2024-10-05
The Importance of Switching Off
It's been months, hasn't it?
Life gets in the way of everything, as always.
I haven't had the time nor have I had the motivation to keep writing these posts, especially considering nobody except joel even reads them. I dont blame you, I wouldn't either, but it feels like it's all for nothing, doesn't it? anyway, I have been taking a break from the site and managing my entire server, and have been putting more effort towards school, my friends, and the rest of my life. I've started reading again, and trying to take my life back from distractions like my phone and social media and allat. Anyway, let's get into the article itself.
Everyone I know is addicted.
Whether it is to caffeine, social media, videogames, the neverending pursuit of love, nearly everything in the modern world has been created and designed to addict. Especially over the past 4 1/2 years, people have sunk deeper and deeper into this way of life, and adjusted to the 'new normal'.
Every day I go to school, or out into town, and all I see around me are people who are addicted to stimuli, their phones, however you want to refer to it.
The average attention span is plummeting.
1 in 5 people in Wales are functionally illiterate.
People survive on tiktoks reuploaded to youtube.
Household debt is the highest it has ever been.
It feels like the world is heading in a direction where nobody is control of their own lives.
Do you not feel it?
Even now, reading this blogpost, you are itching for a distraction, you've probably already picked up your phone twice. I don't blame you. These apps have been designed with that specific purpose. More time using twitter = more ads seen by you = more add revenue for them.
So. We have identified an addiction. Now comes the difficult question:
Is it a problem?
That's a hard question to solve, but I think that when it becomes a problem is when you feel like it's a problem.
I've been feeling for years that technology, my phone, and all these corporations are the ones running my life. You pay $480 over the course of four years for netflix alone, and once you cancel it, what do you have? nothing but a $480 hole in your wallet. CEX sells dvds for $1 a piece. if you had spent the same amount of money, you would have hundreds of movies that you can watch as many times as you want for your entire life.
You Own Nothing.
The average person spends $250 every single month on subscription services. Imagine your life if you were paid $3000 extra every year. You could (on average) pay off all your debts, including your mortgage, in just over a decade.
Subscriptions aside, even money aside, many people complain they have no free time, stress is at an all-time high, and most people never really switch off from work. Your constant cascade of clicks from communications and the time you commit to things which actively harm you, damage your brain and stop you from improving your self is not a necessary part of life. But some people, my generation especially, never could be convinced that they can exist without these complications, because they have not known a time free of them.
I know you're bored. I want you to be bored. It is boredom that feeds the mind, boredom which allows you to think, form opinions, question your opinions and become the person you dream of being. but that's never going to happen if you can't motivate yourself to put down your phone, or if you cannot function without the sense of constant stimulus. If for just dedicated a couple minutess a day to the purest form of 'nothing', to sit and think and press pause on your boring life of no complications and no need to think about anything more complex than a bagel, you could realise just how much you are missing, how much of life is flying by you with no sense of direction or magnitude.
I'm not telling you to delete your social media and become a recluse, delete steam and smash your electronics. I'm telling you to think about whether you are living life the right way.
Once the escapism becomes your entire life, maybe it's time to escape into the real world.
This must be the least coherent thing I have written to date. You can call me a hypocrite or whatever. I'm not asking you to upturn your life. I'm asking you to be a little more mindful about life, and your relationship with the world. Maybe one day I'll collect my thoughts into something easier to follow, and less of a ramble. Maybe not. I hope you take my advice before it is too late. I can't bring myself to proofread this.
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