Do You Ever Want To Be Internet Free?

Posted: July 3, 2023

Word Count: 1201

Do you ever want to be internet free? For a day, a week, a month, permanently? I know I do, and that feeling has been increasing more and more as time goes on.

I don’t know if in this day and age and especially in the coming times, if it is possible to go permanently internet free. I suppose theoretically, it could be possible, but practically, for every day folks, not really. Practicality is always my one layer of my experiments - is this possible/accessible for the everyday lives we all live given their different needs and structures.

I’ll say that even though I have run experiments on this type of thing in various ways throughout the years, I find it more challenging now. I am also seeing some generational divides happening in this realm. It is getting harder and harder to go offline. My “Input Fast” earlier this year showed me this within myself, and through others based on the feedback I received about it. While I had success with it in the sense that I learned a lot, it took much more effort than previous iterations of this type of experiment.

Which brings me to this creeping feeling of wanting to get offline more. I’ve found myself in the midst of a project, work day, writing, reading, life admin-ing, staring off into the distance and wanting to be internet free for more time. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the internet for so many reasons. I am an information consumer, it has been so useful for me. And also, it’s like catnip to those who love to intellectualize and play in the confirmation bias dimension. There are views of all shapes and stripes and colors, just like there are in life, just louder, and 10x’d.

Some days though, I find it to be too much. Is there such a thing as being too connected? I am finding that for me there is, on so many different levels. For me it works like this, (does this sound familiar?), I go to look up something innocent, not on social media, literally just in the browser, and 20 minutes later I am reading about some unrelated topic with no idea how I got there. A true rabbit-hole, vortex experience. My curiosity, this exquisite trait (if I do say so myself) that has served me so wonderfully in my life begins to work against me. It’s all rather exhausting. How much info can my brain truly take in and synthesize?

Case and point, I visited my cousins recently. One of them is in the tech industry. We are close in age and grew up together. While I’d say we have many similarities, we aren’t similar, our brains work differently. We got into a conversation about AI (as you do), and we started playing with ChatGPT and a few other AI type sites. 45 minutes passed without either of us being conscious of it. We were that engrossed. Sure curiosity and experimentation are traits we both carry, but to me this showed me that another layer of distraction has been unlocked with the introduction and explosion of consumer facing AI. These programs are the beginning of what I consider “new internet tech.” We have the new internet and current internet happening simultaneously, so we are distracted non-stop. Even those of us who devote a lot of time and energy to this subject, make a conscious effort, can find ourselves upside down on this topic.

For me, it all comes down to one main thing, thinking for myself. Now, depending on what internet corners you spend your time on, there are discussions about how much we can actually think for ourselves, have free will, etc. But for the sake of this blog, I’m taking the perspective that we do indeed have the power to think for ourselves…for now. What concerns me is that we are being shaped by algorithms more and more each day. We are being pushed and prodded in ways that our forebearers were not. And I don’t love knowing that my brain chemistry is being hacked. It feels…icky. And yet, we are in, as always, a gigantic, real time social experiment, with only cloudy visions of what we might find.

Now maybe you are a person who is like, brain chips, sign me up. And that’s 100% your choice (we think). I’m not particularly interested in having the internet in my brain, having it in the palm of my hand is already a lot for me. Having access to all of the information and content the world has ever created or learned, just by thinking about it, doesn’t seem like it leaves much room for your own thoughts or inner experience to me. Especially if we have never cultivated that without the internet in our brain or hands.

Let’s take it one layer deeper. Say, the brain chip thing doesn’t happen in our lifetime. Ok. Is it truly that different than what we have going on now with all of this information at our fingertips? In a profound way, isn’t the internet already in our brains? Isn’t it already affecting our every thought? Isn’t it already guiding us to make decisions we might not otherwise make? To take on behaviors that might not have been activated in offline spaces?

The question with all things is, how do we mitigate the harmful aspects of something that can be so supportive in other aspects? We do this dance just about everyday in ways big and small. How do you have a social drink without becoming over indulgent? How do you exercise without becoming obsessive? How do you balance your nutrition in a way that is supportive for your personal system? As we emerge into this new era, this question, which is really about balancing our basic needs, would be helpful to fold into the conversations with ourselves and the world. How do we balance our technological needs to live a life in this age without letting it take over our lives, our free thought, and our private inner experience?

The technological expansion of the 20 year Pluto in Aquarius era (started in March 2023, note the consumer facing expansion of AI since then), asks this of us. It asks us to include this discussion into what it means to live a healthy and supportive life. How do we interact with our technology? How can we be embodied when so many things are trying to pull us out of our connection to our body? What supports us in living the kind of life we want to live in our time here on the planet? How can you align your values, technology use and wellbeing in the world?

So, ya, sometimes I want to be internet free, for a day, a week, a month, but sometimes all I can manage is a few hours. How about you?

If this is a topic that interests you, join me in a six week exploration of this topic in the reprisal of my conscious tech and yoga course “Relationship Reset: Create A Conscious Relationship with Your Phone” this summer. Registration is currently open. We start July 9th, 2023.