The Detox I Didn’t Know I Needed (But Absolutely Did)
Back in January, I facilitated a program for The Innerwork Center called Digital Detox. The goal was to help participants explore their relationship with technology, bringing conscious awareness of how, why, and when they are engaged with it - and most importantly whether it was serving them. When researching this program, I found a few statistics published in a Forbes article from January 2023 that help to pull the necessity for a program like this into focus:
Americans check their phones on average of 344 times per day, which is once every 5.5 minutes.
Nearly half of Americans believe they are addicted to their smartphones.
In 2022, the average American spent 44 days on their phones - nearly a month and a half!
And that’s just smartphones! What about video games, streaming services, screens for work, and wearable devices that keep us physically connected at all times? It’s easy to see how the sheer pervasiveness and accessibility of technology can lead us to quickly tip out of balance from helping us to harming us. So I set out to create a container for our group to do some deep exploration and share what we found as the month unfolded.
A little bit about me before I proceed. I’m not a hater or resister of technological solutions. I genuinely do notice and appreciate the benefits technology bestows on my life. So I wasn’t setting out to push an anti-technology agenda… But given technology’s growing influence on our lives, I figured our relationship to it could use some deep examination. And boy, did this process yield some deep insights. Here are some of the realizations I had…
The first day of the challenge I deleted all the social media accounts off my phone except LInkedIn. Why did I leave LinkedIn? Well, because of all the social media apps, LinkedIn is by far my least favorite (to put it bluntly, I hate LinkedIn!) I might open it up once every two weeks and typically it was just to look someone up or respond to a message. A few days in, I actually caught myself spending time scrolling, you guessed it: LinkedIn! WHAT???!!?!? In the absence of preferable options, I chose to spend time looking at something I hated out of sheer habit. I was shocked.
Between the week prior to starting the challenge and the second week of the challenge my screen time dropped by 128%. Had the phone not shared that information with me I never would have believed it. This just goes to show how unconsciously I was engaging with my phone and when I made it more conscious, I got hours and hours of my time (my life) back.By the third week, after gaining much more consciousness around my use of technology, I found myself picking up my phone and just looking at it. Not unlocking it, but just looking at it, and in those moments I asked myself “why did you just pick up your phone?” And what came up over and over again was “there’s something in there for you”. What the heck does that mean? Well, what I took it to mean I was hopeful that I’d find something on my phone that would, I don’t know, maybe make me happy, make me feel validated, change my life for the better in some small (or maybe huge!) way. It wasn’t specific, but just a general feeling…I was hopeful that there would be something good on the other side of that locked screen.I was three weeks in and had removed all my time wasting apps, so my phone became kind of boring…but I still unconsciously believed if I checked it there would be something great waiting for me. If I just put another quarter into this slot machine, maybe this will be the time I hit it big. That was a huge realization. I needed to decouple my emotional longing from my phone. The good stuff is NOT in there, it’s out here.
And finally, probably the biggest realization came from reflecting on detoxing from Instagram and Facebook. Several years ago my partner, Andy, disconnected from social media and he would often ask me what I felt was getting out of it. My answer always was “connection”. I loved seeing what people in my life were up to, who was having a baby, who was moving across the country, who got a new job. I never had to miss out on anything that was happening in peoples’ lives and I loved that. As I mentioned, day 1 of the Detox I deleted the social media apps (except for my least fav) and so theoretically, I was disconnecting from that source of connection. It was only going to be for a month, I’d be ok. And then the craziest thing happened - I felt nothing. I felt no difference. I didn’t feel less connected, I just didn't feel anything. What I learned was, I wasn’t getting connection, I was getting information. It wasn’t relational, it was informational. Which means that for so many years I had been assuming I was benefitting from this upside of staying on top of my whole network’s accomplishments and fancy night’s out, but there was actually no return on investment at all. Connection comes with interaction, intimacy, sharing space, a long hug, tears, telling stories, learning from one another’s perspectives, etc. I had tricked myself into thinking I was staying “connected” to all these people, but it was just plain false. Wow.
It’s always so fascinating to me how many different ways we can learn what we need to know about ourselves. I truly wouldn't have told you I had a “technology problem” before I went on this Digital Detox journey, but upon reflection, there were clearly several areas of my life I had let technology control me as opposed to the other way around. And getting back into “right relationship” with it has been powerful. I’ve learned more about myself, what I really value, and how I want to intentionally spend my time.
We’ll be pulling together another cohort in June for the Digital Detox program. If any of this has been inspiring to you, please consider joining us. I would love to take this journey with you.
About Ryann
Ryann’s truest passion, and the throughline throughout her career, is creating the conditions that enable people to thrive. She has been a business owner, a CEO, a business strategist, an executive coach, a life coach, and a yoga instructor. Ryann has advised over 200 small business clients on building heart-centered businesses and supported CEOs in finding more balance in their lives. She has written and facilitated leadership development programs for Fortune 500 organizations which empowered leaders to seek their truth and authentically align their work with their values. Ryann brings this extensive business experience along with her drive for personal and spiritual investigation to her role as the Program Director for the Innerwork Center. She seeks to support those in our community in developing more joyful and loving relationships with themselves and others.