Translator: Marta Palacio Reviewer: Denise RQ
I left the Internet for an entire year.
I was 26 years old, it was May 1, 2012, and I pulled the plug.
There were a lot of reasons,
but the main reason was probably that I was 26 years old,
I had life figured out, and I was really overwhelmed.
It was a bit of a crisis.
I just felt like everything was too much, and I couldn't win.
The Internet kept on coming, there's more emails.
You can't win against your email inbox,
because the moment you'll hit "archive" on the very last one,
you're going to get a new email.
You can't win on Twitter,
because there's so much Justin Bieber to talk about.
I felt this in a really overwhelming, very personal way
that the Internet was defeating me and suppressing me.
All my entire livelihood's the Internet.
I was 12 years old when I started using the Internet
and I contracted the sickness.
I've probably used the Internet
for the majority of my waking hours since then.
I was a web designer as a teenager.
I started writing about technology as a journalist when I was about 20.
So it's all I've ever really known.
I don't know what life is like without the Internet,
without being constantly connected, without an email inbox.
I do remember a time before Twitter, but it's really hazy.
I also had this desire to get some stuff done.
I wanted to do some personal studies, some reading,
I had some writing projects that I was putting off.
I figured if I quit the Internet, which is using all of my time,
I would have unlimited free time
to accomplish the things that I desire to accomplish.
So I quit the Internet.
The question that I was asking beyond my personal goals was,
how does the Internet use me, and how do I use the Internet?
At what point are my decisions and my goals
dictating my behavior on the Internet,
and at what point are the apps, the people, the processes,
and just how the Internet is, the medium itself,
how is that dictating my behavior and how is that changing it?
In the mid-90s, Nicholas Negroponte,
- who is the founder of Wired Magazine and the MIT Media Lab -
wrote - the web was very early at this point -
"Web surfing is a fad, we can't keep this up.
This isn't really how life gets done.
Pretty soon there's going to be bots, they'll go out on the Internet for you.
They'll find all of the information.
And you can get back to being a productive adult.
Maybe the kids will have time to surf the Internet,
but that's not gonna be us.
We can't do that, we're productive members of society."
He was totally wrong.
The Internet is for surfing,
that's what we do when we're using the Internet.
But in a sense, he was right that, except for a select few people,
- and I know I'm not included in this -
when I'm using the Internet, outside of a little bit of research
I'm not really, typically being productive.
At least that's how I felt.
I wasn't accomplishing the things
- like I said, I wanted to write, to read -
I wasn't accomplishing those things
when I was clicking on links,
when I was tweeting, when I was on Reddit,
when I was absorbing this vast, amazing, incredible sea of information.
I was more often than not being distracted by it
instead of built up by it.
I didn't feel like I was being productive.
I'd wish there were those bots to just use the Internet for me
so I didn't have to use it.
I contrast the way I use the Internet
with how my parents use the Internet.
I do think there's a difference there,
where they are able to use it more as a utility.
It's a very useful, incredible invention for them.
They go on Amazon, they buy a thing, and they check their email,
and they send an email to me asking me why I haven't emailed them recently.
My mum's on Twitter now, my dad has Instagram,
but really, it's a very tiny fraction of their life.
Then they get back to doing the things that need to be done.
For me, maybe because I grew up with it
or because I'm a nerd, or I have a low level of self-control,
my life was the Internet,
and other things maybe happened in the margins.
I'd be looking down on my phone, and then I'd look up,
and there's a person still there - that's good.
I'd look back down on my phone, and I'm back in my world
where I belong, where I understand what I know, and where I'm capable.
So when I left the Internet, I felt this amazing sense of freedom.
I quit texting; in addition to the Internet,
so I wasn't getting any e-mail.
People weren't checking my email for me.
I had no connection to the Internet.
I was so free, I was so happy. I was high on life.
Everything smelled better, I had a [spring] in my step,
it was just so good...
The sensation I had is a fifteen-year-old's,
"You can't tell me what to do, Internet.
My life is mine now, I get to make the choices.
That email that's incoming doesn't get to mess with my plans for today."
It was so wonderful.
I experienced some new sensations
that I never really had before, or not in a long time.
One of those was boredom. Incredible, intense boredom.
I don't know if you've ever been bored before.
It was a new thing for me.
I'll describe the sensation.
You're not doing anything right now, you don't have anything to do,
and there's nothing at arm's length that can fix that.
When you have the Internet,
the moment you're thinking about maybe being bored,
you can grab your phone, you swipe to unlock,
and now you have
an entire world of information and entertainment right in front of you.
Maybe you don't want that right now, but you're not bored.
Trust me, because I got bored, and it was a very different thing.
It's something creative people have talked about for a long time.
It's this time some people call meditation.
You get solitude, you have a space to think and be creative.
I also found it was a time to decide what I actually wanted to do
instead of taking the path of least resistance.
I also had very different interactions with people.
This is something that's been tackled by so many people,
so much [talked] about.
Does Facebook really bring us together with people,
or are we just hiding in our computers pretending that we're friends?
What I found is that without the Internet
I could be with a person in a much more intense and personal way.
Those are words people use,
"That was intense," "It was intense hanging out with you."
It's scary.
Even on the phone, "I was scared."
Maybe this wasn't a compliment.
But I really valued my ability to talk with people in a way,
- it wasn't just that I didn't have a phone
that could distract me right then -
I also didn't have my mental cycles thinking about,
"Are my emails stacking up somewhere?" "Am I missing something on Twitter?"
"Did I forget to check in at this place on Foursquare?"
I didn't have that distracting me.
It allowed me to be much more in the moment.
My sister told me that I became more emotionally available
than she'd really known me throughout her life.
I had a conversation with a friend that I've known for years that was--
We just got to a deeper level than we'd ever got.
I treasure that so much.
Then there was a flipside to both of those things.
Boredom is awesome if you do something good with it,
but it's not awesome if you just play video games.
That's what I started doing.
I swear, I was-- I'm sorry, I'm 20 years old, stupid,
and I played so many video games through that year.
That became that thing; I didn't know about it right at first,
I didn't play a lot of video games before I quit the Internet.
It became that thing that was really easy, it was right at an arm's length.
I'd grab the controller
and get rid of that sometimes terrifying feeling of boredom.
I wasted so much time, I can't even tell you.
The other thing that happened with people
is, while when I was with them, it was really great, personal, and intense.
I stopped hanging out with people as often.
I got disconnected from my social circle.
It's very difficult to keep in touch with people out of state
- my family's all over the country -
but even people in my city.
I missed the email, I missed the Facebook invite,
I forgot that that movie was coming out this weekend.
You miss a couple of those, and then you miss more and more.
Early on, a lot of my loneliness would prompt me
to go out and reach out to people,
to call people on the phone, which they hate.
They hate when I call them.
They much prefer a text - especially for making plans -
but I had to stick by my principles.
I'd call them, they didn't want to hang out, or I was too late.
That loneliness built on itself.
I became very withdrawn.
Sometimes, I wouldn't hang out with people for a week.
I became out of synch with my social circle.
I wasn't that on the jokes, I didn't know the lingo,
I hadn't seen the same movies.
That was really tough.
But I came back on the Internet.
That was one of the most intense experiences of all,
because it was so overwhelming.
I think we forget how skilled we are at using the Internet,
and how much of your brain it requires to use.
I'd train myself through this year
of engaging with one idea at a time or one video game at a time, at least,
I'd been reading some books a little bit, I was really into that;
capturing that one big idea in one big book,
and how elegant that was,
talking to one person at a time.
All of the sudden, I had ten browser tabs,
20 people were telling me which links I had to go to
because I missed them during the year when I was gone.
I had my phone, my laptop, my tablet.
It was so much.
I literally began to panic that first day I was back.
Throughout that week, I was very stressed.
About a week in, from being back on the Internet,
I was at my coffee shop, going through email.
I had about 20,000 unread emails when I got back.
I forgot to put an auto-responder on my email.
(Laughter)
A tip if you guys are going to leave the Internet.
My sister came in, and she wanted to talk about her day.
I was listening, kind of,
but I was also thinking about what was going on in my inbox.
I started to open my laptop a little more,
and nod along to what she was saying.
She said, "Well, the wall is back up."
She's had to deal with this her whole life:
I'm plugged into this computer,
she wants to talk to me, and I'm not really 100% available.
Maybe 10%, maybe even 90%, but I'm not 100% available.
I closed the laptop, I didn't want to be that person anymore.
But I missed at least that moment.
When I got back to the Internet--
Maybe you should know this about me:
I wrote for a technology publication called "The Verge."
I helped to found it.
It actually launched six months before I left the Internet.
Which is probably a little ironic.
I was trying to get back to work,
I wrote about my experiences for the publication.
I was able to have a job publishing articles for the Internet
without having the Internet.
I'd hand them a thumbdrive, and they'd put my stories up.
But I wanted to earn it back a little bit and do some really good work.
I started doing a story in my first month back
on Google Glass.
So I went from no Internet
to having the Internet literally, on my face, for a week;
learning this device.
I got so into it,
I was finally getting some productivity back,
learning to manage all this multi-pronged attack of the Internet.
I had a Skype call scheduled with my brother and sister-in-law.
I hadn't seen them visually, and I hadn't seen their kids
probably in six months.
I didn't really want to do it.
I don't know what it is about that,
but somehow that thing that you already aren't the most into it
It's just a random link on the Internet,
stopping me from wanting to connect with somebody that's that important to me.
But I did; I sat down my project, and I skyped with them.
My niece played me "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" on the violin,
she's learning the violin.
It was a very slow rendition, but it was beautiful.
She and my nephew had both written original songs
that they'd written in crayon on pieces of paper
and they held up to the camera.
They sang them for me.
Her song was called, "Horsie ride," his song was called, "Helicopter stop."
That was such a precious thing.
It's not just that I almost missed out on then,
I missed out on my whole year of being off the Internet.
Kindred is a very valuable, awesome thing,
I don't want to take that for granted anymore.
I got lucky when I came back to the Internet.
I was trying to figure out what to do next,
and the idea popped into my head
- which I wish it had occurred to me earlier,
but it finally did occur to me -
that I had spent an entire year focused on myself,
and try to fix myself and improve myself,
become a better me, educated, things like that.
I realized maybe I should spent
some of the next year doing something for somebody else,
be a little less selfish.
Besides, it didn't work.
I didn't fix my productivity,
I didn't do all the reading or all the writing I wanted to do.
So I needed something else to do.
I decided I would do something for people or try to care for people.
My brother just deployed with the air force,
so I'm currently living in Colorado with my sister-in-law
helping out with the kids.
And it's so great,
because I realized in this time without the Internet,
that leaving the Internet is not going to fix my problems.
Something people quoted a lot to me when I came back
and saw my failures and struggles
was, "Wherever you go, there you are."
I could change my circumstance,
but I'm still this guy that's not very productive.
But I also am a guy that really does love people,
I love my nieces and nephews.
This is a different brother, actually.
I have two brothers, nieces and nephews; very complicated.
I'm able to spend time with this kids,
and it's such a rewarding use of my time.
Finally, I'm able to dictate back to the Internet what I do find important.
It's cool to have that power over it.
Again, I feel that freedom I felt right when I left the Internet.
"You're not the boss of me."
Yeah, I suck at productivity, and I get distracted easily.
But it's not the Internet's fault.
I'm in charge of my life.
And I've decided that what I want to do
is hang out with these kids for a while,
while their dad's gone.
And that's so rewarding.
My nephew has some Star Wars toys, and he has no idea what Star Wars is.
So he's describing to me the function of a light saber.
He says, "The light saber shoots the competition,
and the competition is fired."
So many errors in that sentence. The light saber is not a gun.
I tweeted it, of course.
Somebody tweeted back to me, a friend of mine, he's an orthodox Jew,
and I talked to him a lot while I was off the Internet.
He understands finding this balance.
He's a technology analyst,
but he honors the Sabbath, and he spends that day with his family.
He said, "If you were still 100% online
you would have missed this experience,
and if you were still 100% offline, we would have missed it."
Yes, I did. I found a balance.
I did something in real life, I told the Internet about it.
I'm very happy because I just want to make sure
that we ask ourselves what is our priority,
and that we do that thing and not let the Internet tell us differently.
Thank you.
(Applause)