Digital Detox

Lights. Curtains. The character emerges. The character is all of us.

My phone is dead. Not just low battery, but dead. Panic rises in my chest. My laptop becomes my lifeline. I fire it up, fingers trembling slightly. Browser tabs open one by one. The familiar portals today feel hollow, insufficient.

I NEED MORE! THE DOPAMINE IS NOT HITTING RIGHT!! FEED ME CONTENT!!!

With screens I die slowly. Without them, I die quickly. Wait! my phone screen lights up. Oh, what a relief.

The bus ride is ten minutes of torture. Thirty strangers surround me, all avoiding eye contact. Ten minutes without stimulation feels like suffocation. Ten minutes! My hand reaches for my pocket. Phone found. Screen unlocked. Oxygen flows again.

Night falls. Silence creeps in. My thoughts grow louder in the quiet. Who is this voice in my head? Intruder. Even the gentle chirp of crickets outside my window feels like an assault. How dare they!?

I lie in bed with exhaustion pulling my eyelids. The solution? More scrolling. My thumb moves mechanically, swiping through endless content. I am searching for something. What am I searching for? I do not know, but I will know it when I see it. Just one more scroll. Just one more minute.

Midnight approaches. Sleep calls, but my phone whispers louder. One more episode. Let’s do the math: eight hours of sleep minus one episode. Still seven hours left. Then six. Then five. The sun rises as my eyes finally close.

Morning comes too soon. Three hours of sleep. My body aches. The show wasn’t even good.

A stranger says hello on the bus. Disgusting! Who does that? Back to my phone. Right swipe. Left swipe. Left. Left. Right. My daily limit appears. How dare they limit me?

My phone dies again. For real this time. Dead for good. As the screen goes black, so does my vision. My heart slows. The world without a screen feels too bright, too loud, too real.

Death.

Darkness.

Curtains.