Digital Detoxing
Taking a break from technology From the moment you awake each morning to when you go to sleep, technology is constantly in your life. Home, work, school and even holidays are full of it, yet increasingly people are also ‘switching off’. Craig Sisterson checks out who is digitally detoxing.
H
olidays should be a time to rejuvenate and reset but you can’t do that if you’re constantly worried about what’s happening on your digital device. The answer: take a break or a digital detox. The best way to do that, according to a recent study by UK travel specialists Hayes and Jarvis, is to head to one of New Zealand’s (or the world’s) more remote destinations. New Zealand ranks 10th out of the top 20 digital detox destinations in the study, for which the top five are Costa Rica, Chile, Iceland, Columbia and Peru. South Africa, Canada and Australia are also on the digital detox destination list which assessed the availability of the Internet and the population spread in various areas alongside desirable holiday activities, accessibility and attractions. In South Africa, for instance, more than 40 percent of residents are disconnected from the Internet, while in Canada only 0.11 percent of the land is built on, making its many beautiful forests and mountains great places to escape from technology.
Increasingly, schools, for instance, are banning cell phones in class, having IT-free days and restricting technology usage. 26
New Zealand has a huge variety of unspoilt, remote places to escape to, especially across the top of the South Island. Nelson Tasman and Marlborough and the neighbouring West Coast offer some of the country’s top remote locations. And while many of them are off the beaten track, there is no shortage of accommodation options for couples, groups and families who want to get away from it all. From hiking and biking, highlands to hinterland, camping and caravanning, to skiing to surfing, the mountains, lakes, beaches and gorgeous scenic locations offer opportunities unsurpassed elsewhere and you don’t have to leave the country to enjoy them. Accommodation options range from DIY camping to luxury lodges. If international travel is on the radar, however, Costa Rica – bordering the Caribbean in Central America – is considered ‘the best’ destination for a digital detox. Over half of the population (66 percent) there has access to the Internet but with 4G speeds of 5.82 Mbps, you won’t be surfing the web quickly. Instead of being distracted by the Internet, you could surf the waves or venture into the jungle. Costa Rica also has the highest percentage of parkland at 25 percent; higher than any other destination on the list making it an ideal location to get back in touch with nature.
Keeping toxicity out of technology
Taking a technology holiday is not just the domain of more switchedon users. Increasingly, schools, for instance, are banning cell phones in class, having IT-free days and restricting technology usage. And it’s pretty telling that the biggest tech gurus in the world, those who’ve spent their careers building businesses that have made computers, social media, and smartphones widely available and habitually used – people who deeply understand the benefits and dangers from the inside – actually ring-fence and restrict how they and their families use technology. The post-millennial generation, born from the late 1990s to early 2010s and dubbed iGen by US psychology professor Jean Twenge and others, is the first to have had the Internet available from a young age and go through adolescence with social media