Have we reached digital obesity already?

I suspect that the idea of fasting happened upon humans when they worried that eating and drinking every day might make them forget the value and importance of food.  Further, the more they ate and drank the less they paid attention to their souls.  Thus, humans in different cultural contexts developed a system of fasting, usually within the religious contexts as well.

The cleansing detox programs like fasting, I like to imagine, date back to when humans began producing enough surplus for them to start building cities and creating what we refer to as civilizations.

As we materially progressed and prospered, the detox programs also took on different variations.  Food detox programs continue, of course.  Detox against shopping.  Against driving.  Against watching television.  Recall MTV's "Unplugged" program?  That was a detox of a different kind.

The latest along that is detox from social media and the internet itself.

There are now resorts that guarantee you that you won't be able to access the internet.  You hand over your gadgets when you check in and then for the rest of the stay there, well, you are on a digital detox.  The Travel Channel even suggests the best unplugged vacation places!  You prefer advice on that from the Wall Street Journal?

We forget that the internet and the digital applications are not the problem by themselves, writes this author at Wired.com:

We all know that social media is a mixed bag. Regular studies connect its use to anxiety, and episodes of depression. There are legitimate questions about its impact on our brains. But it has also transformed many tasks, made us more productive, and at times, helped us to feel more connected. Like any technology, it’s not the tool that poses the problem. It’s how we use that tool.

Even when acknowledging it, he writes about taking off from social media for the entire month of August.  He is off on a digital detox--his third annual treatment!

Meanwhile, over at the NY Times is this piece about "struggling to disconnect from our digital lives"

The first step for me this month will be to shore up and seal my digital borders. I have learned from too many failed experiments that there is no resisting the Pavlovian pull of a ping announcing a new email, the vibration of my phone or the seductions of the Internet once I call up even a single site.
The only way to avoid these interruptions, I have learned, is to turn them off completely. If something requires my urgent attention this month, my away message directs senders to a colleague, who knows how to reach me and also knows how much I hope he won’t try.
I’m painfully aware that letting go won’t happen easily. I’m a lab rat now, deeply accustomed to tapping that lever over and over for the tiny pellets of brief stimulation and shallow gratification that life on the Internet provides.

People have apparently been driven so much into anxiety thanks to being connected 24x7 that they are willing to pay money to get away from it all.  Or, they even sign up for the "Sabbath manifesto" and get away from all gadgets and technology on the "national day of unplugging."   I want to tell them all that they can run but cannot hide!  It is in your head!

I have my own routines to make sure I don't become a gadget zombie. But, I cannot imagine ever going on the detox route.  I have never been a fan of fasting; it is all in the moderation.  As they say in my part of the old country, "அளவுக்கு மிஞ்சினால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ" (the idea translates to "even the divine nectar can become a poison if one exceeds the limit.)  I buy European butter that is rich in fat.  The cream cheese that I buy is full fat.  I buy chocolates and gelato.  Because, I am convinced that it is in how much of those I consume and when.  Consumed appropriately the European butter is the best thing ever on warm sourdough bread.  There are few things in life more delightful than chocolate melting away in the mouth.  But then I don't do that every single meal.

That's the same with digital consumption too.  Yes, it is a consumption; as the author of the NY Times essay put it:

it’s as if I’m sitting in front of a bowl of Doritos or Hershey’s Kisses and compulsively consuming them, except in this case, it’s bytes, not bites. The more of them I take in, the more dissatisfied and hungrier I feel.

Perhaps moderation is not easy for us humans.  Digital fasting is, thus, merely the latest of the forced removal of self from consumption.  Who knows what comes next!