I Use the Internet Too Much
Thursday October 10, 2024
I saw this tweet (on 4chan, classic) and it got me thinking about how much time I spend connected to the internet in some way.
It’s a lot of time. Not including the time spent sitting at my desktop, I pretty much always have my cell phone nearby. I don’t use social media, but that doesn’t stop me from unlocking my phone as soon as I get into an empty elevator at work, or randomly checking Telegram despite not having any notifications. My brain isn’t Facebook levels of mush, but it’s a little mushy.
At work, my coworkers regularly accuse each other of not having the balls to keep their phones locked in the secretary’s desk for the entire workday. Apparently nobody has the balls, because I have never seen anyone do it. It usually boils down to “you first.”
I brought it up during our break yesterday, but nobody took me up on it. The “no balls” bait didn’t work. I left my phone upstairs all day anyway. My plan is to leave it elsewhere every day.
Okay, so even with the phone cut out, will that keep me off the internet? The computer I look at for most of the day (bad) is connected to the internet and has a weirdly unrestricted firewall. This post was almost entirely written on a work computer. Typing blog posts doesn’t feel like I’m “on the internet” even though I really am. No doubt it is unproductive, but this is about un-mushing my mush brain, not being a perfect employee.
When I do sit down at my computer at home, usually nothing is new because throughout the day I was obsessively checking everything I give a shit about. Of course, I don’t sit down at the desk just to “check my things”, I have a specific task in mind. Sometimes that task is just playing a video game, but that is better than unlocking my phone with no intention.
I might sound like a crazy person. Someone only a few years older than me might find the concept of phone addiction kind of ridiculous. I don’t know, man. I didn’t ask for this shit when I was 15. I mean I did ask for a phone, but I just wanted a cool pocket computer, and almost every kid I knew already had a smartphone for years. I didn’t know social media and instant access to infinite free anime porn was bad for you. I suppose I could be a lot worse, and I’m glad my dad was too cheap to be an early adopter.
Sometimes I think I want a dumb phone, but smartphone addiction doesn’t come from using the camera or Google Maps. Ditching a smartphone entirely might be too extreme, and I can start by just not bringing it places I know I won’t need it. It feels so gay saying “smartphone addiction.” What am I, a 16-year-old girl? I think I feel that way because I can remember a recent time when I would not consider myself addicted at all, but now I have to face the fact that I have slipped a little.
Random, unrelated thought: Does anyone share a computer anymore? I remember setting up separate user accounts on my family PC when I was a kid and both my parents thought switching users was an annoying extra step. They did not understand my evangelism about setting your own wallpaper and window theme. My child brain thought it would be really cool to see each family member’s “vision” of the computer, and I was disappointed when they had no vision. I have no idea where my love for computers came from.
Later Thoughts
It has been about two weeks, and it's clear that this is much deeper than not using my phone at work. I find myself still using it a lot at home. I listen to podcasts when doing things around the house, but I could've done that with an iPod in 2005, so I'll give that a pass. Other little things have me reaching for my phone, and the phone not being 1 second away makes me realize how much I depend on it. It's my only decent flashlight. It's the fastest way to take a picture and distribute said picture, either to another person or to my desktop/server. It's my only Kodi remote. I turn my alarm off in the morning and see a pile of notifications on the lock screen. Maybe it would help to just buy a flashlight, alarm clock, or whatever, but I would still be surrounded by SCREENS. Whether it's other people on their phones or my gay ass car's dashboard, I feel like I can't go anywhere or do anything without some shitty computer being involved. I'm a little hypocritical, since a lot of my hobbies take place on my computer, further increasing how much time my eyeballs spend getting assaulted by blue light. Drawing, graphic design, writing, video games, etc. When I have the idea to try something new, the first thing I wonder is how I can do it on my computer for free. All I can do is keep making little adjustments, I guess. It's like when runners say someone who's running slow is still doing better than a guy that's sitting on the couch.