Introduction
As a foreigner who arrived in Cambridge just a few weeks ago, the idea of getting rid of my phone for 24 hours seemed at first to be exciting (“being unreachable in the era of super traceability/availability happens once in a blue moon”), as alarming (“getting lost in a city with a -7°C temperature appeared not equally thrilling”). However, a university assignment sounds like a medical prescription: something that you should do for your own good. Just a few days ago, I was at the doctor who suggested that I should avoid certain foods (“that are also my favorite ones: pizza, pasta, bread…”), as they could be the possible causes of my current physical inflammation. He recommended that I follow these instructions in order to become aware of what is happening to my body, what are the triggers, and finally which actions should be designed and deployed in order to treat the symptoms and avoid the inflammation becoming chronic. Since the rapid development of ICTs and their pervasive availability, a series of symptoms and pathologies have been mainly denounced and analyzed: some of them already existed and have been strengthened by ICTs (from the general lack of attention to phenomena of cyberchondria), while others are completely new (consider FOMO or the “Nomophobia”). I believe that our effort in “fixing SNS and ICTs in general” should consist exactly in detecting these symptoms and treating them so to avoid them rapidly exacerbate and silently becoming chronic. I believe that the no-phone-day prescription acts in this direction and it may be considered as a first “detoxing” step to understanding and discerning what specific features and elements of ICTs revealed as negative for our personal development (i.e., our identity, social relations, and well-being in general). In fact, although a day is not enough to understand the beneficial effects of this prescription, 24 hours are sufficient for the observation of the clear radicalization of the symptoms triggered by our phones in terms of needs, perceptions, and feelings.
No Phone Day Plan: Feelings, Needs, and Perceptions
As a visitor here, my plan for a no phone day was to find a good library where I could study and also enjoy the sunny hours by exploring Boston without a specific itinerary. However, before going out, I decided to peek at some old notes about the city that I had written before leaving Italy. In retrospect, I think that I should have brought at least four items with me to get through the day: an analog wristwatch, a paper city map (including a course to develop the skills to use it properly), a diary with main (and emergency) numbers, and a camera (just for pleasure). During the day, beyond continuously touching my pocket as I was looking for my phone, what I really felt was the impossibility (as a sort of deprivation) of being able to communicate in real-time to distant people what I was seeing (not sharing on social media, but the simple communication), i.e. the beauty of the places I was discovering. In this regard, I believe that our phone has become an extension of ourselves as much as it has become natural to satisfy immediately our need to call or talk with someone/ or a specific person (inasmuch as in a certain way always reachable). For this reason, I think that my generation is developing the need to be sometimes “offline”: we need to be disconnected for a while. Soon, we won’t have space anymore to develop real loneliness and the real need of speaking with someone, since we are being overwhelmed by information and connections (very often weak of contents and authentic communication). In a similar way to what happens to heavy smokers, the hyper-connection through our phones makes us unceasingly needy of connections until states of nausea (and high-levels of stress) that often lead us to the need to go offline. I met new people in the city because of that need to communicate (I am usually an extrovert person) and I wrote my number on a piece of paper (and a person’s hand) to remain in contact. I started to write what I was feeling in spending time on my own to respond to this need for communication and the fear of forgetting these feelings. Although it has been liberating being unreachable for some hours, I experienced a little sense of solitude in not receiving the usual messages and calls from home, friends, and colleagues (the same calls and messages that I often critique for interrupting my work!). I got lost twice and, each time, after realizing that I could not use maps on my phone, I asked people for information, most of whom had to consult their phones to help me. I was (irrationally) saddened when I discovered that I couldn’t take a photo of what I believed unique in that moment, the city at sunset, for realizing immediately (and rationally) that wasn’t so unique and I could come back at any time in the next few months. Yet, I felt to have lost something. In the era of hyper-technological availability, taking a picture, placing a call, sending a text message, and consulting an online map has become so easily and quickly part of our social fabric that their absence creates a strong sense of lack, impairment or deprivation.
Concluding Reflections and Open Questions
My 24 hour no phone challenge has completely confirmed for me that our ubiquitous digital ICTs not only have reshaped existing human needs, but they have created completely new ones: the need to reach someone in real-time virtually, the necessity to describe and share our reality in simultaneous ways, the need to hyper-photograph ourselves and the world (and often the need to hyper-share it), along with the loss of faith in our orientation skills, in our capacity to enjoy solitude, and in our capacity of memory. Our relationship with technology is certainly describable in terms of addiction, but specifically, as a dependence to delegate to technologies ever more of our capacities, daily tasks, actions, decisions, and even our life choices. It is a dependence that will impoverish us and, in some cases, harm us if we don’t find the right balance to adopt and, above all, the positive features to strengthen.
Is it the delegation of certain functions that have made us unable to develop certain skills, by leading us to be increasingly needy, as well as demanding more and more to technology? Is it the technology that is betraying our expectations and impoverishing us? Or are we the ones that are impoverishing ourselves? Are we traitors to ourselves?