Technology is great, but we need to change our relationship with technology

I’ve been a technology geek most of my life. I remember when my family bought our first Gateway computer. It was a complete game changer for me. I figured out everything I could about that computer and, of course, quickly ended up on Napster and started ripping CDs for people at school.

Before that, I remember being banned from the school library because I kept running out of ink in my color printer. I had a bunch of pages of Star Wars characters printed out and displayed in my room. Needless to say, I wasn’t cool.

My obsession with technology continued throughout my life. I’ve always been an early adopter, from the first iPod to the newest iPhone to numerous technology devices, apps, and services over the years. But after nearly 30 years of using device after device and service after service, my relationship with technology has had to change.

Technology has become a distraction machine

Don’t get me wrong. I still want a relationship with technology. I’ll always be a technology geek. I’m still much more of a geek than most (see my writing for two technology websites). But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown tired of being bombarded with new gadgets and new apps. Social media is even worse. To be a human on the Internet, you currently need to maintain a presence across at least three networks.

If everyone is on board, you might have Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Mastodon, and BlueSky. You might also argue about what to post on which social media app or whether to spam everything. Everything else you can do with your mobile phone. From being flooded with apps you rarely use to being bombarded with notifications, you can feel overwhelmed and interrupted at any given time.

Of course, this isn’t just limited to phones. Ads have also appeared on streaming services and have plagued YouTube for years. Smart speakers encourage new ways to interact without prompts. The obsession with putting more in front of you and always available across all apps and devices is everywhere.

Exploring new relationships with technology

While there were certainly benefits to staying up to date on these social media apps and staying up to date with all the new shows and YouTube videos, they ended up being more overwhelming than helpful. Now it looks like this. Not only was it stressful, but it felt like I had little to no time for anything else.

So I decided to embark on a quest to build a new kind of relationship with technology. It’s a relationship where I feel comfortable with everything I interact with and unencumbered by everything else that technology has felt constrained me to. I’m back from. That doesn’t mean I’m banishing technology from my life and going back to an analog world instead of digital. I just want to make sure that the technology I work with is actually good for me.

I think it means a lot of changes and a lot of cleanup. Change your notification settings, delete many apps from your phone, update the watch face on your Apple Watch, unsubscribe from some YouTube channels or streaming services, maybe even delete some of your social media accounts, and much more. things will happen. What I need to do to get to this new place I want to go.

But I believe that by making a lot of these changes, you’ll feel less stressed, more present, and feel like you have more time (because you actually do). It will be a long journey, but one worth taking.