Dear readers,
In April, I spoke to Esther about the time she spent inside a digital detox social club. It’s a pop-up gathering where people can join for an evening to get away from their phones. Upon arriving, attendees would be asked to hand over their phones, and for the next couple of hours, they get to mingle with other phone-free participants, and reconnect with themselves—that often takes the form of reading, doing arts and crafts, among other things. My chat with Esther was part of a set of conversations I had for my previous edition, “The offline premium: Can you pay your way into an offline world?” (If you haven’t read it, it’s over here.)
I came to know Esther Kinn from the Digital Anthropology programme at University College London. Her months of volunteer work at the club was part of the fieldwork she did for her Master’s dissertation. Esther has always been a sharp observer and an articulate speaker, and only so much of what she shared during our April conversation made it into the final piece. So, I thought it’d be best to let her explain her own learnings and reflections, which is how this podcast came about.
We spoke for over 1.5 hours. I shortened that to around 30 minutes for you, dear readers, to listen to. We covered a lot of ground: the lack of public infrastructure to address phone addiction, why she decided to study the club, the extent to which people struggle with their screen time, how useful these clubs were for the attendees, the need for infrastructures of rest and leisure, and more. It’s a great Sunday listen, if I may say so myself. Chill, insightful, and one where you can walk away with plenty to reflect on about your own relationship with your phone.
My personal takeaway from the call was to focus less on limiting my screen time and more on finding other things I enjoy doing. To reason with myself that this other thing I’m doing—finishing a book I had put aside, for example—is more interesting than the bite-sized information I would get if I were to spend my downtime scrolling away on my social media feed. But even that is an individual hack for a social issue. If this conversation highlights anything, it is that there is still a lot of work to be done to address it as a collective problem.
At the end of the day, all of us aspire to have a good life. In a technology-saturated world, that is increasingly being defined by a life where we are not chained to our devices. We have only begun to have serious conversations about what it means to be digitally well. At present, digital wellbeing seems to only be accessible to those who can afford it. I’ll let you decide if it should remain that way.
With that, enjoy the listen.
Best,
Dita
