If you are a committed stoner, you probably wake and bake. Before you are even out of bed, you are smoking a bowl. For tech abusers, there is a similar pattern; the morning doesn’t start until emails and text messages have been checked. Your fevered anxiety to look at them might even be what wakes you up every day. If you are smoking pot and abusing tech, you must be spending like a half an hour in bed every morning enjoying flash games and dreaming about Pop Tarts.
Tech addiction isn’t listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders); there are no universal indicators to check yourself against. But, you know that computer and phone use that you can’t control, even when it has a negative effect on your life, is a problem. You are the person lighting up the movie theater with your stupid phone screen. You are texting under your desk in meetings and classes. You can’t get through a visit to the toilet without checking Neko Atsume (the virtual cat game. Yeah, pretend you don’t know). You need help. The following extreme tips might help you curb your addiction (but they probably won’t) and you won’t even have to grow as a person (you definitely won’t). So, it’s a win-win (just don’t do the ones that’ll get you punched).
Develop Self-Control
OK, this is obviously the tech addiction beater that every web article is going to push on you. You should establish times when it is acceptable to check your phone or computer and times when it isn’t. Let these rules keep you in check. Yeah, because that works for addicts all the time, right? All they need to do is just have more will-power and rules? That isn’t how addiction works. I know you aren’t selling your body for wifi access, but you might be buying overpriced lattes to get it and that’s a problem that regulations don’t fix.
Instead, try developing external checks so that you don’t even have to work on personal boundaries. If that doesn’t work, look into websites and apps that take the control out of your hands by blocking certain websites (of your choosing) for a certain period of time.
Takeaway: Toss your cell phone and run out of the house into the sun so as to stave off scurvy every so often.
Eliminate Places to Sit
If your home computer use is eating up your time, there is a solution. Maybe you have a pretty serious Netflix problem and you sit all day marathoning Murder, She Wrote (and who wouldn’t?). Maybe you have become so wrapped up in Stardew Valley that you are getting carpal tunnel syndrome in your mouse hand. Before you buy a wrist brace and soldier on, gather up every chair, couch, ottoman, and chaise in your house and donate them to charity. You can still stream movies and TV sitting on the floor, but you won’t be able to do it for as long. And, gaming while you stand hunched over a desk is also a short-lived activity. If discomfort alone doesn’t force you away from the computer, maybe fear of walking through life Igor-style will.
Takeaway: Make tech lounging less comfortable.
Have More Sex
Addiction, across the board, messes with the reward center in your brain. It triggers extra happy chemicals to be released; your brain gets hooked on them and works to keep you doing the thing that makes it happier. A quick fix is to substitute something else the brain likes for the tech. It’s like dealing with your alcoholism by taking up smoking or chugging coffee. Yes, you have a number of substitutions that you could try, but sex makes the most sense. You can burn calories, enjoy orgasms, and be justified in not calling the person afterwards because you are purposefully limiting your phone use. Also, for clarity, this means sex with another person because sex alone often involves tech. And by that, I surely mean robots.
Takeaway: There are more life-positive things to focus your time and attention on. Also, do not sex your robots.
Get a Landline
Do you want to limit the number of people who contact you and thus limit the time you spend on tech responding? Don’t worry about creating your own personal limits. You can just go old school. You will know who really wants to connect with you when they can no longer text you. Only your diehard friends will even bother. There will be no more Word with Friends. It will all be Words with Yourself. You may end up so disheartened by the reality of your social situation that you may be too forlorn to bother getting on the computer to attempt to connect with others via email, Facebook, or CraigsList personals.
Takeaway: Embrace retro tech that is less connected in an effort to be more connected to real life.
Become a Social Media Pariah
If you can’t go full landline (and most can’t) consider limiting your time spent on tech via social media by driving your friends away. We’ve already covered the kinds of social media users that cause people to repel in horror, so adapting your output to resemble them shouldn’t be too hard.
If those ideas are genteel, however, you could start sharing inflammatory memes to push people away — well, most people. Really, it could be a hell of a litmus test to determine who actually reads your feed and who, among your friends and family, is a horrible racist, but do you really want to carry the weight of being yet another asshole who spends their day posting negativity online? Maybe just go in the other direction and become the person who shares every single totes adorbs kitten video. That’s a much more positive way to become a pariah, though it’s still pretty insidious.
Takeaway: Kitten videos are insidious.
Cut the Cord
You can’t get on your phone if the battery is dead and you can’t get on the computer if it won’t power up. Both of these can be accomplished by cutting your power cords. Yes, you could always buy new ones, but cutting them might slow you down. Best case scenario? You take a tech break. Next best? you are forced to go out into the world without your phone crutch and actually interact with people (do not ask them for directions to the nearest Best Buy). Once you get the interpersonal ball rolling with actual human interaction, you may be able to maintain it. It’s the law of social motion: a person being social will continue being social unless acted upon by an outside tech urge.
Takeaway: Have yourself a reverse rumspringa and go temp-Amish.
Drastic Measures
You think that your phone and your Google calendar are managing your time and allowing you to remain busy without crashing and burning. But, you don’t know what “too busy to tech” is and you need to. If you can’t control yourself, you need an external control and nothing is better at creating an impossible number of tasks like tragedy. While it isn’t advisable to kill someone (although attempting to get a way with it might keep you too occupied to text), you might consider putting a hit out on yourself. Yes, it’s a little drastic, but you are dealing with a serious addiction. Take serious action. When you are forced into hiding and all tech ties can lead people to your location, you will happily set aside the computer, tablet, and phone in favor of a good book in your barren tent in the woods. Once that happens, you will have beaten your tech addiction and you can celebrate that … if you survive.
Takeaway: Straight up, do not do this.
So, there you have it. Some of you are probably more ready to embrace change and live a life less burdened by bells and phantom vibrations (You’re welcome). But some of you are probably reading this on your phone while in the bath as Daredevil streams on a tablet that you taped to the wall. And that’s okay. We get you. Go read another article.
