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Internet Dizziness

I have been cutting off the internet from my home.

This is a conscious decision, not for financial reasons - because I'm a student, and my student apartment comes with free internet access. I did this because I noticed that I could not get anything done when I had the Net at home. Even when I didn't have any actual work to do, I still did nothing besides turning my brain off completely by surfing through meaningless websites.

Since the day I made the decision to have no internet at home, I have been replacing it with reading. I did all of my work that required the internet at either the campus or at the public library.

With all of the work for the day done at those public places, I then checked and replied to my messages (if I had any) and went home. I understand that I cannot be alerted with new messages when they usually come in the evening times, which is the time when most people finish their work and have free time to send their messages. Those messages will be answered the day after when I have access to the public internet connection again, so I have said to myself. That leaves nothing else that requires the internet in my downtime.

I then usually go home, make and eat my food, then start reading until my bedtime. Sometimes I go for a long walk or cycling session, which is where I let my mind wander around my relationships, studies, goals, and the things I have been reading about.

I have been feeling calmer for the last two months of doing this.

My breathing has become slower and fuller at most times.

My head has become lighter and I have reduced the anxiety for random things around my days.

My thoughts have come back, and I have regained the ability to hold on to a thought at length and dig deep into it.

Maybe this was all a placebo, but at least I had become happier with the time I spent.

I thought that maybe I could find some explanation for the changes in my brain, so I went out and started reading The Shallows by Nicholas G. Carr. In the book, the author went through the history of different major technologies and how each of them directly changes the "wiring" of our brains. The tools we have been using, as the author said, have changed not only the way we do our tasks, but have altered the synapses and neurons in our brains at the anatomical level. The more we use a certain tool, the more we practice the task of using them. With more practice, our brain structure shifts to allow us to do that task more efficiently. These shifts in our brain affect the way we think about other things too, besides the task we were practicing by using the tools. And the tool we have been using the most during these recent years, or in my case, the most of my life, is the Internet.

My thoughts were scattered all over the place, jumping from one matter to another in a span of seconds. This way of thinking was not happening only in my downtime, but disturbingly, it was happening for most of my "productive" time too.

I was fighting hard to focus, and the battles were not getting any easier if I had the Internet on. Now I have come to a point where the constant context switching, the constant navigating, and the scanning nature of using the Web is making me nauseous and is putting me in a slightly panic mode. Maybe I'm actually fine, and all of these symptoms are just because of me giving in too much about the book I have been reading that I've just mentioned above. Or perhaps, as disturbingly as it sounds, I have had these feelings of using the Web since day one, but then I forgot about it as my brain altered and got used to this short-bursting way of thinking, instead of the focus, non-interrupted alternative. For the time being, I will just connect to the Net to get my reading materials, then turn it off right when I get what I need.

I need to practice this behavior because I can't do anything while I'm connected to the distraction itself.