Are we survivors? Are we heroes? Did we rise to the challenge, or did we fall helplessly for the charms of social media and the internet?
For us boys, specifically, gaming was the most difficult thing to go without. Every one of us at some point found ourselves picking up our phones and playing around with them without even realising it! But, in the end, we all got back on track and struggled on to the very end.
The English lesson on 22nd November was the point at which we finally regained our digital freedom and were officially allowed to use our phones and devices the usual way again. Interestingly, when we reflected on the experience, we realised that although we were clearly happy to have things revert back to normal, we didn’t miss our devices nearly as much as we had thought we would. All of us were surprised by how much we used our devices for certain things – like social media – but didn’t particularly miss them during our challenge. We then discussed what this meant about the value of those activities and why we feel that we need to do them in the first place, considering they give such little reward.
It is not possible here to describe all of our experiences and what we learned, but suffice to say it was an eye-opener and a worthwhile experience. We would say that we did manage to fulfil most of our objectives, but we can’t help looking back and regretting that we didn’t do a little better. So, here are two key pieces of advice for you if you want to take on this challenge:
• First things first: it’s all about your mind-set. Before you start such a challenge be sure that you want to do it and that you are going to apply yourself as fully as you can to it. If this is not the case, your chances of succeeding are pretty low.
• Before you start the challenge make a plan about how you are going to spend the time (time that you previously used for using social media, gaming etc.); for example, start reading a book, spend time tidying your room, and maybe go to sleep earlier.
To conclude, the 7-Day Digital Detox challenge was pretty demanding and although it certainly had some drawbacks, we realised, as we are sure you will too, that we aren’t as dependent on our phones as we thought we were. . .
So, why not give it a go yourself?
Ami, Noemie, Jules, Mai, Kevin, Luisa and Andrei
