Digital Immune System

Let’s talk again about tuning your own radio:

We are almost like antennas, and around us all there are thousands of vibrations and thoughts which enter our mind. When you are driving your car, all the radio stations, and their waves are hitting your car, your antenna outside. But it’s the station you put on the radio that blocks off the rest of them and lets one come in. Same thing with your mind. All around you there are vibrations of success and failure, health and sickness, positive and negative. We need to learn how to tune our “radio station”, to choose a “music” in our lives.

Timor Klinghofer

I touched this topic a little bit in my essay on journaling. But if journaling is my active defense, digital detox is my immune system.

My digital immune system

• No news sites and podcast on current affairs. Don’t worry, the really important news will find their way to you.
• No social media, no feeds. If you are a digital creator, use “write-only” mode, post your stuff, reply to meaningful feedback, close it, and forget about it.
• Don’t waste your time mindlessly in group chats. Don’t argue with anyone on the internet. It’s useless.
• No video sites, no YouTube, or teach their algorithms to show you something that motivates you and teaches you. Unsubscribe from informational, news, leisure channels. Dislike them and click “Don’t recommend this to me”. Like and subscribe to the content that drives you, or makes you smarter.
• No porn for stress relief or a quick dopamine fix. Keep your dopamine levels healthy. Save that energy for real relationships and really important things in your life.
• Delete them all from the history of your browser and autosuggestions. Out of sight, out of mind.
• Disable all notifications, all sounds, and unread badges on your messengers and other apps, which are built specifically to get you hooked. To make sure you keep checking that app.
• Clean up your environment physically and virtually. Remove all distractions from the sight. Stuff and apps that draw your attention. Less is more.
• Consciously check messages from people that you care about. Meaningfully write and chat with them. Show appreciation.

It’s impossible

No. It is possible.

I’m a digital content creator myself. I worked in the media and was a news editor for more than 10 years. My work involves people, many times meeting them offline, and I interact with dozens of people personally every day. I also work in digital marketing, and I have to use dozens of apps to post videos and other content everyday.

Not following the current news and socializing meaninglessly online is not about being ignorant, arrogant, or just a heartless bastard. On the opposite, it’s about radical responsibility.

There is a lot of injustice in the world. The daily doomscrolling¹ won’t make you more responsible, and for sure won’t make victims’ lives better. I have friends and some distant family members who fought and died in some recent wars around the globe. They didn’t care if I followed every daily madness in the world.

If you want to help - do something. It can be something small, but meaningful to you.

Act mindfully.
Create.
Tweak your radio.
Improve your digital immune system.

Further reading

• I’ve just learned about this book “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” by Cal Newport

Footnotes