Trying (and failing) a digital detox

Dear Fellow Snitcher,

It seems that modern society, despite its penchant for excess, for providing everything a human could possibly need, has a strange obsession with detoxing. There’s an overwhelming array of diets and cleanses to choose from, because when there is nothing left to want, you begin to want for nothing, and this applies to our mobile phones, too. It’s called a digital detox, and on the surface, it seems like a great idea.
No matter how high your screentime is, most of us are aware that we use our phones too much, namely when it is not strictly necessary. It might be a cheeky scroll while waiting for the bus, or a quick “just five more minutes” before getting out of your cosy bed and braving the cold morning, but it all adds up. So, for the purpose of science, I decided to try a so-called digital detox. The rules are as follows:

1. Turn your phone off for three days. The idea is that, because you aren’t being attacked by a constant onslaught of notifications, you will not be burdened by the urge to check your phone.

2. If there is some digital-related business you need to tend to, you can make the conscious decision to do so from your desktop, and hopefully not get distracted by reels or shorts.

Simple, right?
Well, I failed almost immediately, and then I continued to fail for all three days. It appears that discarding such a useful tool is simply not beneficial in our culture—everything and everyone is connected through our phones, and they’re just so convenient.
Day one: Upon arriving at work, I immediately had to retrieve my phone from my bag and turn it back on to contact my boss. Later that evening, I had to use it to access my calendar: it turns out that the convenience of having everything written down and accessible on a lightweight, portable device is simply too difficult to shake off. But I didn’t have work the next day, so surely it would go better tomorrow.
Day two: It’s extremely difficult to get around London without access to Google Maps. Once I had turned my device on for this now-commonplace amenity, I was pounced upon by messages from my sister and a call from a friend with an important question. I was beginning to think that this digital detox thing was simply never going to work.
Day three: I had a little more success on my final day, although the damage had already been done. I passed my morning doing a little reading and finishing up a poem I had started a few days before, although I found myself frustrated that I couldn’t immediately post my craft to social media. It’s a frivolous frustration to be sure, but it’s a little difficult to be creative when the only way to share your work is by being connected to the internet. I then had to scramble to Instagram on my desktop anyway, to confirm dinner plans with my friends later that evening. Except, rather embarrassingly, I found myself scrolling mindlessly through my feed anyway, only it was by scrolling my mousewheel instead of swiping up on my phone screen.
Other people have had more success than me in digital detoxing, but my little failed experiment reveals a painful truth for those looking to limit their phone usage: it might actually not be possible to, unless you would like to go off the grid completely. In the short reprieves I took from my phone in those 72 hours, I found that life became much more difficult to navigate. I couldn’t easily check the weather or news, mark events in my calendar, plan outings with friends, or listen to music and audiobooks. I think that anybody else attempting a digital detox might run into the same problems. But doing these perfectly reasonable activities without getting distracted by social media is a Herculean task.
I won’t patronise you with a tangent about how there must be an alternative, because there is an alternative, and it’s called Snitch.
Digital detoxing may work for a small amount of time, but Snitch provides a long-term solution, one that doesn’t require you to cut yourself off from the outside world entirely. Although the app is still in beta, I’ve managed to cut my average screentime in half over the past two weeks. Everytime I’ve opened Instagram and have been kicked instead to Snitch’s homepage, my friend and I’s daily time limit staring back at me, I’ve had to question if I truly had a good reason for opening the app in the first place. Nine times out of ten, I don’t, so I just put my phone away. When I can think of a good reason that my friend won’t berate me for—like posting a poem or making plans with a friend—I don’t feel immeasurable guilt about allowing myself to use Instagram or YouTube. Then, before I can get too distracted by the slew of posts and reels, I’m reminded that I’m eating into not only my time, but my friend’s too. It’s a gentle nudge that I can reap all the benefits of modern comforts without any of the drawbacks, and it keeps me mindful that, at the end of the day, my phone is a tool I can use, and I don’t have to let it use me.