I'm not so smart - a digital detox is too much to bear

Weaning yourself off your digital devices is harder than it sounds – even for a short time

IF ONLY my phone wasn’t so damned smart. It wasn’t always this clever. When I got my first mobile in the spring of 1997, it was considered (by me at any rate) to be a piece of technical wizardry up there with the Apollo space programme, despite the fact that it could do nothing more fancy than make phone calls, send text messages in CAPPED UP letters mostly, and wear holes in my pockets because of its brick-like nature.

My phone today, on the other hand, is a whole lot more high-tech than the Apollo space programme and is beautifully svelte. It allows me to read and send emails, tweet, watch YouTube clips, read newspapers, blog, manage my diary, take pictures, create arthouse images using special filters, listen to and buy music, book flights, watch live TV, read books, file tax returns and hundreds of other things besides.

It is, in short, a little wonder. I would be lost without it. I would be also bereft without my iPad, my laptop and my multimedia player. I’d even miss my TV, although it’s not as important as it was before technology changed everything.

Why then I said yes to going on a digital detox when asked is beyond me. I instantly wished I’d said no. I will quite happily run up Croagh Patrick or canoe down Liffey rapids for a story, but give up all this wonderful technology? Seriously?

This detox wanted to force me to live an extended period – four long days – without access to the internet, text messages, iPads, smart phones, multimedia players, social media and pretty much everything else that comes with chips. It sounded like hell.

And it is all Daniel Sieberg’s fault. He has written a book called the Digital Diet in which he documents his own battle with tech addiction and the steps he felt he had to take to break the stranglehold it had on his life.

He has produced an entirely analogue book about his diet which he says is “designed to guide you to a new life in four weeks”.

Sieberg is no luddite. He is, in fact, anything but. He was the CBS News science and technology correspondent for more than three years until 2010 and has broadcast to millions about the joys of modern life.

He realised, however, that he had a problem when he was swimming with sharks a couple of years ago and found he had this urge to use his BlackBerry underwater “while a fearsome predator stared me down. What the hell was wrong with me?” he asks in the book’s introduction.

I don’t know, but I do know that whatever is wrong with him is wrong with me too. When I read the introduction to the book, I immediately thought that wanting to text or tweet about an encounter with sharks in the middle of that amazing experience was entirely normal.

Then I thought I had a problem and figured Sieberg could help with his four-step programme. Following his rules, I need to put all the technology I have to hand – phone, iPad, games console, everything – into a box (an actual box) for four days. After that, I am supposed to slowly reintroduce elements. I will need a very big box.

As part of step one, which Sieberg calls “Re: Think”, dieters are asked to examine how technology has overwhelmed society and assess the impact it has had on their own physical, mental and emotional health. This is a tough one. I am not proud to admit that my phone is the first thing I check in the morning and last thing at night, while not an hour goes by without my looking at it.

Next there is the “Re: Boot” in which people are asked to take stock of their digital intake using Sieberg’s “Virtual Weight Index”.

Then the stuff goes into the box for the “Re: Connect”, which sees the tech addict working on and trying to improve relationships harmed by the technology in their life.

And finally there is the “Re: Vitalize” in which people are supposed to learn to co-exist with technology in a more healthy way by optimising the time spent emailing, texting, tweeting, Facebook stalking and surfing the web.

Sieberg promises his programme will make families better communicators, employees more productive, and help friends to stay in touch while using technology to our advantage, without letting it control us. “At the core, the Digital Diet is about common sense and common courtesy. . . Be the master, not the slave,” he writes.

He says “technology makes life more sterile and makes it too easy to avoid a conversation”. He highlights how “services like slydial send you straight to voice mail”, while our communications tools allow us to avoid responsibility with the old “Sorry, didn’t get your message”. He says it makes us worse at displaying emotions. “Those emoticons just don’t cut it,” he says.

He suggests that too often technology allows us to replace meaningful interactions with superficial ones. “Many of us have become terrible and ineffective communicators . . . Lots of telling, but very little listening.”

He believes we’ve come to rely on what he calls “drive through conversations”. You pull up, “get what you want and drive away. No fuss, no muss. If only real life were so convenient,” he says.

If I am to become the master instead of the slave, the first thing that has to go is Twitter. For many people, giving up Twitter would be as easy as giving up rancid lard. For me, turning my back on Twitter is trickier.

It has taken over a good chunk of my life in the past three years and, in that time, I have posted more than 14,000 tweets. I am obviously a twaddict. I am not alone. Social networking addiction is becoming a real problem in the more affluent parts of the world.

A study carried out by Intersperience, an international consumer research organisation, found that social networking is becoming as addictive as taking drugs, and giving up the internet is supposedly harder than forgoing narcotics. It even goes as far as to suggest that some people feel similar withdrawal symptoms.

It said that half the 1,000 participants from the UK admitted they would feel “upset” if made do without the internet for a short amount of time, while 40 per cent said they would be “lonely” if forced to go without.

One person surveyed described giving up the internet as “like having my hand chopped off,” another said it was his “biggest nightmare”.

A separate study published earlier this year found that if forced to choose, a worryingly high number of people would rather go without sex than Twitter. Even hotel chains such as the Westin in Dublin have been quick to cotton on to the issue of tech addiction. It is now offering a digital detox stay to guests who come through its doors.

You check in with your gadgets and spend your time in the hotel free from 21st-century white noise. It is a gimmicky idea, but the fact that it issued a press release about it, reflects the times we live in.

Even Twitter recognises there is a problem. Earlier this year, Christopher Stone, the co-founder of the social network, urged the 500 million people who use the site not to spend hours on it.

My twitiction is not so advanced and when I announce – on Twitter – that I am going on a four-day Tweetox, I assume I will coast through it. I am wrong.

Just 20 minutes into it, I am getting fidgety. I manage to last six hours before stealing a look at my Twitter timeline on my (ever-so-smart) phone and 48 hours before I eventually cave in and start tweeting again.

The tech-in-a-box part goes even worse than the attempt to quit Twitter. My phone, laptop, iPad, iPod multi- media player don’t stay in there for four days and I barely manage four waking hours before looking at my phone, while the laptop comes out sooner.

I tell myself it is because of work, but the reality is it was during a weekend and I used work as an excuse. I am, I fear, a hopeless case.

Sieberg says that too often “we give in to our gadgets and let them be our guide. But when we use our mind and our social graces to overcome a particular dilemma, like catching the right train, there is a sense of pride that we accomplished something, not our device.”

The book may be cashing in on a particularly 21st-century phenomenon, but it has much truth in it too. We do rely on our devices too much today. But how can we not? They are just so damned smart.