Dreaming of a Digital Detox

Day 131 of my visual dream journal  probably connects more than I first realised to how I’ve been thinking about the way I communicate online. Lately I’ve been working on deleting all social media apps from my phone. Not quitting the internet, not disappearing from social media, just removing the constant presence in the room. All the social apps live on a junk phone now, one that only connects to Wi-Fi at home. No notifications in my pocket, no endless checking, no unconscious scrolling in the gaps of the day. Attention and time feel incredibly precious, especially if you’re trying to be a thriving artist. It’s hard to make anything meaningful when your focus is constantly being chipped away in tiny pieces.

In what ways do you communicate online?

It’s also hard to ignore the feeling of being watched. Social media isn’t just showing you things, it’s studying you. Tracking what you pause on, what you like, what you ignore, how long your thumb hovers before you move on. It knows what gives you a hit and what doesn’t, and it keeps tuning the machine to keep you hooked on the dopamine slot machine in your pocket. Pull the lever, maybe you get something good, maybe you don’t, but either way you pull it again. Marketers have a big hand in this and they manage to ruin almost everything they touch. Everyone is shouting for your attention, all at once, all the time, trying to hook you, keep you looking, keep you engaging with their ads until they grab you by the throat and stuff you down a marketing funnel and churn you through the marketing meat grinder. It’s exhausting, even when you’re not fully aware it’s happening.

I’ve started to see more clearly how easy it is to let digital tools flip roles on you. If you’re not careful, you’re not using them, they’re using you. Turning you into a kind of battery for a giant attention farm, where your focus, energy and ideas are harvested a little at a time. 

So the way I communicate online now is more intentional. Writing things that aren’t designed to disappear in a feed in five minutes. Sharing work in ways that feel more like putting something down carefully rather than throwing it into the noise and hoping it survives. I still use the internet, I still share my Art and behind the scenes images, but I’m trying to control the tools instead of letting them control me.

What I’ve noticed is that when the constant noise drops away, there’s more space to think creatively, to notice patterns, to actually make the work instead of reacting to everything around it. The ideas feel clearer. The urge to constantly perform fades a bit. It feels less like feeding a machine and more like having an actual conversation, even if that conversation is quieter and reaches fewer people, it’s hopefully more meaningful to those it does reach. 

The ever-present cats in that dream, with their all-seeing eyes, are probably part of that too. A stand-in for being watched, tracked, analysed. Although cats are much nicer, even if they are manipulating us. Either way, this feels like a better way forward for me. Protecting attention. Choosing how and where I communicate. Letting the work, and the dreams, speak without being drowned out.