The Need To Put Ourselves On A Digital Content Diet

The first person to talk about the digital content diet was the American writer Jake Reilly. Initially he did it as an experiment, which later became a very famous article, which was called Digital obesity and digital diet.

It all started when Reilly realized that he could not be disconnected for a minute from the Internet. He began to do accounts and found that he was sending more than 1,500 emails a month. His tweets exceeded 250 per month and in the same period he spoke on the phone for more than 900 minutes. It was then that he thought about going on a digital content diet.

Jake Reilly also spoke of the concept of “ digital obesity ”. He even created a formula to digitally “weigh” himself and check for any excess. It consisted of a points system that counted the number of devices that one had, the number of times of Internet connection per day, the number of messages that were sent, etc. And in the end, if everything passed a certain score, it was said that there was e-obesity.

Without reaching these extremes, each person has an internal thermometer that indicates if there are excesses. Some of the measures are the stress and anguish of being at all hours, with twenty windows open, looking here and there and with the feeling that “there is something to see”, without being like that. After following a diet of digital content, you may come to certain conclusions, similar to those found by Jake Reilly and many others. These are.

The stress level goes down with the digital content diet

We do not realize how tense we can get when we surf the net. This is because the brain is in an attitude of maximum alertness. All the time he is waiting for “something to happen.” This is basically a new communication or some news.

When you do a diet of digital content, for at least 30 days, the level of revolutions of the brain goes down. At the beginning there is great tension, similar to that produced by abstinence from a drug. With the days, little by little you begin to feel more tranquility and inner peace.

Not as many things happen as it seems

In the network we form the idea that thousands of things are happening continuously in the world. We come to feel that if we disconnect for a long time, we are going to miss something important and that this leaves us out of the social dynamics.

Going on a digital content diet proves that this is false. Most of that content that circulates on the networks and the web is truly irrelevant. More of the same, in a word. Therefore, it is enough to connect once a day, at the most, to find out how important the day is.

We don’t have as many friends as we think and networks are addicting

Friends and followers on the Internet are, most of the time, another illusion. Not because they like  what we post, they are really our friends. However, immersed in the network, it seems to us that it is. That our friends are the ones that appear on the list of followers.

By going on a digital content diet, we discovered that this is not the case. If we disappear from the network, we disappear from their lives. They get other virtual friends. On the other hand, talking back to those people with whom we really have important ties is a great gift.

Social networks do generate addiction. They do it imperceptibly. When you connect, your brain releases small amounts of dopamine. Therein lies the catch. Thus begins all addiction. Then you go back and forth, trying to experience the same feeling.

You have to find moments to do nothing

Another feature that the Internet connection impresses on us, without our realizing it, is that of getting involved in a dynamic in which “something has to be happening” all the time. Never the stillness. Never the absence of stimuli.

That deprives us of that wonderful pleasure of having time to do nothing. In fact, without hardly noticing it, we begin to fear inactivity. It is something serious, because it is precisely in those moments of “nothing” when we generate our best ideas and delve into the existing ones. The great conquests of thought were often made in moments of leisure.

It’s good to disconnect whenever we can. It is not convenient to allow the Internet to replace life. Of course, the web offers us enormous possibilities, but we must not put aside real life, the one lived with the senses, the one that finally has much greater weight and relevance than everything else.