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Thankfully, you can’t send a status update from here.
“Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to lose”
– Thomas Edison
Are you spending your time like it’s valuable and you’re in control of it? Or are you spending your time in a way that external forces dictate?
More specifically, do you rule your smartphone and your social connection platforms or do they rule you?
I’ve written before about how tweeting travelers and constant Facebook updaters are missing out on most of what the less-connected travelers are, but the digital addiction actually hurts in a deeper way than just getting a shallow view of where you’re visiting.
All the way back in 2009, studies started showing up that smartphones make us dumber and people who think they’re good at multitasking with one actually did worse on cognitive tests than those who weren’t so confident.
More studies have shown that constant smartphone interruptions make people more stressed, more tense, worse at memory functions, and can lead to symptoms exhibited in people with Attention Deficit Disorder. The latest study, from tech-obsessed Korea, coined the new phrase digital dementia.
Having all these things going on with your body and brain on vacation kind of negates the point of going on vacation, doesn’t it? Hell, most can’t even manage an uninterrupted 3-day weekend now.
It’s interesting to me that some of the best-known travel bloggers are finding that it’s really hard to travel a lot and work a lot too: the two functions are just not compatible. At the Planet D they announced they’ve realized they need to separate the two more often and Gary Arndt of Everything-Everywhere made the same realization recently.
Being constantly connected when you travel means…you’re not really connected to where you’re traveling.
I’ve had some conversations with bloggers who are sending 30-40 tweets, status updates, and Instagram photos daily while on the move and it’s sometimes like talking to my 83-year-old father: they have trouble remembering what they just did two weeks ago or what they actually liked about a place besides that meal they took a photo of. One actually tried to scroll through old Facebook photos to find the name of a city she had just been to. And she was 20 years younger than me!
You’ll remember this better if your phone is in your room.
Conde Nast Traveler ran a whole big digital detox section at the end of last year, talking about where you could go where you were forced to disconnect (no signal) and how social media is killing our vacations. Psychology Today ran a piece on the 7 sins of Facebook and how they were bad for your mental health. When Inc Magazine ask Tim Ferriss for productivity tips for business owners, two of the biggies were “check your e-mail just a couple of times a day” and “avoid instant messaging.” (I’d imagine he’d put texting in that same category.)
If you’re finding that social media addiction is taking over your life, here’s a good place to start: don’t log in on Saturday. I started doing that after reading Hamlet’s Blackberry and it’s really helped me feel more sane. Only use your phone for making phone calls to real humans or responding to real friends/relatives who send a text truly needing a reply. Don’t look up anything on Google or Bing. Leave the e-mail alone—nothing important gets sent on Saturday anyway. Save the bill paying and e-commerce buying for Sunday.
What will you do with all that uninterrupted time? Hopefully what people used to do before smartphones. Enjoy your surroundings, enjoy the people around you, and maybe spend an uninterrupted block of time with a good book or movie.
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