The actual rehabilitation out of unhealthy digital habits and/or addiction is obviously slow, arduous, and most likely boring. But boring in this instance is absolutely necessary, and must be framed in the light of being a healthier net positive for mental health. The wear and tear of constant dings, pings and a missing ‘phantom limb’ knee-jerk response, reaching for a phone at the slightest bit of discomfort, ever so slowly whittles down a mental state. The brain becomes conditioned to crave these distracting rewards as second nature, until all that’s left is being hunched over isolated in front of a screen as a poorly served pacifier for self-soothing. Every cause has its effect. For the hyper connected digital world, the cause being an oversold, watered-down future for communication, with its effects obliterating everything we’ve known that’s more genuinely meant-to-be, old-fashioned, slow and analog.
What has become missing is face-to-face, synchronous conversation, reversing generations of evolutionary human interaction, essentially turning communication as we know it, on its head into an opposite, unhealthy direction. There is an underrated blessing in being bored, it allows space between in that time for ideas, unrushed daydreaming, spontaneous conversation, deeper connection and creative imagination to flourish. The mind, in a reflective and more natural pace, needs these slow, patient and tranquil qualities to thrive. A significantly lower volume of distraction is necessary for quaint experiences in real life to be simply heard with more attentive, wholesome, well-paced clarity.
