Digital detox - Module 4

C2 Proficiency · Gapped Text · Expert Proficiency, Pearson Education

You are going to read an article about spending a weekend without technology. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (1–7). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

Digital detox

Spending a weekend without access to communications technology was an eye-opener.

At home, those concerns about my digital addiction are most acute when I catch my son looking at me while I'm checking a screen. It's reinforcing how much more important the screen is than him, as if I'm teaching him that obeying these machines is what he needs to do.

In truth, he wasn't alone in such lapses. Without our hand-held devices, neither of us had much idea what the time was. Then, I reached for mine when I wondered about local shopping facilities and whether it is normal to see a barn owl during the day. And the magical moment when Artley was being read his bedtime story in front of an open fire, I've had to try and commit to my own fallible memory.

For those of us compelled to check email every few minutes, that finding accounts for those days which seem to pass so quickly with so little getting done. And this is part of a wider trend. 'The more we connect, the more our thoughts lean outward,' Powers writes. 'There's a preoccupation with what's going on "out there" in the bustling otherworld, rather than "in here" with yourself and those right around you.'

Like me, he is a true believer in the value and potential of digital technologies. He concludes, however, that we need to find the discipline to restore control by reintroducing a little disconnectedness.

More radical still is the idea of banning the internet at weekends on the grounds that being away from it on a regular basis allows us to grasp its utility and value more fully. Hopefully, it also brings about a shift to a slower, less restless way of thinking, where you can just be in one place, doing one particular thing, and enjoy it.

The meaningful and the mundane have thus merged into one, all dutifully and habitually recorded – my enjoyment split between that technological impulse and the more delicate human need to be in the moment. This is how we live these days.

What did strike me though was the change in Will's behaviour. If my worst habit is incessant messaging, his is allowing his phone to take precedence over everything else. Country walks, dinner, bathing our son – no moment is safe from the seemingly irresistible ringing, vibrating, nagging phone, that demands – and wins – his attention when he should be enjoying the moment with us.

What's more, the hustle they develop as they struggle to keep up with the pace of all that incoming information has produced a restless, anxious way of engaging with the world. Desperate for efficiency, this seeps into people's physical lives. Perhaps that's why I feel compelled to tidy while on the phone, to fold the washing while brushing my teeth, and no single job has my undivided attention.

We were brushing through wet grass in the early morning when we saw it – a flash of white drifting behind a small patch of trees, backlit by the sun. Crouching down next to Artley, our twenty-one-month-old son, my partner Will and I watched the unmistakable shape of a barn owl until it disappeared into the wood. The look on Artley's face was part of a brief moment of magic, the kind of memory that we live for. Ordinarily, my next thought would have been to pull out my phone, take a photo or video and send a message. Connecting is something I do unconsciously now, and sharing such moments has become second nature.

That weekend, however, the three of us were, by our own choice, offline. We were camping at a rural site called Swallowtail Hill in southern England, which offers visitors the option of leaving all their electronic devices in the safe keeping of the owner for the duration of their stay – a kind of digital detox, you might say. We had been inspired by William Powers' book Hamlet's BlackBerry, an imaginative and thoughtful work that explores reactions to new technologies throughout history and the lessons we should have learnt from them. Blessed with two days of good weather and some delicious local food, I barely noticed I wasn't online.

I take equal responsibility for our digital obsession – magnetically drawn, as I am, to any screen that can feed my addiction. Nonetheless, any objections of mine to this specific vice are usually swiftly defended by an explanation of the importance of dealing with whatever it is now, though it never seems anything that couldn't wait half an hour. Suddenly, however, we had his full attention – well almost. There was a moment when he was distracted by a buzzing sensation and automatically reached for his phone, before realising it was a bee.

By breaking away from my connected life, however, I came to appreciate just how much it had permeated my way of being. So-called 'early adopters', the heavy technology users who throw themselves at every new device and service, will admit to an uncontrollable impulse to check their email accounts or social networking sites. Researchers have called this 'variable interval reinforcement schedule'. Such people have in effect been drawn into digital-message addiction because the most exciting rewards are unpredictable.

A study by the University of California concluded that such constant multi-tasking gradually erodes short-term memory. It also discovered that interruptions to any task requiring concentration are a massive problem, as it takes us much longer to get back into them than it does to deal with the interruption itself.

In other words, what was once exterior and faraway is now easily accessible and this carries a sense of obligation or duty. He sees the feeling that we should be reaching out, or be available to be reached out to as tied to the self-affirmation that the internet, and all that goes with it, provides us with.

One practical suggestion, for example, is to use paper as a more efficient way of organising our thoughts. The theory of 'embodied interaction' asserts that physical objects free our minds to think because our hands and fingers can do much of the work, unlike screens where our brains are constantly in demand.

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