Digital Addiction

(Note: This was written about two weeks ago and has, by an interesting twist of fate, been trapped in my iPhone.)

Recently several articles in the Washington Post have explored various aspects of digital addiction, even reporting on residential treatment programs where people can go for withdrawal from their devices. 

While I am certain that I am not nearly as badly hooked as many around, I have wondered several times in the last month if I might not be falling victim to this disease.  I have already decided that I want to go cold turkey during part of my staycation in early July.  But, even at that I have wondered what exactly does "cold turkey" mean? 

Since I get lost in my closet, I've been quite grateful for having Google Maps facilitate my arrival when and where I attend. If I go on an excursion during my staycation, must I really go back to reading maps, which I really don't do very well? 

If I totally give up electronics, that means I can't do my Spanish lessons which require daily practice to be effective.  Can I do my Spanish lesson once a day?

Can I sync my step- and sleep-tracker each day?  What really are the consequences of not knowing these things, which I cared little about until recently but which now seem indispensable?

Usually during vacations, I really enjoy writing for this blog.  Would it be OK to write a blogpost on one of several devices that I own?

You see the slippery slope upon which I am perched.

Back in the days during which the closest approximation we had to smartphones was a Blackberry, they were jokingly referred to as "crack berries" because even they were as addictive as crack cocaine.  Just the sampling of uses to which I put my iPhone, described above, make it really easy to see how it is easy to slip into this addiction. In and of itself, each use is benign; it is the accumulation of all those helpful apps that threaten addiction. Even as I write this, I am on my way to a Washington Nationals baseball game. Back in the day, like 2010, I would have taken a book or a magazine to read on the commute, and maybe I'd talk to people. Not today.  I love that I can finally have a chance to write, but relent the consequences.

While I've been thinking about this issue for several weeks, it is particularly heavy on me today.  I've been riveted to news coverage about the horrible tragedy in Orlando all afternoon. Wearing my ear buds plugged to NPR as I ran errands and did chores, I've hung on every word. Just before I started writing this post, I'd found myself looking at my phone offering the temptation that a bag of heroine might to a drug addict. 

The line in the sand came when I realized that I'd learned almost nothing...all afternoon. 

(Note: Since starting this post earlier, I've now been to a very exciting baseball game during which my phone remained happily in my purse.)

As I was saying, I came to the realization that while there had been 4 or 5 reporters covering the event, almost nothing new was reported.  So what was the point of hanging on every word, except for serving my addiction.  I do remember a time in the late 90s, though, when I was so disconnected that my editor at Butterworth-Heinemann shared with me a breaking event about Osama bin Laden, and I said, "Who?"  Clearly there is a happy medium between these extremes.

I do know that despite of, or maybe because of, that exciting two-run 9th inning for the Nats, I feel way more relaxed after this three hours than I did after three hours of the continuous news cycle. I take that as good data.  Now I just need to turn that information into wisdom. 

Because of a strange work week, my weekend is Sunday and Monday this week, and while I won't give up my laptop, I plan to abandon my iPhone except for what a phone is supposed to be used for--talking to friends.