Digital addiction
The amount of time per day that I'm immersed in digital activities has been uncomfortably high since high school, but what's scary nowadays is that it's no longer just for work, school, or games–it's also looking at my Peloton screen when working out, reading books at night on my Kindle, and filling much of my walking time with podcasts. I no longer merely have a phone in my pocket at all times; I have a phone strapped to my wrist as well.
Triggered by Facebook's rebrand to Meta, last month much of the tech world started talking and opining about the "metaverse". This tweet by Shaan Puri struck a nerve with many:
The metaverse is the moment in time where our digital life is worth more to us than our physical life. This is not an overnight change. Or an invention by some steve jobs type. It's a gradual change that's been happening for 20 yrs
There hasn't been a year in the last decade where my digital life to physical life ratio has decreased. The trend of our digital lives becoming relatively more important is both unquestionable and unstoppable. And it's both exciting and terrifying to think about what AR/VR will be like after 50 years of compounding progress. If we aren't already more robot than human, it seems like a good bet that by 2070 we will.
This digital shift has come about so suddenly that I worry about long term effects on our brains. To protect myself, moving forward I'm going to make conscious effort to disconnect completely from the digital. Inspired by this excellent post by Erik Torenberg, this upcoming year I'm committed to doing at least one device-free, silent, solitude day or weekend each quarter.