is deleting your digital presence the same as dying?

better yet, could i leave the internet behind even if i wanted to?

I’m concerned my phone is destroying my brain, fragmenting my perception of the world so much that I often feel like I’m trying to understand life while standing in the middle of a house of mirrors. The impact of constantly being plugged in, of living life one foot through the digital door, was only slightly noticeable before. However, it’s getting worse, and I know it’s not just me. Despite acknowledging the detrimental effects it’s having on me—on my social life, my cognitive functions, my motivation—I’m unable to give it up. At least not completely.

Over the last few months, I’ve continued to ask myself why: why am I so against throwing my phone in a river and walking away? My life feels governed by incessant digital humming, yet I worry the absence of it would haunt me deeper than its presence. I exist here; if you listen carefully, I’m sure you could hear my voice echoing off each delicate string that makes up the spiderweb of the digital world. At times, I convince myself my existence is grander online than offline. Usually, the moment I step outside, I shake the notion away, confident my real Self shines brighter than my pixelated form.

Still, there’s a tiny voice in the back of my mind that doesn’t fully accept that as fact.

Part of me enjoys having the ability to edit my life, to pinch and rotate and squeeze until the photo I’m eager to upload to Instagram is perfect. Editing in real life is much messier. It requires uncomfortable conversations, darting eyes, and courage that is seldom easy to muster. Isn’t that why our generation prefers to break up over text, ghost someone after a first date, or send an email instead of cold calling? We’re the first generation that’s been gifted the capability of hiding behind a screen. Instead of stumbling over our words after being flirted with at the bar, we can type and delete and type and send a flawlessly crafted follow-up text, bypassing embarrassment. We can swipe swipe swipe, in pursuit of love, all while avoiding vulnerability.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the unique ability to disassociate anytime, anywhere. As a child, I would create worlds for myself to live within, away from the complexities of reality. Bad habits die slowly, and rather than live in my imagination, I’ve begun using the internet as a means of escapism; a world removed from the physical, a refuge from the Self. Though that’s not entirely true. A version of me exists here; an extension of myself entombed within a pixelated avatar I’ve curated to perfection, my online personhood devoid of any physical sensations, curated to impress, intrigue, interest.

If you refrain from thinking too much about it, it’s difficult not to consider this—the internet—paradise. And yet, lately my time online has begun to feel lacklustre. I find myself scrolling out of habit rather than pleasure, endlessly, even when I don’t want to. It’s become difficult to stop, despite the majority of the content being fed to me being mush, slop, devoid of meaning, stripped of any intrinsic value.

As

J. P. Hill

observed earlier this year, “Social media platforms originally fostered some degree of connection between people, now every social media company primarily functions as a content distrubtion platform…we’re meant to passively absor monetizable content, and ideally buy something…most of us are meant to sit, scroll, and watch.”

As a child, I flocked to the internet to satisfy my need and desire for human connection, a habit I’ve refused to grow out of despite having a life full of love, support, and kinship. There’s something magical about the internet, or there was, before it became a machine welding profit rather than meaning.

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The other day, I sat in the park alone, the sun burning through the thin fabric draped across my shoulders. My phone rested in my pocket, tucked between the denim flaps like a coffin, weighing down my jeans (which were two sizes too big) just enough that the string of my thong, which had been digging into my hips all day, made its summer debut. Despite the serenity of the scene in front of me, I found myself continuously reaching for it, desperate to escape reality, to slip off the skin of my physical self in exchange for my pixelated self; to remove myself from the heaviness of the world and relax into the digital ether.

I had to stop myself from reaching for it more than once. Eventually, I removed the rectangular box from my pocket and shoved it as far into my purse as I could, hoping to forget about it entirely.

What was I searching for on my overpriced (and often malfunctioning) liquid-crystal display that I couldn’t find right in front of me? The park was full of people, the sun was shining; I was alive and young and beautiful on a warm spring day, and yet I yearned for more. When did I become so greedy?

Despite sitting amongst many others, it was hard to ignore the loneliness growing in the pit of my stomach, typically satisfied by a quick trip to cyberspace.

That night, I fell asleep without charging my phone. When my alarm went off at 7 AM, I peered over at the screen, squinting through sleepy eyes, looking for the tiny battery symbol. 5%. A rush of gratitude spread through my body, having forgotten about the whole alarm situation; I was thankful it hadn’t died in the middle of the night and made a mental note to start using my analog alarm clock again.

There was enough battery left to check the transit app and reply to the texts my friends had sent while I was asleep; too little battery to do much else until I got to the office to charge it. When I boarded the streetcar I checked again: 2%. Unable to escape into the hum of the digital world, I looked around, noticing how many necks were angled downwards, how many thumbs scrolled, scrolled, paused, scrolled. My curiousity got the best of me—being unplugged for even the briefest of moments makes you feel like an outsider, and it doesn’t help that I’m naturally a nosy person. Plus, I needed a quick dopamine hit to keep my eyes open. Thankfully, the woman beside me was scrolling on TikTok, seemingly unaware of my peering eyes, unaware of anyone, or anything, beside her FYP, which was full of puppies and young girls sharing their morning makeup routines.

At the next stop, I pulled my book from my bag: 10:04 by Ben Lerner, a recommendation from my boyfriend, whose ability to disengage with the internet I envy. As I struggled to remember what page I had last read, I made brief eye contact with the young girl sitting across from me and watched as she pulled out an Elizabeth Gillbert novel. We shared a nod, followed by a sheepish grin, as if we were in on a joke no one else on the tram would ever know.

In a way, we were. The rest of our early morning commuters remained too engrossed with their phones to catch our sly encounter. I’m not embarrassed to admit it was difficult to shove down the sudden superiority complex I felt. It quickly faded when I reminded myself of all the time I’ve wasted in the same way, head buried in my phone. However, for a brief moment, I was euphoric.

I bottled the feeling up, saving the sensation for a rainy day when I knew I would need it more.

For the rest of my morning commute, I pretended not to notice the anxiety bubbling inside me when my thoughts drifted away from the words on the page to my dying phone, resting at the bottom of my bag.

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So much of my life, so much of myself—my art, my work—relies on my constant connection to the digital world. To completely remove myself from it seems impossible, futile. My FOMO would perhaps kill me before my lack of income did. Is it even possible to remove myself from the algorithm, or is my being so deeply intertwined in it that deleting my online self would be like killing a part of me?

Would logging off, indefinitely, be digging my own grave?

Yes, I think detaching myself from the digital world would feel like dying. Part of me cringes in embarrassment at that statement, the other part recognizes that many feel the same.

Would I be labelled an outcast? Would I be betraying those who only have access to me online? Would I feel lonely? The internet has become my friend; it comes with me wherever I go, always right in my pocket. Parting with it may cause more harm than good. But maybe that’s just an excuse I tell myself, an addict’s reasoning.

As I explore my connection to the internet, to the hold it has over me, I’m beginning to see that all of us, whether we like it or not, are beginning to merge so significantly with technology that we’re becoming part human, part machine. It would be ignorant to pretend that’s not what’s happening. For many—if not most—of us, the internet and modern technology are how we measure our existence. If you don’t exist online, are you even real?

Without a digital presence to refer to, you will surely be forgotten. Could you live with that? Could I? I’m not sure.

The future remains unclear. All that’s certain is this: life, real life, will drive you crazy. It will get messy and ugly and sentimental, and half the time you’ll feel like you're drowning in the depths of it, but I think it’s worth looking up from your phone to experience.

I’m certain it’s worth existing in, despite its harshness. I’m still figuring out how to dance the fine line of existing both here and there. Digital consumption isn’t the route toward absolute self-actualisation, but god is it alluring.

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