Estimated reading time at 200 wpm: 7 minutes
Recently an associate – because I keep no friends – messaged me: “limited screentime today… taking a digital detox.”
Whether or not you agree our Fat Disclaimer applies
That simple line stopped me in my tracks. Not because I have anything against the idea — I get the appeal of stepping away from constant pings and glowing rectangles. But as I thought about it, I realised something that felt almost radical: a genuine digital detox is no longer possible for me. And, more importantly, I’m not sure it needs to be.
For the last decade or so my life has quietly migrated almost entirely onto screens. I don’t buy physical newspapers any more; the only time I see one is if I happen to pick one up on a ferry or train. All my news, research and learning arrives digitally. Most of the books I read live on a tablet or laptop. I haven’t been to the cinema in years — my movies and series come through Amazon or other streaming services. Even my weekly food shop is about seventy percent online. The two large monitors hooked up to my desktop aren’t for “watching telly” in the old sense; they’re workspaces and entertainment hubs at the same time. My data consumption varies between 2 and 120 GB per day with an average settling around 5 GB/day over an average month.
In short, the screen — whether phone, tablet, laptop or desktop — is no longer an optional layer of my day. It is the day. It’s how I work, how I learn, how I stay informed, how I relax, and how I get the groceries. Declaring “I’m off screens” would be like announcing I’m taking a break from electricity or running water. Possible for a short camping trip, maybe, but not a realistic or sustainable way to live.
This is not ‘advice’ even if it sounds like it!
Rabbit hole of reflection
That realisation sent me down a rabbit hole of reflection. Why has “digital detox” become such a trendy, feel-good phrase? Why do we see people posting about it on the very platforms they’re supposedly escaping, collecting supportive “Go you!” comments like digital gold stars? And why does it feel so different from the way earlier generations worried about consuming too much media?
Because people have always worried about over-consumption of information. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were moral panics about “novel fever” and “reading mania.” Heavy novel reading — especially among young women — was blamed for everything from ruined nerves and unrealistic expectations to moral decay and national weakness. Newspapers were accused of filling heads with trivia and pulling people away from proper conversation.
In the last 30 years, I’ve never once heard anyone announce they were taking a “paper detox” or “book fast.” The language simply didn’t exist. People might have said they needed to cut back on frivolous novels or stop wasting time on the daily rag, but they didn’t frame moderation as a dramatic cleanse that implied the printed word itself was toxic or addictive.
That’s the difference today. The word “detox” carries medical weight — it suggests poison that must be purged or ‘addiction to be managed’. It turns ordinary modern life into something tainted with pathology that needs a heroic weekend intervention. And because we’re all swimming in the same cultural soup, many of us have absorbed the script: “Any screen time above two hours is bad,” “You must unplug to be healthy,” or “Balance means less digital, full stop.” It’s the current wellness narrative, and it sounds virtuous when people say it out loud. Oh sure – I’ll be upsetting some of my associates. Do I care? I do not.
No equal screentime
But here’s the thing I keep coming back to: not all screen time is created equal. There’s a world of difference between mindless doomscrolling for dopamine hits and the hours I spend researching, writing, following quality journalism, or watching a well-made series. My digital life is mostly intentional and productive. The problem isn’t the medium; it’s when the medium starts using us instead of the other way round.
We’re now living in the full swing of the Internet of Things era. Our fridges can tell us when the milk is low, our cars update their own software over the air, our heating adjusts itself based on weather data, and our bank balances, travel plans, medical records and social connections all flow through the same glowing devices. Digital isn’t a lifestyle choice any more — it’s infrastructure. There is no escaping it, any more than our grandparents could escape electricity once it reached their homes.
Screentime is not ‘evil’ and it’ll only grow over the next two decades.
A Note on Children and Screentime
For children, managing screen time requires a more deliberate and protective approach than for adults, because their developing brains, bodies, and social skills benefit enormously from real-world experiences that screens simply cannot replace. Recent guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (updated in 2026) has shifted away from rigid hourly limits toward emphasising content quality, family context, and ensuring digital use does not crowd out essential activities.
Key priorities include plenty of daily physical exercise and outdoor play, face-to-face social interaction with family and peers, unstructured creative play, and sufficient sleep. Parents can help by setting consistent family rules — such as no screens during meals or an hour before bedtime — choosing high-quality, educational, or co-viewed content over passive or addictive gaming, and actively replacing mindless scrolling or endless video games. They can provide alternatives like sports, board games, park visits, or hands-on hobbies.
The goal is not total elimination but balance: screens can have a place for learning or limited entertainment, but they must support, rather than displace, the movement, real-life relationships, and varied stimulation that children need to thrive physically, emotionally, and socially.
It was always about balance
Balance has always been the real concept in life, whether the dominant medium was books, newspapers, radio, television, or now the internet. The need for physical movement, face-to-face conversation, quiet unstructured time, and sensory variety didn’t disappear just because our tools changed. We still benefit from long walks without a phone in the pocket, from picking up an actual physical book now and then, from hobbies that use our hands instead of our thumbs. Those things create contrast and refreshment. They don’t require us to pretend we can step outside the digital world entirely.
So I’m not taking a digital detox. I’m not posting a virtuous status update about my screen-free weekend. Instead I’m trying to be more intentional inside the world I actually inhabit: turning off non-essential notifications, taking proper breaks away from desks, curating what I let into my feed, and protecting pockets of analogue life where they fit naturally.
Conclusion
The detox trend might make for good social-media camaraderie, but for those of us whose work, learning, and daily logistics are now inseparable from the digital layer, a more honest approach is simply this: use the tools deliberately, protect what matters, and remember that balance isn’t about dramatic purges. It’s about living thoughtfully inside the world we actually have.
But caution: I have no problem with people having their detoxes of any sort.
