Switching off

Baby steps to a digital detox…

My moment of epiphany came when scrolling through Twitter, I came upon an article on internet addiction, described it as the most widespread malaise of our times. As I scrolled through the piece on my phone (where else?) I realized that I was exhibiting all the classic signs of internet addiction.

What was the first thing I did on getting up in the morning?

I checked my phone to see if any mails or calls had come through while I was asleep.

Did I check my social media feeds even before I brushed my teeth?

Oh yes, indeed. Most mornings, I dropped into Twitter before I visited the bathroom.

Did I turn off my phone at night?

Are you kidding? I don’t think I have turned off my phone for a good year at least. It stays on 24/7, and remains in my vicinity day and night (it has its own little sweet spot on my nightstand, within easy reach, when I go to bed). 

As I read on, getting increasingly concerned, I decided then and there that it was time to conduct a digital detox of sorts. I needed to wean myself off my addiction to the Internet before I got my brain rewired completely (and developed attention deficit disorder in the bargain).

So, over the last week or so, I have been taking baby steps on my way to a digital detox. And here’s what you need to do, for starters, if you would like to join me.

• Turn off notifications: This has made an enormous difference to how I use my phone. Earlier, the ‘pings’ that would announce the arrival of an e-mail or message, an Instagram like or a Twitter mention would distract me countless times during the day. And no matter how hard I tried to resist this siren call when I was working, it was hard not to click on to the phone to see just what was happening in the virtual world. After all, I told myself, it could be something important. (Spoiler alert: it hardly ever was.) But once I turned off the notifications and let the sound of silence fill its space, I found that I could concentrate much better on my actual work, without breaking off to check my social media feeds.

• Turn wifi off on my laptop: Once the Internet is not accessible on your computer, the incentive to take a ‘break’ to surf through news or gossip websites, or even play a game of online Scrabble or Sudoku drops considerably. Speaking for myself, I had a tendency to conduct ‘research’ alongside writing my next book. But before you could say ‘Google’ I had fallen down the rabbit hole of the Net, navigating from one site to another to pursue topics that had no real relevance to what I was working on. Well, that’s all in the past now. Now, I’m all work on the laptop and all play when I’m on my tablet. And that’s working out pretty well for me. Try it.

• Keep your phone out of the bedroom: This is essential if you want to wind down and get a good night’s sleep. The blue light emitted by your phone screen inhibits melatonin production and, thus, prevents you from falling asleep. So, if you insist on scrolling through Facebook or Twitter in bed, well then, you are going to stay awake a while longer. The only way you can get your quota of eight hours sleep is if you stop looking at your phone at least a couple of hours before you retire to bed. And if you have your phone within easy reach, the temptation to take just a little looksee will be hard to resist. Much better to leave it in the living room before you head for the bedroom. If you need to read something before you nod off, reach for a book instead.

• Assign time limits to your social media usage: The best way to do this is to get your social media apps off your phone. If you can’t access your feeds on your phone at a moment’s notice you will, perforce, check into Instagram and Facebook less often. But if that seems like a step too far, well then, you will just have to exert some discipline. Ease yourself out of your habit gently. Allow yourself to check in at hourly intervals at first. Then take a couple of hours in between logging in. And then, when you have weaned yourself off that constant dopamine fix that instant approbation gives, just click on every morning and evening – just enough to keep in touch, and just enough to avoid being sucked in again.

• Carve out a period during the day when you set your phone aside so that you can just be in the moment. Leave it at home when you go for a walk. Switch it off as you have lunch with your mother. Don’t take it into the kitchen when you are cooking dinner. Place it facedown when you have breakfast with the children. Prioritize your real life over the virtual one. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

The Young And The Restless

Who would be a teenager in today’s world? Not me, for sure!

When 13 Reasons Why premiered on Netflix, I scrolled right past it after reading the brief summary. A teenager commits suicide and leaves behind a set of tapes to all those who are complicit, explaining why she killed herself, and what role each one of them had to play in her decision. So far, so depressing, I thought, as I clicked on the latest season of Grace and Frankie and binge-watched it through the night.

Then, a week later, when I was at a loose end, I idly clicked on 13 Reasons Why (adapted from Jay Asher’s bestselling 2007 novel of the same name), thinking I would check out an episode or two to see if it was really as good as all the critics insisted. And before you could say Hannah Baker, I was hooked. Don’t worry, I am going to post any spoilers here. Suffice it to say that this is addictive viewing and I highly recommend that you do it over the weekend.

But as I watched the world of teenage angst unfold before me, with all its dramas and fights, its hormone-fuelled rages and passions, its friendships and enmities, I was reminded of just how tough those years between 16 and 20 can be. When you are finding out who you are, trying on different personas to see which one fits, falling in love for the first time, breaking your own heart or the hearts of others, falling out with friends, bullying or being bullied. It’s like being on a rollercoaster of emotions, and what’s worse is that you experience it with that heightened intensity that is a hallmark of teenagedom.

As I binge-watched (yes, again) in fascinated horror, I found myself feeling grateful that I had grown up in the era that I did. Because, hand on heart, I would not be a teenager in today’s world for all the money in the world.

Why, you ask. Well, because while technology (read Google) has made it easier to do homework or research a project, social media has actually made our kids’ lives much more distressing and complicated.

Consider this. In the days before the Internet, our only lifeline to our friends was the telephone. So, we would sit by it for hours, chatting incessantly, while our mothers impatiently gestured for us to get off. And on the days when it didn’t ring, our lives would be miserable. Did no one care about us? Why didn’t anybody call? If it was a boyfriend/girlfriend who had neglected to phone, our misery would be multiplied manifold.

Now, consider the many ways in which the teenagers of today can experience the same anguish of rejection. They could be blocked on Snapchat, have their Instagram images languish with just a dozen likes, see images of parties on Facebook to which they have not been invited, be bullied on Twitter, and slut-shamed on any one of these virtual platforms.

Break-ups are hard enough when you are a teenager but to have them play out publicly, as you unfollow each other on social media, or even see images of your ex with their new partner, can be even more traumatic. What’s worse is there is the ever-present temptation to turn into a virtual stalker, torturing yourself with how fast your ex has moved on while you are still in mourning for what you’ve lost.

Then, there is the constant pressure to look good because, you know, selfies! You must be constantly camera-ready, pout firmly in place, hair styled to perfection, and cleavage on display – and that’s just the guys. The girls need washboard abs and slimming apps (not to mention special filters) to look like those supermodels who have taken over Instagram in their itsy-bitsy bikinis.

If you don’t fit in with this new prescription of beauty and glamour, then prepare to be body-shamed and bullied. In fact, if you don’t conform in any way at all, be prepared to be targeted by bullies, both in real life and in cyberspace, where the cloak of anonymity facilitates the generation of greater bile and venom. And when you can’t see or identify your tormentors, the attacks leave you feeling even more helpless and disempowered.

And then, there is the new face of romantic relationships in an age where most teenagers have seen hardcore porn before they ever experience their first kiss. Where we would have sent an erotic love letter, the teenagers of today feel compelled to share sexy selfies. Instead of talking dirty on the phone, they indulge in sexting, exchanging naked pictures, which often become the stuff of revenge porn when relationships end (as they inevitably do, at that age).

In 13 Reasons Why, it is a unfortunate picture taken of Hannah Baker and circulated through the school that starts the chain of events that leads to her suicide. And the scary part is that, as I watching it, I could see just how easily it could happen to one of our own kids. Just one moment in time, just one little indiscretion, one instant of letting down your guard, trusting in that one wrong person, can have unspeakable consequences.

Honestly, who would be a teenager in today’s world? I certainly wouldn’t. And nor, I suspect, would most of our kids.

Happy New Year

In case you haven’t made your list of resolutions as yet; here, for easy reference, are some of mine

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The time when we chalk up a long list of resolutions, all the stuff that we absolutely must (or must not) do in the spanking New Year that stretches out before us. Odds are the list will be abandoned by the time February rolls around, but for what it’s worth, here’s my own list of New Year resolutions, in no particular order of importance.

De-cluttering my life:

This starts from the very basics. The closets bursting with clothes that I will never wear (i.e. fit into) again. The shelves groaning under books that I barely got through the first time and will never re-read. The CDs I never listen to now that all the tracks have been downloaded on to my Ipod. The magazines that lie piled up in a corner (and are still untouched after several months). The shoes that have been retired from active duty now that my back (and increasingly, my knees) has given up on me. The solitary bottle of barbeque sauce that lies forlorn and ignored on the back shelf of my larder. The ficus plant that stubbornly refuses to flourish on my balcony. All junk must go.

Trimming my friend list:

Over the years, we all end up adding friends to our extended circle. There are those we bump into at parties; those we discover through the social media; those we meet in the new neighbourhood we move to; those we acquire by marriage; and those that acquire us. But as social research indicates, it is really not possible to keep up with more than a 100-odd people (especially if some of them are very odd indeed). So, maybe this is as good a time as any to get rid of all those who add nothing to my life; those who are unremittingly negative; those who take a particular pride in running everyone else down; and those who are legends in their own lunchtime. (FYI, if you need to ask, “Don’t you know I’m famous?’ you’re probably not.)

Making time for those who matter:

Once I’ve got rid of the flotsam and jetsam of my world, it will be that much easier to work on my next resolution: spending time with those people who really matter to me. Long conversations on Skype with old school friends I haven’t seen in years. Making time for a cousin who has flown into town for a couple of days. Touching base with extended family. Long, lazy lunches with my girl gang. Bonding over boozy dinners with my favourite Smug Marrieds. Ah well, you get the picture.

Swearing off all diets:

Yes, yes, I know you’ve got this absolutely fantabulous diet. And yes, I can see that you have oodles of weight on it. But you know what? I don’t want to hear about it. Yes, you got that right. I. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. About. It. I don’t want to know how carbs mustn’t be mixed with proteins. I don’t want to be lectured about how I need to finish dinner by 7 pm at the latest. And I certainly have no interest in the glycemic index of various food items. So, be a dear, and shut up about your diet already. (Because, in any case, I can’t hear you above the siren call of that chocolate fondant.)

Rationing my time on the Internet:

Sadly, my search for a Net connection that automatically times out when it senses I am wasting time has come to naught. So, I guess I will have to do this the old-fashioned way: by exercising some self-control. That means not spending more than an hour on the Net every day, no matter how tempting the cyber trail that leads me away from the topic I type into the Google search box. And, of course, resisting the temptation to refresh my Twitter timeline every half hour.

Finishing my book:

If I can stick to the resolution listed above, this one will be so much easier to fulfil. If I could just check which Tube line went from Westbourne Grove to Camden Town; read an article on the Lashkar-e-Taiba network in Bradford; research the new Beretta models on the market; and get right back to my writing, I would have finished my first draft by now. Instead, I go flying off on a tangent, clicking link after link until I’ve clean forgotten what I was searching for. Well, no more procrastination, starting right now. It’s full steam ahead with the writing.

Staying positive:

I am tired of indulging the prophets of doom and gloom in the world. I no longer want to be told that a, b, c is impossible to achieve – well, at least not in our lifetime. I don’t need that kind of negative energy in my life. So, I am going to say nay to the naysayers. This year, as far as I am concerned, nothing is impossible. Or better still, my motto is going to be: The impossible? There’s nothing to it.

In the blink of an eye

That’s how long it takes for us to lose interest while surfing on the net – and increasingly, in real life

If you are as old as I am, you probably remember a time when you actually had to dial-up an Internet connection. Sometimes it took two minutes; sometimes it took ten; and sometimes it didn’t work at all. When you finally connected, every site took ages to open up, and then just as you were finally getting into it, the connection would magically disappear. So then you had to dial-up again...and again.

I remember spending entire afternoons at my desk, just waiting to first get through and then finish my research. Over time I got canny enough to arm myself with a magazine to while away the time spent waiting. Sometimes, just to mix it up, I would buff my nails; call a friend for a chat; eat a sandwich; even do my stretching exercises. (Okay, I made up the last one; but the rest of it is true.)

In case you’re wondering why I am blubbering on about the bad old days of internet connectivity, my nostalgia was triggered by a recent news report that said that people will visit a website less often if it is slower than its competitor by more than 250 milliseconds. What is 250 milliseconds in peoplespeak? Well, it translates as the blink of an eye.

So, if a website is slower than its rival by even a blink of an eye, we will abandon it in favour of the faster one. As Arvind Jain, the resident speed maestro at Google says, “Subconsciously, you don’t like to wait. Every second counts.” Or, more accurately, every nano-second. Harry Shum, speed specialist at Microsoft agrees, “250 milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the web.”

And no doubt with time, we will only get more demanding. As recently as 2009, a study by Forrester Research found that online shoppers wanted pages to load in two seconds or less. The moment you hit the three second mark, a large percentage would simply abandon the site and move on. Just three years earlier, however, a similar study had found that the average expectation for page load time was four seconds or less. So, with every year, our desire for speed, well, speeds up even more.

But if you ask me, this is not simply about our impatience while surfing the net. In a sense, this report is a metaphor for our times. We want it all, and we want it now. And by that I mean NOW, not 250 milliseconds later! Okay?

Ours is not a generation that sees any virtue in delayed gratification. And the generation after ours, which has been weaned on smartphones and grown up on Ipads, is going to be even less patient. Soon the 250 millisecond mark will be whittled down to 150 milliseconds, then 50 milliseconds – until a time comes when we will want the page to load intuitively even before we have clicked on it.

We can already see the signs. Everyone is always in a hurry. In a hurry to grow up; in a hurry to hit the fast lane; in a hurry to get rich; in a hurry to get into shape; in a hurry to be famous; in a hurry to retire; in a hurry to...well, you get the drift.

And of course, everyone is in a hurry when on the net. What, 250 milliseconds too slow? Bam, you’re dead.

Sadly, this impatience has percolated into every area of our lives. You see it in the professional sphere all the time. No one wants to stay in the same job for too long for fear of stagnating. They want to move on and up – and on yet again, even if the raise offered is a few thousand rupees. The idea of staying on and working for the same firm – like the company-men of an earlier generation – is anathema to anyone under the age of 30.

Or let’s look closer home. Children, these days, seem to be in a tearing hurry to grow up. The teenage years appear to start at 10 rather than 13; they are dating at 12 rather than 16; and they seem to know more about sex at 15 than we did ten years later.

Personal gratification is another area where our expectations have speeded up. Want to lose weight? Yes. But who has the time or inclination to do the old-fashioned way: by eating less and working out more. That would just mean losing a kilo a week, duh! That’s simply not fast enough.

So bring on the fad diets, the slim cures, the week-long fasts, the plant juice detox. Instead of taking a long-term view, look for the quick fix. Check into a fat farm, a body boot camp, or a yoga retreat for a week or so. And if none of that works, well then a little bit of liposuction never hurt anyone – and you’ll be home before lunch to snack on some fast food.

Ah food! Cooking is becoming a lost art because few people have the patience to rustle up a home-made meal from scratch. And eating out in a restaurant has become like a race against time. I want my menu now. Bring the bread to the table already. What’s with the ten-minute delay between courses? Of course, I don’t want the soufflé; it takes 25 minutes!

You do realise that I don’t have even 250 milliseconds to spare, don’t you?.

Attention, please!

When there are so many distractions available at the click of a mouse, can you stop your mind from wandering?

Over the last few months, I have been trying to work on a new book, a racy thriller that I hope will turn out to be a page-turner (not to mention, a bestseller!). But the operative word in the last sentence is: ‘trying’. Yes, that’s right. I am trying – very hard indeed – to write a book. But I’m sorry to report, I am not getting very far.

And it’s all the fault of that scourge of our times: the Internet.

No, seriously, if it wasn’t for the distractions available at the click of a mouse, I would be half-way through my opus by now. I have written the first chapter, which is always the trickiest. I have the plot more or less worked out. I have plenty of thoughts on the twists and turns I could throw in to surprise the reader. I have the gleamings of a cracker of a climax in my head. And by now, I know my main characters almost as well as I do some of my best friends.

And yet, the writing is not going very well.

Of course I carry some blame for that, for being an undisciplined so-and-so who can’t keep to her self-imposed deadline of at least 500 words a day. But truth be told, most of the blame rests on my laptop, which is connected to my wifi network, and keeps throwing up interesting little nuggets when I am trying to work.

Suddenly an icon pops up telling me that a friend wants to chat on Gmail. Now, if she were to call me on the phone at that juncture I would probably not even notice (my mobile is nearly always on silent) let alone take her call. But there is no ignoring her on my laptop. The icon blinks on and on and I can’t keep my eyes off it.

Finally the temptation gets too hard to resist. Who knows what choice piece of information she may have to offer? What if she needs to discuss something urgent? The questions whirl around in my head until I concede defeat, close my word document, and press ‘Yes’ on that icon.

Of course, nine times out of ten she is just looking for a good gossip in the middle of the workday. And by the time the two of us have finished instant messaging the news of the week, a good half hour has passed. And so has the mood to work on my novel.

If it isn’t instant messaging on Gmail, it’s Facebook alerts that pop up to provide instant distraction. Yet another friend has a ‘Recent Status Update’ that he would like to share with me. Another has sent a private message with such an intriguing tagline that it is impossible to ignore. And then, there’s that link to a piece in the Guardian. Would it really be so bad to have a quick read before I resume work?

Of course, it would. Because when it comes to surfing the newspapers, there really is no end to it as far as I am concerned. I click on a link about Obama’s state visit to India, get distracted by a strap line that talks about the forthcoming royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton (or Catherine, as we are all apparently now meant to call her). From there it’s one easy click to an article about Princess Diana and how she may well overshadow her daughter-in-law even from the great beyond. And so it goes, until all thoughts of my book have been chased from my head, which is now filled with conspiracy theories about the Princess’ death in a car crash.

And then, there’s my new toy: Twitter. No, I don’t really tweet that much, mostly because I have nothing to say. But I do get a tad curious if I get an alert about someone having tweeted to me. I sign in to check what that’s about, quickly type out my replies, and then get waylaid by what everyone else is twittering on about. It’s not long before I have been inveigled into a conversation or two with my Twitter friends, or, as is more likely, have gotten into an argument that takes up so much of my mind space that there’s no longer any room for novel-writing in it.

I guess this is an unavoidable fall-out of the Age of Information that we live in, surrounded by so many social media networks that we find ourselves quite lost in all that babble. And given this constant flitting between different things, it’s no wonder that our attention spans are shot to hell.

Well, at least I know that mine is. With all this instant messaging, twittering, Googling and what have you, I find it harder and harder to concentrate on any one subject. In fact, given the level of my distraction, it’s a wonder how I manage to get any work done at all.

Which is why I’m making a resolution even before the New Year rolls in. From now on, I am going to restrict my use of the Internet to two hours a day, judiciously spaced out over a 24-hour period. Who knows, with a bit of luck, I may even get down to finishing that book.

(Full disclosure: in the course of writing this column, I logged on to Twitter, answered a couple of emails, and did a quick Internet search for Kate Middleton and Princess Diana.)

The Google trap

The search engine has come to rule our lives

One of my friends, who is in the luxury business, spends about half his time on the road, living out of suitcases in some glitzy hotel or the other. It sounds glamorous, I know, but he maintains that it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. His entire time goes in meetings, the cities pass by in a blur and most time he has no idea where he is on that particular day.

But after a hard day at work, he likes to reward himself with a nice dinner in a fancy restaurant – you know the kind that you can’t get into for love or money. So, how does he manage to land a reservation nine times out of ten?

Simple. He calls up, leaves his name and his booking request, and asks the staff to Google him. He has found that once they log that he is a luxury hot-shot, there is no trouble getting the best table in the house, even at a day’s notice.

It’s a great strategy, of course, but it wouldn’t necessarily work for all of us. After all, not everyone’s name throws up many thousands of hits in a Google search. And how do we know this? Because at one time or another, every one of us have given in to the shameless impulse to Google ourselves.

Such is the popularity of this little recreational activity that Google is probably one of the few companies since Hoover whose name has become a verb in the English language. We use it almost unconsciously when we want to search for something on the Internet. It could be something as innocuous as the latest gossip on Angeline Jolie or Brad Pitt or something as important as doing a background search on someone who has applied for a job. Whatever we want to know about whichever subject, we simple Google it.

There’s even a phrase that’s evolved to describe those of us who are so dependent on Google for all our research. Old-fashioned academics – you know the kinds who actually read books and spend time in libraries painstakingly looking up references – have dubbed us the White Bread Generation. The phrase was coined by media studies professor Tara Brabazon in the UK, who bans her own students from using Google because it is like white bread: filling but without any nutritional content.

Academics like Brabazon fear that most students these days don’t bother with doing any reading at all (unless it is on the Internet). They have probably never set foot in a library. All their research is conducted on the net. Google is their weapon of choice and Wikipedia their Holy Grail, the fount of all wisdom.

It doesn’t matter to the WBG that most Wikipedia entries are written and re-written and then re-re-written by people who are not necessarily the best minds in the business. It is of no consequence to them that some of the information regurgitated by Google is suspect at best and wrong at worst.

No, as far as they are concerned, if you can Google it, then it must be true. So the term White Bread seems particularly apt – for the generation that is not interested in the meat of the matter.

Journalists like me are perhaps more guilty than most. For most of us, Google has become synonymous with research. And this means that once an erroneous bit of information has been fed through Google, it takes on a life of its own, being repeated over and over again until it begins to acquire a certain authenticity. As the old Nazi saying goes, if you repeat a lie often enough, it begins to seem like the truth.

Which perhaps goes some way in explaining why Google has become so important in our lives. We know that it will be the first port of call when anyone wants to find out anything about us. So, we try and make sure that all the Google entries about us can pass muster if they are being read by putative partners (romantic and otherwise), potential employers or just friends and family.

Only there’s no good way to do that. Once someone has written anything about you and posted it on the net, well then you can be sure it’s going to pop up forever more every time someone types your name into the search engine.

All you can really do is control the kind of information you put out about yourself. We’ve all heard nightmare stories about people being fired because their Facebook photos showed them doing drugs or because they were blogging about their bosses and places and work. And all of it was duly flagged up on Google because they never really understood how the privacy settings work. Remember the newly-appointed MI6 chief in the UK, Sir John Sawers, who nearly lost his job because his wife posted pictures of their house and kids on Facebook for the world to see.

See, when it comes to Google, a little discretion goes a long way. Except for us journos, who simply have to live with the fact that nothing we write today will be forgotten tomorrow. No, it will live on forever in cyberspace, coming right back up (in Google searches) to bite us in the butt.