Meanwhile, new emails are flooding your inbox and the Slack app on your laptop is pinging. Breaking news alerts are popping up on your phone screen, which also shows someone has Venmo’d you $22 (you can’t remember what for) and your social media apps are lighted up with notifications — 54 likes on the goat hiking pic so far. That’s prompted messages on your social accounts from people wanting to know where they can hike with goats too.
Then your mom calls — you never returned her voicemail. Is your heart racing yet?
We live out our lives on screens, meeting partners on dating apps, networking on social media, shopping online and doomscrolling to unwind. As a consequence, we’re in a near-constant split-focus state of mind.
“There’s some — not surprising — research that suggests a real decrease in attention span due to overuse of technology,” says clinical psychologist Karen North, a professor of digital social media at USC. What’s more, she adds, the digital world is exacerbating problems people already have: “It can exacerbate an array of emotional problems, including anxiety and depression, in part because it deprives people from the very things that could help with or solve their problems, like human interaction or the richness of the in person world.”
Beyond negative mental effects, being on a device all day is bad for your body too. Chronic screen time can lead to eye strain, headaches, “tech neck,” carpal tunnel syndrome and other body pains. The blue light emitted by screens can disrupt our circadian rhythms and lead to worse sleep, says Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at UC San Francisco.
“And then there’s the consequence that the complete absorption in our devices is removing you from being outside and in nature, being physical,” he says. “It’s about the cost of what’s missing.”
It may be familiar advice, but it’s worth repeating: unplugging — staying off our devices, even keeping them out of reach or sight for periods of time — is vital for our physical and mental health, right up there with diet and exercise.
But it’s often hard to know exactly how to do that in our screen-saturated world. We journeyed around Los Angeles to unearth some of the most immersive and creative ways to unplug. They include unique spa experiences, hands-on crafting and a remote waterfall hike with, yes, goats.
Taking time away from our devices is admittedly a privilege that’s schedule dependent, and leisure activities can be costly. For that reason, the list includes activities with varied time commitments and price points — from free to donation-based to somewhat indulgent.
Whether you’re hoping to sneak away from the grind for an hour or a whole day, there should be something here for almost everyone. Choose one. Leave the phone behind. Breathe. Allow yourself to truly experience the analog world — the sound of crunching gravel beneath your feet on a hike, the view of late-day shadows across a soaring mountain range, the commingling scents of springtime foliage.
That unfamiliar feeling? It might just be peace and calm — if just for a little while.