Mays digital detox

(a.k.a. social shock)

Let it be clear that I am not anti-screen at all. I hear many people express outrage that today's youth only sits behind the iPad and how bad that is. I find that terribly old-fashioned. I always have to hold myself back from saying, “And in the past, they thought the milk would go sour when the train passed by the meadows.” The youth has the future, and the future is digital.

But with us, it got out of hand. It went from the playhome app via Netflix to the best of K3, and everything was gladly on the highest setting. With the middle girl, I could still sometimes push through an educational game, but beyond that, it was chaos. And the worst part was that I had no say over my mobile devices from the moment I stepped over the threshold in my Marant boots.

When my daughter ran from one medium to another like some kind of overheated junkie, it was time to stop. But what I expected from her, I had to do myself. If you want to lose weight, you shouldn't fill your kitchen cabinets with Chocotoffs, so that mobile had to be out of sight.

I put it on airplane mode and placed it in the bookshelf. Puzzles were brought out. Then books. I read twenty-seven books this weekend. Of the caliber ‘Kiki gets a little sister,‘ mind you, but still. Like a true addict, I checked my messages at the moment the girls rode a few laps around the park. Very sneakily under the flap of my Jérôme Dreyfuss bag.

We are not completely kicked yet

The editorial app gave a shocking score of 66 messages. I thought of an exploded site, but it turned out to be a group chat about how to tell someone that you're ‘just not that into him.’. This by the way, there are seven signs that you can see that he is not that into you, but that aside. They could solve that perfectly well without me. I quickly fluttered something on Instagram and put my phone back in the cabinet. I read newspapers, dove back into Kluun (book, mind you, book). When the girls were asleep, I checked Facebook and looked at our visitor statistics. When all that was going well, I didn't even want to anymore. I craved an open fire. And a loved one. Without a screen between us.

The next day, I actually forgot my phone. We had breakfast, went to Ikea (that's just what people do on a Sunday pre-spring day), and no one missed my phone. When I got home, I had lost it. No idea where I had left it. Calling was not an option because a. it was on airplane mode and b. it was already completely drained.

I searched. A little. And went back to the newspaper and a good conversation. In the evening, I made a sloppy search attempt. Nothing. I was fine with it. Everyone who had messaged me had not hit a blue checkmark, so hopefully understood that I was offline for a bit.

The phone remained lost. And I slept quite well...

Although I did get a bit restless and I think I even made some sort of jump when I found it again. We are not completely kicked yet. This weekend, I will try again. So if I don't answer you... You know what it's about.