The Media Fast: Or what Making Non-Alcoholic Beverages Taught me about Digital Culture

I went into my media fast this weekend expecting to feel disconnected, rather anti-social and a lot more productive when it came to my homework. That sounds pretty pessimistic, but as the time to officially give up my media loomed closer, I could suddenly come up with more and more reasons why my digital devices were so important to me. I couldn’t help but imagine what if I came across someone who was dying on the side of the road. How would I call 911? What if I lost my friends (and my ride) leaving the broadcast in the morning? Or what if I desperately needed to make a call or text a friend to solidify our plans for dinner that next evening?

 

Despite my fears, I did find the media fast very liberating. It was nice to be able to say that I can in fact survive without my technology, my devices and my texting. But I definitely saw how impossible it is to actually escape technology and still manage to get nearly anything done. I (stupidly) chose to do my media fast on the Sunday when church was cancelled for the Brigham City Temple Dedication. Thus within the first few hours of my time “without media” I already had technically failed as I attended and watched the broadcast. But I decided to keep going with my fast. I was fine for the few hours following the broadcast when I had no real need to get on the internet or use my phone. While I worked on homework and hung out with my roommates, I felt like I was going back to an early, simpler time. Then once again, reality struck.

My roommates and I were in charge of a bringing a Mexican drink for a dinner party at our friends’ apartment that evening. We had decided that we were going to bring virgin margaritas as a fun, and relatively easy to prepare drink for the party. This was a good plan in theory, up until I was the only person at home to actually put things together. What had sounded like a simple project, suddenly took on lots of complications as I couldn’t Google the recipe I had planned to use. Or even call my mother to ask for advice on how to properly put salt around the rims of our glasses. And then as I was just combining things (hoping it would turn out to be something resembling a margarita), I couldn’t even figure out how to work the fancy blender I had borrowed from a friend. Thankfully my sister decided to come over about then, and I handed her my phone and my computer. She called my friend about the blender and found online that you need to use lemon juice to get the salt to stick around the edges of the glass. After that I was able to throw things together in the fancy blender that I then knew how to work.

Although I didn’t Google and call myself, I definitely saw that I really couldn’t survive without my digital media. Maybe things would have worked out if I hadn’t let my sister cheat for me, but they sure would have been much more complicated. Either way my media fast highlighted the importance of relationships (the real, face to face kind), but it also showed me how much all of my devices have become a part of my life. I was really surprised that I missed the internet the most when I was attempting to cook, and that it wasn’t Facebook or my email that really got me in trouble. At least for me, this media is such a tool in my life and has become deeply embedded within my daily tasks not just my social interactions. In fact the social part was the easiest to go without, and I think it was the most liberating to actually have to talk to someone face to face rather than texting or Facebook-ing them. Yet I now see clearer how deeply technology has become embedded in my life, and I don’t think it is necessarily in a bad or harmful way.

And did I manage to use the break from media to get a lot of homework done? No. Ironically it became yet another excuse to procrastinate.