After attending David Levy’s lecture tonight, a realization struck me about our media fast.  Upon reading all of the blog entries by my peers, many people said that the 24-hour fast was not difficult, but “unnecessary” or “inconvenient.”  During Levy’s talk, he mentioned that we should all try to do a 24-hour media fast for one aspect of media.  That would mean fasting from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, texting, email, etc.  What really stuck with me was his deliberate mention that we should not fast from things that are crucial — like being available if your parents need to reach you.  This made me realize that our media fast was actually quite extreme.  As I mentioned in my blog entry about my own personal fast, we could control our access to media if we were in an emergency, but not if someone else was and needed to reach us.  I agree that we should all gain a certain awareness of our media usage, but I don’t think this media fast was a good way to do that.  Although luckily it wasn’t, it easily could have been problematic for many people.  We shouldn’t do things that make our lives inconvenient, but rather explore how our lives would be different without certain aspects that we eliminate one at a time.

It is 06 pm – 02/10 Friday afternoon. Chose the perfect time to go on, this time, a lack of digital adventures. It wasn’t planned ahead, much like most of my digital use it was impromptu and subconscious, but I decided to stick with it, and finish this 24h Lent period :).

07 pm – After walking around campus, chatting with friends and other people, I cannot even feel that something is missing. As exaggerated as I made it sound, it didn’t feel like it before either. I left my smartphone in Macedonia on purpose (okay, not quite, I didn’t have the time to decode it and use it on US turf ), took my less impressing Sony Ericsson w890i and left it in my drawer since my second week. It was just a convenient alarm so I didn’t really feel any necessity to say goodbye to it for another 24 hours as I had been fine with it for a longer period. Also I don’t have a phone number (yet) so again, cellphone goodbye was the easiest part of all.

09 pm – More walking around campus, finding people, socializing, and let’s be clear, it was not a causal effect of my Digital Fasting. It might have been correlated, but then again, the only piece of technology I might be using at that time usually is my laptop, to catch up on some Modern Family or How I Met Your Mother. Irrelevant. I left my cellphone in my drawer, my laptop was conveniently low on battery, put it in my drawer and went on my merry way.

12 pm – 03/10 Saturday morning. I wake up (quite late, as per usual on weekends), grab some brunch, walk around, come back and grab my books. Nothing unusual for a Saturday, except that I was missing the constant beat in my ears coming from Spotify – for some reason I concentrate much better when I am listening to music while I am doing school work. Continued doing my homework, and did some readings, constantly getting more than annoyed by simple sounds such as people sniffing, lights ticking, doors opening and closing, people chatting, and I am more than aware everyone does that, even me, more than often (…but I have slight misophonia – hatred of certain sounds, which in itself does not help me concentrate, and that is one of the main reasons I do listen to music when I study) and that was probably the worst part of my media fast. I didn’t get to read the new articles on The Economist, or the Macedonian headlines, or see my facebook profile for a day, which again, as my mother would put it, it was not the end of the world (…”was it?”).

5 pm that same afternoon – Again, I go outside, find people, make plans for the night, get some food, and grab a cup of coffee. I was relaxing and chatting outside of Proctor for what seemed as a nice couple of hours. It was. Before I knew it, it was 7:30pm (excuse my possible inaccuracy it might have been 7:36pm), and I went to my room and checked my email, and my facebook. A couple of notifications from school events, a couple of messages from family and friends, and my media fast was broken 25h 30(36)mins after it began. I am alive, and so far, haven’t noticed a particular change in any activity I have been doing.

That was me, unplugged. Not a recovering addict of internet and media, but a social, occasional user, who if it weren’t for the drawbacks of being far away from home, would not even feel the need to be constantly online and in touch.

So I recently finished my 24 hour digital media fast. It began Saturday evening at 9:30 PM as I left my phone off on my desk and departed for the evening. It was not long before I encountered trouble without my phone. At around 11:25 PM (which I knew exactly thanks to my wrist watch) I had been separated from the group of friends I had gone out with. We had been bouncing around different suites in Atwater for a couple of hours when I encountered another football friend who I talked with for a bit, and before I knew it they were gone. Instinctively, I reached into my pocket to shoot one of them a txt asking where they had gone, but, of course, it was not in my pocket. Thus, I decided to go about it the old fashioned way and went into the stairwell yelling their names. Still no response. I would venture to guess that the volume of the music made it an even more difficult task, but I don’t think anyone was willing to quiet it down while I looked for my friends. After poking my head in a few more suites with no success, I decided to check Coffrin. When I didn’t see them there I did not know what to do. I could have gone back out with some other people, but at that point in the night, I didn’t think it was worth it, and instead simply headed to bed. The next morning I discovered that my friends had gone to Homestead, which would have been and easy walk if only I had known.

The next day I had a JV football game that my parents and some other family were coming up to watch. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to have my media fast because I would be busy for a good portion of the day with the game and catching up with family. I turns out I did not anticipate my Uncle having some trouble finding the field. As he drove around aimlessly through Middlebury, my parents were in the mountains without service, rendering them totally unhelpful in this situation. He left me multiple messages, but my phone was still off. Eventually my parent got service and met up with him, but it would have helped if I could have simply answered his call.

Aside from these two incidents, I actually kind of enjoyed my media fast. Every time I felt the tick to check my Facebook or Twitter, I told myself that I couldn’t because of the media fast, and it actually felt liberating. Its not necessarily that I am addicted to these social media sites, but forcing myself to say no to them and instead do something productive felt good. I organized my room and got ahead on reading. I did not feel as distracted as I usually do when I read because I was not rushing through it so that I could reward myself by reading barstoolsports.com or scanning my newsfeed. Overall, it was a good experience, and I hope it will push me to  deny social media more in the future.

-Nick

This Friday, I went backpacking with the mountain club for the night. We left from behind Proctor at 12:10 and quickly left areas of cell phone service. My phone, which was already on low battery, proceeded to die. Until the next day around 3 in the afternoon, I was media fasting yet again! What I thought was interesting, though, was the difference between this week and last.

Last weekend, when I ran around Burlington in a cow suit while everyone I was with remained connected to the digital world, I was an outsider. The experience wasn’t particularly uncomfortable, nor was it extremely difficult to be without technology, but there was a marked difference between myself and the people around me. People who knew that I was fasting from digital media kept forgetting not to text me or show me a YouTube video. In this way, I stood out from the crowd.

This weekend, on the other hand, not only was I fasting from digital media, but everyone I was with also participated in the “fast”. Since there was no service wherever we went, we pulled out the paper maps, turned off the cellphones, and limited ourselves to the technology of our backpacks, a stove and a few flashlights. It was not an intentional or planned event, even, it just happened! I think that is one of the best things about backpacking and camping – letting go of our cell phones and the internet. It reminded me also of something Nancy Baym said in her book Personal Connections in a Digital World: technology only takes away from a relationship when the people involved disagree about the usage of technology. When one person sitting at the lunch table wishes everyone else would stop using their phones, there is tension that could hurt their relationships, but if that person is just as content as the others, nothing negative happens. Conversely, when a group of people agree not to use technology, they are similarly compatible.

I am the type of person that loses my phone for 2 hours without even realizing it. I think it’s rude for people to text when we are spending time together, and I think that the presence of computers in the classroom takes away from discussion. This is one of the many reasons, or maybe they just go hand in hand, that I like spending time outdoors. I recognize the extensive benefits of technology and am not denying the fact that I rely on it for most of my schoolwork, but for me, to stay in touch with myself, I need to leave that realm every once in awhile. It was nice to reflect on the difference between this week’s fast and last week’s  – one was purposeful and intentional, and one was merely accidental.

Glad to say that I am done with that.

To be honest, it was exactly what I expected since I had many days during my gap year which I couldn’t use digital media. After this media fast, I can confirm that I use digital media most of the time to fill up some spare time. Since I knew this was coming, I forced myself doing other activities because I knew I would start feeling empty if I didn’t. I went to the gym, watched the football game and organized my room. The only time I felt like I needed a phone was when I wanted to contact my friend because we were planning on to go to town together. It didn’t work out, so I ended up reading my book.

After reading, it was already after 12, so I pounced onto my phone finding what I have missed out. It wasn’t anything exciting, just some boring people asking how am I or what am I up to. Even though I would have preferred having a mobile phone on me, I concluded that I could live without one.

I am embarrassed to say I did not make it successfully through the media fast. I lasted a solid 15 hours but couldn’t find it in me to make it the full 24. I began my fast at 11Pm Saturday night. It was great to be with the basketball team and feel like I was fully present in the moment with them. We sang karaoke at the grille (killed it I might add) and I could not have been more thrilled that I didn’t have my phone attached to me. I woke up Sunday morning and did all the reading homework I could do. 4PM hit and my anxiety got the best of me. With my political science paper due Tuesday, I didn’t think it was the smartest idea to leave it all for Monday night.  I was most surprised by  how little I missed my phone. I thought if I wasn’t going to make it through the fast it was going to be because I needed my phone. I felt free when I didn’t have my phone. It was nice feeling that I wasn’t constantly accessible to people. Without this paper looming over my head would I have made it the full 24 hours? It is tough to say. I like to think I would have but who really knows. This experiment made me realize we need to set aside more time without technology. Maybe not a full 24 hours, but even just a couple hours can make a huge difference.