Digital Demon
It Hates My Analog Room
You’re no stranger to the digital demon. Freaking thing’s everywhere.
I say demon in the singular but it’s more of a swarm, and everywhere I go, a member of the hive is ready to irritate and sting. What’s in those stingers? Anesthetic, slow-release poison, hallucinogens. I not only absorb it all, I find myself enjoying the stings, until my brain becomes a buzzing nest full of demons and their eggs.
Look, I’m not a Luddite. I graduated college during the dot-com boom and the internet was awesome. It still can be if it’s used right. My life is easier with certain apps. I like streaming music in the car. Even social media has helped my life more than hurt it. I’ve met a lot of you online. And here I am writing a blog-type thing to share with people far away. Wicked cool.
But that’s a classic demon trick, isn’t it? Using something good to make life worse. Letting me choose to indulge, and then overindulge, while I tell myself it’s 100% healthy and normal.
It’s hard to say anything original about a problem we all know. Excessive digital input is as obviously bad as shotgunning a sixer. But my solutions don’t need to be original, either, and a single move can work wonders.
My #1 move was creating an analog room. I spend a lot of time in my home office, which I designed as a special place for writing, reading, watching horror DVDs, and listening to totally righteous metal records. I love my room. I love doing unplugged things in there. And yet what am I still tempted to do? Check my phone. Submit to the doomy, sloppy, disorienting hive. The digital demon wants me to forget who I am, and what I love, so my brain will turn into food for all its swarming mouths.
But the analog room has rules:
It’s up to me to follow those rules, and the demon waits for me to get weak and maybe, for a second, for an OK reason, use my phone for just a speedy little look at something. You know what happens then. Touching that phone is like sticking my finger in a wasp nest. It wakes the hive and then it’s hard to get away.
That’s why my analog room also has a box:
When I enter the room, I put the phone in the box and shut the lid. I can’t show you the phone in the box because I needed my phone to take the picture. Very sneaky of you, demon. The analog rules don’t specifically allow “taking pictures,” but using the camera is permitted if it’s part of, for example, creating this blog-type thing for human connection. After the picture is taken, the phone goes back in the box.
The boxed phone leaves me in my analog room without exposure to horrid news, incessant dopamine hits, and millions of strangers spitting rabies at each other. It’s just me, a part-time Luddite, in a space that’s calm and healthy. Locking up one’s phone has become a mini-movement, and while I’m generally wary of trends, and especially wary of internet trends about using the internet less, I’ve been doing versions of this for a long time now and strongly recommend it.
My whole self feels different after a few hours without my phone. I feel like me. Which isn’t always pleasurable! I’ve been trained on the noise and colorful lights, and spending hours in a mostly unplugged room allows different demons to assault me. Boredom. Blues. Sloth. I have to make a serious effort to follow the analog rules, and I’ve slipped up more often than I like to admit. But it’s important that I’ve sanctified one little room in the world, and that I’ve filled it with non-digital stuff that requires me to slow down, focus, and feel more deeply myself.
There’s no algorithm in here: only me. And when I follow my own rules, and spend quality time writing and reading and cranking Judas Priest, I forget about the phone in the box. I don’t hear the buzz. I’m like a 1980s teenager again, figuring out who I am and how I want to be, and when I leave my room at the end of the day, everything feels better. I still want to check my phone, but I want to check it less, because the time I spend without it simply feels better.
Do you have your own analog room? Do you have a box or something? Let me know how you fight the demon. I could use some fresh ideas.