Green beans, steamed rice with almonds, pork chops. I scroll mindlessly through the dining hall dinner menu, debating the merit of using a meal swipe later (with the reduced meal plan, every swipe counts). It’s 11:49 a.m. I stopped trying to follow my professor’s explanation of the same graph a long time ago. Instead, I switch between tabs on my laptop, wondering if pork chops will sound good seven hours from now.
A week later, I’m home for Thanksgiving. Recovering from my food coma the night before, I go normally about my Friday until around 3:00 p.m., when my grandma asks me to order three lemon-lime hand juicers for her on Amazon.
“For Christmas?," I clarify, confused why she needs the juicers delivered in two days if she’s not gifting them until Christmas. “They’re on sale today, sweetie,” my grandma gently explains. I realize it’s Black Friday. After ordering the juicers for her, I decide to see if anything I’ve been eyeing lately is on sale. I click on an Abercrombie email that says “OUR BEST SALE OF THE YEAR!!!” and immediately close my laptop.
Like many people, I have a love-hate relationship with the internet.
Some days, I can’t seem to consume enough content — I walk to class motivated by my morning podcast, stumble upon a cool NYT chart about money in college sports and read a creative Substack article that really makes me think. Other days, I’m drained even thinking about unlocking my phone, knowing I’ll probably spend 30 minutes doomscrolling on Instagram reels and purposefully avoiding the mounting pile of unread emails in my inbox.
Educational or mindless, energizing or draining, I am always consuming something when I go on the internet. Being digitally connected means being constantly inundated with information. A list of things I could find out on my phone right now includes:
- How many steps I took in the last hour.
- What the girl I sit next to in class wore to our last home football game.
- The dining hall menu tonight, and any day of the week (again, I get bored!).
- What [insert celebrity] just named their baby.
- The chicest shoe this winter, according to some random micro influencer (mesh flats?).
- Where my latest job interviewer went to high school.
- What the temperature is in Los Angeles right now.
- How many days it would take me to walk from South Bend to Los Angeles.
You get the idea.
My generation grew up with the world at our fingertips. With the internet so deeply embedded in our day-to-day activities, it’s difficult to distinguish between our online and offline selves. I see a pretty sunset, I take a picture. I finish a good book, I log it on Goodreads. I meet someone with a cool job, I connect with them on LinkedIn. The boundary between the material and digital world has never been so blurred.
Don’t get me wrong — the internet is a powerful tool. It’s how we stay informed, connect with friends and family and learn about the world. I would not be where I am today without the privileges technology provides me.
But that’s exactly what it should be: a tool that provides you value, not the other way around. Books and podcasts have already covered this subject at nausea, but it's easy to forget that technology is supposed to improve the quality of our life, not consume it, when you’re binge watching “Normal People” on Hulu while simultaneously replying to a text on your phone and turning in an assignment on your laptop. There’s a battle for our attention being waged, and the tech companies are winning by a landslide.
Yet, I think there’s been a shift in Generation Z towards limiting our screen time. Despite what our childhood normalized, you eventually realize that constant access to all this information is, in fact, Not Normal. We were never supposed to participate in every new trend, to have active social “connections” with 500 people or to see exactly how many calories we burned on our walk to class. Instant gratification wrecks our attention span. Social media causes us to form flat, profile-picture-sized assumptions about people we don’t know, eroding our innate curiosity in who they actually are. General internet “noise” prevents us from growing and deepening our interior life.
It’s difficult to fathom all the ways we’re affected by consumption, yet swearing off technology is not realistic, either. It’s complicated. I can complain about my phone all day, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love getting my grandma’s check-in texts or watching SNL in bed. The internet allows our modern world to function, and it would be naive to suggest we revert back to a completely technology-less society.
As with most things in life, it all comes down to moderation. Mindful consumption of the internet, and mindful protection of your (precious) time and attention. It’s not like anyone still needs to be convinced of the benefits of limited screen time, but I know I’m not the only one who struggles to put these intentions into practice. If you’re like me, here are little ways I’ve seen people reduce unnecessary device interactions:
- Walk to class with your phone in your backpack or purse.
- Don’t immediately open Google to answer every question that crosses your mind. Let yourself sit in the unknown sometimes - not knowing the year toothpaste was invented isn’t going to ruin your day.
- Go to a restaurant without looking the menu up beforehand.
- Buy an actual alarm clock and leave your phone outside your room when you go to bed.
- Other options like deleting Instagram/TikTok off your phone, turning your phone on grayscale or using screen time limit apps like Forest or BePresent.
I read somewhere that if your average daily screen time is 4-5 hours, continuing at this rate will cost you 15 years of your life. If it's 6 hours, it can cost you 21 years of your life. I’d like to spend as much of my life offline (in the real world!) as possible, wouldn’t you?
I think the zeitgeist agrees. I’m not suggesting you throw your phone in the ocean (though tempting), but take the time to critically rethink your relationship with technology. No one stands to suffer the consequences of a chronically online lifestyle more than yourself. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives — look up from your phone every once in a while and make it worthwhile.
Allison Elshoff is a junior studying Business Analytics with minors in the Hesburgh Program of Public Service and Impact Consulting. Originally from Valencia, California and currently living in Badin Hall, you can find her unsubscribing from email lists or hammocking by the lakes. You can contact Allison at aelshoff@nd.edu.
