24-hour Technology Fast

I decided to start my technology fast on December 6th at 11am. I didn’t think I was going to do it, because I had so much to do and was afraid people might need to contact me, but I impulsively decided to it anyway 10 minutes before 11am. I am so glad that I followed through. Because of that, I wasn’t able to tell everyone that I was off the grid, but it worked out okay.

During church, I enjoyed the experience and wasn’t constantly wondering what time I could go home, which is the opposite of my regular experience. This semester, for some reason, I’ve been feeling so anxious when I’m at church and I didn’t feel that way this time. I’m starting to wonder if I should leave my phone at home for church all the time! I’m not sure I will be able to do that though, because they asked us to use our phones so much in the meeting, for scriptures, hymns, etc.

One interesting development was that I was a lot less concerned about missing out on things on social media than I thought I would be. It thought it would be a bigger problem for me because, whenever I do social media fasts, I regularly attempt to check social media whenever there’s a lull in what I’m doing. However, with my technology fast, I was able to put my entire phone away, which might have taken away my need to check my phone completely!

During this fast, I had the very distinct feeling of my brain slowing down. Since COVID, focusing has been hard for me. My brain is constantly darting through things at 3x speed, but my task switching has also become abominable. Strangely, during my technology fast, I was able to focus and feel calm. I had some homework, but I found myself very able to focus on it. I believe my technology usage has gone up a bit since COVID hit. In fact, during the summer, when I was in my parents’ Arizona home with nothing to do, I used technology from the second I woke up to the second I went to bed. This did a number on my mental health, and I got pretty badly depressed (although there were probably a number of reasons for that). Since I got back into school this fall, I use technology less than in quarantine, but I think I was leaning on it to cope with things.

My ability to focus really well lasted for a day or two afterward, and then it faded back into the same old “trying to focus on a million things at once”. I’m not sure that I could get rid of technology completely, but I realized that I could easily turn it off in the mornings when I wake up and only use it when I want to use it—not whenever I have a second of free time or get a notification. I think being able to control my media/technology yes and not letting it control me.

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