise would. We are training our children to feel unimportant."
It was time to rein in the addiction. I made a commitment to my family: two weeks with no smartphone or internet. A 14-digital detox. I’d be 100% present, whether they liked it or not.
I’m packing for a long voyage, a modern day Scott setting out to the digital Antarctic. He died, I very much intend to stay alive. I leave a forwarding address and my wife’s phone number with relatives. The instructions are clear: call only in an emergency.
After a nostalgic scroll through the NYT, FT, CNN, ABC, Time, BBC, RTV and Reuters, I send goodbye messages on WhatsApp and, weirdly, LinkedIn. I schedule enough Twitter and Instagram posts that people won’t think I have died.
Finally, as an act of complete recklessness, I give my phone to Alice and ask her to hide it.
Alice is my daughter. She looks at me, a tractor in one hand, a toy microphone in the other, and says, “Daddy, are you… alright?”
“I will be,” I say. “In two weeks.”
“Is it my birthday in two weeks?”
"34% of internet addicts access their favourite websites and check for status updates before getting out of bed."
Scientists
The morning of day two and I awake from a dreamless sleep, my hand unconsciously scrambling for a phone which isn’t there. I go to the kitchen and make coffee in silence. I sit on the sofa and feel estranged. Any other day I would already know major world headlines in alphabetical order.
I drink my coffee, shell-shocked.
Luca and Alice alleviate my confusion. They’re moving in pincer formation towards the kitchen. They’re like fucking velociraptors. I tell them there’s no point sneaking up on the enemy if you’re screaming.
I used to make breakfast whilst checking for Nasdaq fluctuations and BitCoin price. As the children threw their oats and water at each other, I’d sit on the sofa and check my emails. Again.
My first lesson from my two week digital detox is served in a cereal bowl: breakfast is hilarious.
It’s sad to write, but I had never noticed. The children are at their best first thing: energised, excited, funny, curious. Questions and wonder at every turn as they dissect their dreams and their plans for the day.
I put my coffee aside and drink it in.
I have a lot of time to make up for.
The top five online activities for internet addicts in China include social networking (94.73%), school work (86.53%), entertainment (82.44%), online gaming (73.42%), and online shopping (33.67%). Brits spend 8 hours and 41 minutes per day staring at a goddamn screen.
Science Direct
My favourite time of the day used to be when the kids had gone to bed. Now it is when they wake up. Three days is nothing. Three days is everything.
FOMO washes over me. My brain firing neurons I didn’t know existed as it tries to trick me into getting a dopamine hit. What the hell is happening in Jakarta? I’m sure I need to know. What is the FTSE doing RIGHT NOW?
The importance of a LinkedIn chat escalates to unbearable levels.
Neurosis grips me as I feel the urge to be online, my past life attempting to sabotage my experiment to be a better, more present father.
I need a cure and need it quick, so do something no sane parent would and volunteer to help with homework. I must be delirious. My hands are shaking, I’m sweating. Apocalypse Mommy doesn’t care, freed from the shackles of diphthong pronunciation she dances out the room, leaving me to some early morning English pronunciation for 4-year olds.
Devoid of notifications, I’m completely in the moment, Buddha holding my hand as the morning passes in Zen-like beauty. I watch and feel – really watch and feel – my daughter’s mind evolving. Right before my eyes.
Is this what being a parent feels like?
"We are communicating messages to our children even when we are not talking. Adults and children express emotional energy on their faces, in their voices, and in the way they move or stand. Because children are still developing their language skills, they trust the message of this non-verbal communication far more than they do mere words."
When you’re on a phone you’re not looking at people.
Your non-verbal communication is communicating to your children – and I am really labouring the point here, because it needs fucking repeating – that they are not as important as what you are looking at.
Again. And again. And again. And again.
This is your family.
These are your relationships.
This is your life.
One screen at a time.
I haven’t checked my emails for four days. I feel… alive.
The kids start playing football in the house. To the delight of my new found cerebral clarity, my patience holds. Reminiscence of an old impatience is so diluted I barely notice it. They’ve had a traumatic year, I say to myself.
Instead of staying stop and checking the Australian football scores, I join in. And score three goals.
Can I still do one thing at a time?
I haven’t tried since 2003. I start with a mindful trip to the toilet. Luca has beaten me to it, dragged a bedside lamp and plugged it into the murky water at the bottom of the U-bend. He stands, his mouth on the side of the bowl, stirring the water with the upturned lamp. I’m completely present for this milestone.
When evening comes, I read 53 pages of a book.
"Addictions activate a combination of sites in the brain associated with pleasure."
National Institute of Health
Stripped of ‘blue light’, my sleep is transcendental.
Feeling more refreshed than Buddha, I wake up before the alarm clock. I read another 53 pages of my book to prove the day before had really happened.
After a breakfast of music and delightful conversation on how the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World can be made of Lego and jelly, my wife and I talk without distraction. The kitchen work surface doesn’t vibrate. If there's a coup d’etat, I don't know about it.
After lunch I play hide-and-seek with Alice and Luca. Not only do I win because my vibrating phone isn’t there to give away my location, but I also choose a different hiding place to the wardrobe I usually choose so I can scroll Instagram for something interesting even though I know Instagram isn’t interesting and never is but that hope. Oh my god, the dopamine hit should something actually happen is overwhelming.
It’s a monster. An uncontrollable, rampaging monster.
Internet addiction causes psychiatric disorders. Mood disorders, poor sleep quality, impulsivity, self-esteem, and suicide.
Many Science Journals
Did you know internet addiction has an effect on the part of the brain that’s involved in decision making, executive attention, cognitive control, and emotional processing?
I’ve fried my own damn brain with lifestyle and business blogs, with celebrity gossip about celebrities I’ve never fucking heard of.
I become an asshole on day seven. I want to tell the world of my superiority. “Look at my new found resilience and willpower”, I want to shout from the roof. “I’m the best dad in the world.”
Can I put a photo on Instagram which shows the world how not on Instagram I am?
Shaking the thoughts away, I take stock of my situation. Half-way through my detox. I have scaled the summit and now all I have to do is get back to smartphone base-camp, a better man, a better father.
“Don’t forget,” Apocalypse Mommy reminds as we sit watching The Queens Gambit. And only the Queens Gambit. “More people die coming down than going up the mountain.”
Pawn takes Q6.
Before I started this human experiment an hour walking with the children seemed like an eternity of unread emails, breaking news and networking opportunities missed. Either that or an exercise in foot dragging and a spaghetti western stand-off yards from the front door.
When I remember I’m not tracking how many steps I have taken today, my hearts starts malfunctioning. That thought is replaced by a more pressing milestone: toddlers can run long before their reptilian brain can articulate the danger of their new gift. Nature played a hideous game when she gave movement before speech. Luca is off. I missed his first steps as they coincided with Boris Johnson contracting Coronavirus. However, I am completely in the moment for the milestone of running, and catch him before he reaches the main road.
"Many of the problems with mobile interaction relate to distraction from the physical presence of other people. According to these studies, conversations with no smartphones present are rated as significantly higher-quality than those with smartphones around, regardless of people’s age, ethnicity, gender, or mood. We feel more empathy when smartphones are put away."
University Study
I hallucinate during breakfast. Notifications float out of the toaster and the fridge. The children start speaking and babbling in speech bubbles. I realise Luca is actually trying to say something. “Crane.” A new word. A milestone. To celebrate he repeats the word over and over again like some kind of broken down polygraph skipping over presidential lies.
Crane is a one syllable word made of four sounds: ‘k’, ‘r’, ‘ei’ and ‘n’. The third sound is a diphthong. The ‘r’ sound is made by bringing the tip of your tongue near the alveolar ridge at the top of your mouth – without touching it – whilst simultaneously scrunching your lips together. The final ‘n’ sound is made by touching your tongue about a centimetre away from the back of your front teeth, and directing air through your nose.
Luca was doing all of that. No wonder he was impressed with himself. I’m there for this. It makes me happy.
Ladies and gentlemen, phantom vibration syndrome has left my pocket on day 10 of my digital detox. My leg is no longer calling me.
Gains come from all sides, battering my ambition with clarity, focus, mood-control and energy. My decisions are cloud free, multiple and sound. It’s like I have internalised every self-growth book on the New York Times bestseller list. Mark Manson is in my fucking head.
I see the children setting up to quarrel and jump in with a game and a puzzle.
My negotiation skills could release hostages; convincing Alice and Luca they should eat peas is child’s play.
They don’t know they are being hoodwinked.
Foolish children.
Every parent goes through five stages when their toddler learns a new word: laughter, joy, frustration, boredom, hate.
I’m there for all five and have no desire to take a photograph of any of them.
Further, the idea of even taking a photo hasn’t crossed my pre-frontal cortex for eleven days now.
In the future I’ll take less photos. I won’t be one of those people saying ‘Im taking a photo in my mind’, but neither will I have eight thousand photos of every fucking moment.
Photos are a reminder, not a diary.
I feel like some kind of advanced parenting A.I..
Three new words today: rain, brain, train. I sense a pattern.
I am Nero in the Matrix. Ironic that the descending binary code is representative of clarity and thought. It’s the language of technology, the language of binary is not what I need here. It is the wrong analogy. I’m thirteen days into a digital detox. I shouldn’t be seeing programming language.
I don’t see ones and zeros, I see everything and nothing. I am White Fang, the city was my internet addiction, now I am returning to my family, to the clarity of a pre-internet age, to the sanctuary of the wolf pack, to the forest.
No coverage here.
End of the fibre-optic line.
Balancing work, family and the never ending surprises of life without a smartphone is not only easier than I thought, but immeasurably more fun. I’m not going to miss any more moments or milestones for want of breaking news or a LinkedIn sales message.
What scared me the most during my detox of discovery was how powerful the subconscious influence was, not just for me but for Alice and Luca. The inherent power of a device influencing how they viewed their own importance was startling.
My notifications will be accessible, but only during certain hours of the day or when the kids aren’t present. When my kids are in the room and talking to me, they need to know they are most important thing in the universe.
Even if they are driving me up the fucking wall.
All that said, I do need to make a phone call.
I ask Alice where my phone is. She has no idea what I’m talking about.
Two weeks is an eternity for a child.
She asks me to do a puzzle.
And I say sure.
She knows what I’m thinking and says, “Three hundred pieces?”
And I say yes.
I’ll look for the phone tomorrow.
Mark Fielding
Excellent!