Digital Detox helps people ‘disconnect to reconnect’

In an age saturated with TVs, tablets, smartphones and other technological gadgets, Digital Detox seeks to “recharge mind, body and soul” by disconnecting.

Digital Detox is a company that seeks to restore and enhance personal wellness through retreats and in-house workshops. The company’s mission is to forgo technical gadgets in an effort to reconnect to a simpler life, with the slogan, “disconnect from technology and reconnect with yourself.”

Amidst statistics showing that a third of Americans prefer texting to talking, and 84 percent say that they cannot go a day without their smartphones, Digital Detox strives to restore a sense of independence from technology.

“We understand that technology is an incredibly useful tool in making much of life more efficient, connecting friends and family across the globe, improving the basic daily enjoyment of life for people of all ages, not to mention saving lives around the world, though people have forgot what it means to live without it, even briefly,” reads the Digital Detox website. “Phones, computers and gadgets are invented to make our life simpler, however they often stand in the way of simply enjoying an experience. Though far too often, we are no longer using the tools, they are using us.”

The driving idea behind Digital Detox is not to entirely remove technology from people’s lives; rather, it is to find a healthy balance in using it.

Even without an organized retreat, some people try to remove their addiction to technology by removing it from their lives for an extended period of time. Mark Hooper, who went two weeks without using the Internet in 2010, wrote an article about his experience in “The Observer.”

“I swapped Facebook updates for lengthy phone calls. … I read more, I cooked more, I wrote a few postcards (and managed to forget to leave enough space for the stamp). I drew. I went on long walks. I drove to Hastings and ate chips on the beach. I watched more curling in the Winter Olympics than I would have thought humanly possible. I rediscovered the rare thrill of staying up until midnight on a Saturday night to see if my football team had won (we're in the Championship) or — better yet — only finding out when I opened the Sunday papers,” Hooper said in his article. “But, most of all, I did nothing — and it was great. I could physically feel my head rising above the water again as the stream of information subsided. My wife told me I was more fun to be around, probably because I wasn't tutting at my phone every 10 seconds.”

Digital Detox offers retreats in different locations, including California and Cambodia.

Abby Stevens is an intern for the DeseretNews.com Faith and Family sections. She is a recent graduate of Brigham Young University–Idaho. Contact her at astevens@deseretdigital.com.