Spending hours on the internet everyday, I had always wondered what would happen to me if I lived without it. Checking discord every hour, listening music from Spotify, and just being unable to surf on the web, would I even survive? When spring break arrived, I realized it was the perfect opportunity to give the challenge a shot. Well with many asterisks. Here are (most) exceptions I made:
Checking emails and responding to them.
Using Wi-Fi to connect to my self-hosted applications, in particularly Jellyfin and Mealie.
Checking weather and public transportation.
Using the internet to help within my household.
Direct messaging people I know in-person, primarily family, through Facebook Messenger
Otherwise, there were no excuses for using internet. I didn’t know what to expect at the time, but I set a goal of one week. Here is what I realized during that week:
There were some moments when I sat in my desk, not wanting to do anything but check social media. However, not having social media didn’t plunge me into depression. Actually, I was surprised how little my life changed without social media overall. At most, I found myself focusing on activities I actually want to do.
This challenge made me aware of how much we rely on web browsing. As you saw, I made many exceptions when it came to trivial tasks like checking the weather or public transportation. Everything else, I lived off on my own memory. It became annoying being unable to do things I usually do like exploring new recipes or read advice from Reddit. When I wanted to show someone something, well, I couldn’t because I couldn’t use the internet.
I must confess: I am not an outdoors person. I don’t exercise as much I should and depend on the computer for entertainment. This challenge didn’t change that because beforehand, I had downloaded movies, books, and music. When I felt bored during the challenge, I watched a movie. Furthermore, I enjoy creative writing so this challenge gave me an opportunity to spend time writing on my story. Not to mention, I was studying for my driving knowledge test and spending time with family. In short, without internet, I had plenty to use my time on.
Through the challenge, it became clear that the internet was not important to me in the wide scheme of things. There were many things to do besides going to social media or watching YouTube. Life felt the same. However, being unable to do research, it was also clear that I was not going to abandon the internet. The internet is way too useful, and it has been so ingrained to society that 100% turning off my internet would be unthinkable.
I learned a lot through this challenge, so, in future, I would like to experiment limiting more parts of my life. Eventually, I want to try turning off computer-based entertainment completely. Perhaps I could have a challenge not using electronics for a certain part of the day.
Any comments or questions? Or you have no one to talk to? Feel free to contact me!
This work by thairanaru is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International