Hi My Name Is Gabbie and I'm Addicted to the Internet

The Results of a 5 day internet outage

Dear friends,

Our wifi has been down for two days with no signs of coming back anytime soon.

In one moment, I’m agitated, on edge. Staring hopelessly at the browser wheel endlessly spinning. I shut off the screen and turn my phone over on the table. I sigh, I can’t even look at it. It feels like I'm in withdrawal.

I walk away.

I sit facing the mountains and take a deep breath drinking in my surroundings. The rustle of the palm leaves in the wind, the birds calling for a mate in the distance, the warm sun on my skin.

A doorway opens.

Inside the doorway lies the potential for freedom. Freedom from endless scrolling and overstimulation and an opportunity to rediscover presence.

This doorway is the antidote to the digital world we now live in.

We have entered a new era dominated by the internet.

The Rogers outage in 2022 left 12 million Canadians in shambles for 26 hours. Nobody knew how to exist without the internet.

As a species we have evolved to be inextricably connected and therefore reliant on the internet. Within seconds, we have an endless array of answers at our fingertips. For example, when I'm learning a new recipe I consult a few different spaces. First, I search what I want to make on youtube and find a short video instructing the process, because I'm a visual learner. Then I consult Pinterest to find the recipe with written instructions, so I can get a sense for quantity. Once I get rolling I frantically rely on google to problem solve: what do I do if it looks nothing like it does in the pictures?

When we were living off-grid in Belize, one area of the farm had internet, but one of the most important areas to me that didn’t, was the kitchen. In my moments that I needed answers, I couldn't get any. I had to turn to my own well of knowledge, and think critically. As my mind scrambled for answers that weren’t immediately accessible, I slowly found myself digging deeper, improvising and testing solutions through trial and error allowing for critical thinking to flourish, something that technology is causing us to lose due to this reliance.

Research confirms our reliance on instant answers weakens the neural pathways that once thrived on problem-solving, leading to an erosion of cognitive skills.

We rely on the internet to look things up but also to send emails, to manage our businesses, to connect with our peers, to entertain ourselves and inadvertently overstimulate ourselves.

When we are inundated with a constant stream of notifications, youtube shorts and endless scrolling, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released in the pleasure center of the brain, according to an article on technology's effect on our brains and bodies by Pepperdine University. This constant stream makes this area of the brain hyper stimulated by dopamine, says Pepperdine. “This overstimulation can make our brain’s pleasure centers less responsive to other enjoyable experiences like eating a meal, reading a book or watching a movie”

Basically, the more we use our phones, the less our brains respond to the actual things that make life worth living. You can imagine how this might make a society less connected. Less connected to ourselves and the things that bring us meaning, and less connected to others as we dissolve into the digital sphere and away from our physical world.  

This digital sphere feels like where we’re supposed to be because it’s where everybody else is.

Except for me.

I’m feeling FOMO. For those that don’t know what fomo stands for, it means “a fear of missing out,” and for me seems to be the driver of my tension.

An even greater tension itches at me, how do I exist without the internet? How do I occupy this time? How did people do this in the olden days?

I sit down and try to read a book, and in no time, my brain begins screaming for stimulation, the kind of stimulation my overstimulated brain just can’t seem to get from the simple act of reading a book.

I’m irritable, anxious and a little short to those around me, poor Alex. I characterize this stage of the tech detox, the withdrawal stage, which from my previous experience usually lasts 3-5 days.

I have done digital detoxes in the past, both forced–at summer camp we were required to hand in our phones for the summer– and out of choice, the choice born from a value to understand my relationship to technology and its impact on me.

I grew up with the evolving internet and in a household that prioritized a life within the physical world. There were computers in my house, but there was no “screen time” or kicking and screaming when told we couldn’t have it. We played our educational computer games, but the internet was young– there was only so much that you could do on a computer compared to now.

As I entered my teenage years social media exploded. Social media was, however, new. In 8th grade instagram launched, a place to share your sepia-filtered photos with tacky borders and harmless features compared to what the app can do now. That was it for a while. I grew up on the cusp of what social media would become, developing without the influence of the entire world to compare myself at my fingertips.

Eventually the evolution of social media did in fact catch up with me, and as an anxious person, it took a toll on my mental health.

In university, being surrounded by peers with similar afflictions, I wondered what would happen if we actually talked about our addiction and the way it can negatively impact us. I conducted a 10 day detox experiment and ended up writing about it for my creative nonfiction class. This gave me the ability to recognize my overreliance, and stop feeling so guilty for an addiction that technology is designed to prescribe us.

And this awareness deeply embedded in me, has kept me cognizant, creating boundaries around my usage that keep me from slipping.

So you might imagine that being without power for a couple days would be a breeze for me, I've been here before. But it wasn’t. Technology is addictive.

As the outage turned from 2 days into 3 and 3 into 5 I was forced to reckon with the ability technology has to control our lives and to reevaluate my relationship with it.

By day three the withdrawal settles– I make it over the hump.

The quiet simplicity of that doorway grows appealing. As I step forward, I find a world free from distractions, one that offers the rare gift of presence– something nearly unattainable in a society dominated by the digital.

In this slower, simpler space, I curl up with a book, and lose myself in its pages. Alex and I pass the time playing chess and watching movies on my laptop until it dies, savoring these pleasures without interruption.

Then, a loud sound chimes, pulling my attention back to reality– the power has returned.

When I pick up my phone, the FOMO takes over. Eager to see what I've missed, I turn on my screen. Turns out it was nothing urgent all along.

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