Is There Too Much Technology in 2025?
Investigating the need for unplugging and dopamine detoxes
I recently took up reading again. I decided that I didn’t want to be staring at my phone all day, and that my attention span was worsening by the day. As a graduate student, I do a lot of heavy reading for courses and need to stay engaged during three-hour lectures. The constant overload of information and dopamine hits from social media were only inhibiting the development of this skill.
With that being said, I haven’t taken an entire social media detox. I find myself picking up my phone much less often, but when I do, the algorithm seems to know I want to make this change. Instead of trends, mindless AI videos, and funny clips on my social media, I find my feed filled with news, longer-form content, and videos of people talking about this very topic: the hatred of technology.
Hatred might seem like a harsh word, but that is truly how these videos feel to consume. It feels like an all-powerful force has taken over our bodies and stuck us to our cell phones. As if there is no longer a choice, we are addicted. And there are many theories and reasons for this circulating. You might have heard of people wanting a “dopamine detox” and claiming we are overloaded with dopamine and have become addicted to constant stimulation. I recently watched a video saying it’s much simpler than that: people like having fun, scrolling on their phones is fun. But is it?
Have we lost the joy in our lives? Once we get a break from our lives, we unwind by staring at screens, often emotionless. And there are mainstream media outlets covering the loneliness epidemic. We spend entire days without connecting, and if we do, it’s often with faceless users in public comment sections. It’s exhausting, draining, and overbearing. How do we fix this?
Like I said, a lot of the media I still consume has become tailored to my new perspective. This in itself is a scary idea. The algorithm knows it’s losing me and is pushing content I would enjoy. I find myself watching multiple YouTube videos back-to-back on educational topics and critiques of AI or technology use, which feels like productivity, but is still giving the machine exactly what it wants: engagement. That being said, the videos I watch come from real people who are making a living off these platforms, so supporting them isn’t inherently wrong. Watching long-form content can still be a way to activate your critical thinking skills and broaden your perspective as long as you're choosing to do so. It is also important to me to stop wasting my time away online. Even when consuming “good” content, it’s not healthy to be fully dissociated from my own life. I heard this same argument quite a few years back about reading. That we shouldn’t be sucked into the “escape” fiction novels portray for us, and need to live our real lives--touch grass if you will. But now we’ve gone so far past being sucked into books that reading is on the rise.
Some videos that inspired this article, click the image to check them out.
I’ve watched quite a few videos of people cutting out technology: using application-lock features, do not disturb mode, and flat out not carrying their phones around. There has been an increase in usage (from what I have observed) in iPods, Walkmans, physical books, flip phones, wired headphones, and so much of what is being referred to as “vintage” or 2000s tech. We hate our phones. But we are addicted to them. So we have digressed back to using our older sister’s old Razor flip, and our dad’s old rock records. Kids are yearning for real information, real media, and real connections. A theory I have for this is the use of AI in school. Since many kids are taking shortcuts on their homework, they aren’t learning. That part of their developing brain is craving stimulation not given to us by TikTok or Battle Royales. We get to adulthood and we realize we can’t finish a book, movie, or even a TV show episode without checking our notifications. And when we are without our phones, there’s this constant urge to pick it up; we miss it. This circles back to my other article, “The Art of Being Wrong”; We aren’t discussing anything anymore without fact-checking ourselves. We have endless information at our fingertips, so why bother to memorize anything?
Someone on my TikTok For You Page claimed, “We are the more educated generation, yet the dumbest.” We can know anything at any time, but we really know nothing. People my age don’t know phone numbers, important dates, or even addresses, because we never had to learn them. Now, AI does everything for us. What’s the point of learning a recipe, trivia facts, or basic knowledge when we can just ask ChatGPT?
Our dependence on technology is setting us up for failure. Just the other night, the power went out in my building. As a kid, when this happened, we would whine for a few seconds that we couldn’t watch TV, then we would go outside, or play board games, or draw. The power went out last night, and we all sat in the darkness on our phones.
I often say I’m “losing my whimsy.” I used to love doing crafts, artwork, and just being creative. I attribute this to working a part-time job and being a full-time graduate student, but if I really think about it, I’m just simply not making time for these things anymore. After a long day, I come home, cook dinner, and consume content. I relax with a YouTube comedy video instead of watching a film with my family. I often spend free hours in the day on my computer, even when I have no work to do, or even scrolling on my phone. I’ve been consciously trying to change this. Today I picked up a book first thing this morning rather than scrolling my feed, but eventually, around midday, I wanted to check my phone, so I did.
The age of technology, as many like to call our current era, is an enormous accomplishment we could have never imagined. But have we gone too far? Having to pry our iPhones out of our hands, install child locks and timer on media apps, and thrift old technology in hopes of better solutions seems dystopian. Most ads I see are for AI companies, even plastered on the subway; shouldn’t we use this genre-breaking advancement? As we advance, our lives are supposed to be easier, but for what? Once everything is automated, what will we do?
We might regress back to the Renaissance and build beautiful architecture and paint murals, but inevitably, AI can do that for us. People won’t want to put in hard work because everything is easy for them. We could also lose these skills altogether, similar to my generation’s lack of ability to remember phone numbers, people are losing media literacy skills. We are googling what things mean instead of subjecting ourselves to hard thinking. If we keep heading down this slope, what’s next? Our reading skills? Our walking skills? Will we become floating mindless zombies like in Wall-E, while robots clean up the mess we made?
It is extremely important to me to maintain human connection, but it is equally important to me that I develop my personal skills. I’ve been reading more books, consuming less social media, and bringing back little joys in my life like writing and painting. I hope this article can inspire you to do the same, because my life has gotten so much better. I feel much less anxious, my head hurts less, I can stay productive for longer, I have better ideas, and I feel more like myself. A simple way to get started is reading a YA or short Fiction book and then reflecting on it either with a friend or in a journal. And do all of this without the use of your phone. Talk to the barista at the coffee shop and ask how their day is. We need to stop humanizing technology and stop dehumanizing humans! Better yourself by bettering your skills. Not everything in life needs to be profitable. I know that is hard to grasp in our economy, but as long as you can afford food and shelter, and you have the privilege of free time, you are living a blessed life that centuries of people hoped for the future.
