Good afternoon everyone!

I am working on a livability index for Littleton. It's a side project for me, but I thought some of you could have fun with it and maybe provide feedback. Essentially it creates a score for how well positioned your home/apt is compared to 6 metrics of closeness: coffee shops, grocery store, restaurants, nature access, transit, and healthcare.

I am still adjusting a lot of things in the background (open maps data is unreliable, so it's missing a lot of small places), so scores may change. The idea is that if you are someone thinking about moving to Littleton, you can check how close the house you are trying to buy/rent is to point of interests.

The goal is to give you an idea of how much you can do on a short 5-10 min walk/bike ride.

Here is the link: https://jbriones95.github.io/Livable-Index/

A reminder that you can see this post with all the images and links in the Moving Offline newsletter: https://open.substack.com/pub/josebriones/p/change-your-environment-change-your?r=1jksws&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Many people believe that avoiding distraction requires complex systems or the latest digital minimalism products. Those people would be 20% right, and 80% wrong. Dumbphones, app blockers, and digital detoxes are helpful, but research indicates that the key to being successful in your digital disengagement is found in your environment.

To illustrate, let’s take an example from the health world. Little Rock, AR tops the rankings of the “Fattest Cities in the U.S.” Some think it’s because Arkansas is the McDonald’s capital of the world with more fast food restaurants per capita than most cities its size. The reality of the problem is more about what they don’t have than what they have plenty of. While fast food is an issue, the main reason why Little Rock and many other cities in North America deal with obesity is the lack of sidewalks. In this city, only 14% of residents have access to a connected sidewalk network. This, in turn, forces people to consider driving as the only practical way to get around. Therefore, sedentary behavior + fast food available everywhere = high chances of being overweight.

When applying this thinking to the digital world, let’s discuss the example of Mindy, who sent me an email with her info a few weeks ago. Mindy is a remote worker in the marketing space and spends about 10 hours total in front of her devices. She wanted to find ways to reduce her digital overload. I asked her to give me a few insights into her daily life and this is a sketch of her every day:

• Mindy wakes up about 7:30 am each day, turns off her phone alarm, and quickly does an email, social media, and messages check-in for about 30 minutes while brushing her teeth and preparing the coffee.
• At around 8, she takes care of physical necessities (bathing, breakfast, and a quick walk with the dog).
• From 9-12, Mindy focuses on work tasks and sits around Zoom meetings, gets another round of coffee, and watches a video or two while working on her marketing pitches. She also replies to messages as they come.
• At around 12, she takes a little break and sits down to decompress, eat some lunch, and watch reels that her friends sent her on WhatsApp. She sometimes takes a walk with the dog, but most days she is replying to text messages and catching up with friends before heading back to her home office.
• Around 1 until 4, Mindy goes back to work, answers more emails, has a few more meetings, and then she closes the laptop for work. From there on, she goes to the gym for about 30 minutes, listens to a podcast or Spotify, walks the dog for a second time, and then takes a shower to initiate her evening routine.
• Evenings are a little more varied for her. She sometimes goes hang out with friends or watches a play at the local theater. Most days, however, she sits down to watch a show and some reels on her phone until it’s time to go to sleep. Around 10-11, she finally goes to sleep and repeats the cycle the next day.

A lot of people would say, “Mindy, go get yourself an app blocker, create a better schedule, and stick to it. Build your willpower and eventually you’ll reduce your screentime.” Again, those are directionally accurate answers. However, most of those people are not dealing with the main issue, Mindy’s environment. Her life is all interconnected. Work, life, friends, and family, they are all mediated through the surface of technology. When that occurs, it is not surprising that screentime is high. Moreover, she has the biggest blessing and curse combo of the 2020’s, remote work.

Remote work, with all its benefits, is causing longer workweeks, creating more irritable people, and reducing physical activity. Am I suggesting that all work from home is evil and should be banned? No. There are excellent resources and data points that a more flexible location and schedule to work benefits most people. Having said that, remote workers like Mindy must watch out and proactively counteract the dangers of the home office. Thus, here is my advice to you and her for the environment question we consider today.

Confine Smart Tech to the Home Office

One salient observation from Mindy’s case is the pervasive presence of devices throughout her daily routine. She wakes up, the phone is there. While eating breakfast or sitting on the couch, smart tech surrounds her. If our goal is to create a conducive environment for mental rest, all smart technology should be confined to a specific room.

Creating a physical boundary for technology usage is not a gimmick, research shows that it improves your mood, sleep, and mental acuity over time. It also serves as an effective measure to mitigate excessive screen time. If your phone, laptop, and other tech is in one area of the home, whenever you are not there, you are likely to not get distracted.

Switch Your Environment Every 2 Days

The next step for remote workers like Mindy is to reset their environments every other day. Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism, has an excellent article detailing why. The gist of it is that the “home is filled with the familiar, and the familiar snares our attention, destabilizing the subtle neuronal dance required to think clearly.” Mindy does not only suffer from constant tech activation all throughout her house, but also from the reality that her every day environment is always competing against work.

To avoid this enmeshing of work and home, the easiest thing to do is to take a stroll for the day and work out of a coffee shop, library, or other building that is not her home office. The new stimuli allows her brain to not be dragged down by the dishes, the laundry, or the dirty corner that hasn’t been vacuumed in a while.

Create Space for Silence

My final recommendation for Mindy and all of you reading is to dedicate time during your day for nothingness. Like many people in the modern world, Mindy is overstimulated and carries a large load in her brain. She replies to text messages, works on her tasks, fires responses via emails, and probably has many other things accumulating in her mind. As a result, the modern brain suffers from a lack of space to process and think clearly.

Time alone without any input helps our brains reset and create neural pathways toward solutions and creativity. 15 minute walks around the block, a candle lit in the evening before going to sleep, a bath where all you hear is the water, all small gestures that help your brain experience pause from the barrage of information we subject it to nowadays. I encourage you to do this at least once per day, but if your life is too busy and you cannot make the time for it, prioritize the weekend for silence as a time to breathe again.

Conclusion

It is simple dear reader. Your environment plays a larger factor than you think. When you tidy it up, remove distractions, and create silence, the benefits compound. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a shiny new gadget will be the reason you overcome the battle against distraction. They are helpful, but the environment is way more powerful.

From the Moving Offline Newsletter: https://josebriones.substack.com/p/my-job-wants-me-online-i-want-my

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received emails and comments from people who say their jobs make it nearly impossible to step away from their smartphones. 2FA apps, Slack, and email are among the most frequent culprits listed. Most of these services are treated by the business sector as must-haves with no real alternatives to be considered. Many of these workers told me they want to disconnect and reclaim parts of their lives. Still, they worry that switching to a dumbphone could make them seem obsolete at work or even cost them their jobs.

As someone with a 9-to-5, I understand the fear of having to look for another job, especially during the current economic downturn in many parts of the world. At the same time, I know firsthand that stepping back from technology and an always-on mindset can benefit both personal and professional life. Sharper focus during the day, quieter dinners, or better sleep are small examples of what happens when we learn to say no to work’s technology demands. Thus, on today’s newsletter, I want to offer a few ideas that can help you embrace digital minimalism at the workplace.

The Key To Freedom: Trust

The most important thing to understand about a business under a capitalist structure is that it uses trust as a currency. The more trust you are able to accumulate, the easier it will be for your boss to consider low tech engagement as an option. This invisible coin is acquired by delivering your tasks when you said you would, providing value to your employer, and cultivating personal relationships at the office. Yes, we would all love for the right to disconnect to be the norm in American society as it is in many European countries or Australia. However, the oligarchical class does not favor structures that protect the working person. Thus, we need to innovate under our own pretenses.

Once you have built that trust, you can begin asking for more flexibility in how you engage with work technology. A friend of mine is an IT director at a space research company where one employee uses a flip phone. Over dinner, he told me this person refused to get a smartphone, but his strong job performance made it worth exploring other options. I suggested giving him a YubiKey or an iPad during work hours so he could authenticate for his tasks without relying on a phone. After looking into it, my friend found that a simple change would allow that setup to become the default for this employee.

The only reason the company was willing to find a special solution instead of demanding smartphone compliance was because the employee had built years of trust and credibility within the company. I know how messed up that sounds, but without the currency of trust, you won’t get far. If you don’t believe me, ask the owner of the candy stand I used to work for when I was in college. My car broke down and I couldn’t cover my shift one Friday afternoon. I informed my manager, but she never relayed the info to the owner because she was sick that weekend as well.

The owner texted me to ask whether I was still coming in. This was my second interaction with him since I got hired. Just a few minutes later, I told him my car had broken down and sent photos from the shop. Since I lived 45 minutes away and had no access to public transportation, I explained that I couldn’t make the shift. He said he didn’t believe me, called me lazy, and told me that if I didn’t show up, I was fired. Was he a bad owner? Absolutely. But was a part of the equation that he didn’t trust me? Also yes. I am certain that if my manager had relayed the info to him or I had built a personal relationship, I would have avoided getting let go, but honestly I am glad that this happened because it was a real life lesson on what happens when communication channels break down and trust is nowhere to be found. Plus, I avoided working for a bad boss long term and got a job the following week at the University that was walking distance from my apartment.

The Dual Set-Up: Smart Week, Dumb Weekend

Having explored trust as the medium to ask for digital breaks, I understand that some roles simply require pronounced digital engagement. Maybe you are a trader, a software engineer, or a retail worker who needs an app for scheduling. In those cases, a full time dumbphone setup does not make sense. It creates too much friction and leads to mismatches at the office. For people in that situation, the best approach is not purity, but rhythm. A dual setup for your days on versus your days off.

The core idea is that you set up a defined window of time where disconnection is the default and you leave the smartphone behind. A weekend, an evening, or a short vacation that lets you focus on offline hobbies, family dinners, and creative projects. This oasis for your brain is essential to avoid presenteeism, the phenomenon where an employee keeps working even when they are not supposed to or when they are not at their most effective. They may be physically present, but they are not getting as much done because they are struggling to focus.

In the late capitalist stage, many people prioritize being present or available as the primary metric to judge themselves by. However, this mindset leads to burnout and poor work performance. A 2018 YouGov poll found that 60 percent of workers check their email during vacation, often because they feel pressure to stay available. This behavior is often a coping mechanism for the fear that their absence will cause problems at work. The counterfactual is that coworkers and managers figure out solutions when someone is not available. Even people taking the poll admitted that their boss probably does not care if they disconnect for a few days. Only 5% replied that their boss definitely wants them to stay connected. These findings suggest that the fear of catastrophe is psychological, not operational.

As you internalize this reality, the dual setup becomes easier to adopt. During the workweek you use your smartphone fully because your job requires it. You respond to messages, check schedules, and handle the digital load. Once your defined window of disconnection arrives (weekly or daily), you switch to your simpler device and let that become the default. The key at this point is consistency. You tell the people who need to know that you are reachable by call or text, but not through apps or email. You place the smartphone in a drawer or leave it at home, and you let the offline life shape the pace of your weekend or evening. Over time your brain learns the rhythm and recovers. You work when it is time to work, and you rest when it is time to rest. The dual setup becomes a boundary that protects your attention without asking you to abandon the tools your job depends on.

You Got the Green Light, Now What

This is the part that is both funny and sad. Many people who try digital detox methods or convince their employers to accept these new engagement rules, eventually don’t know what to do with their free time. The boredom hits them harder than expected, and they drift back to digital stimulation as their default mode of engagement. It feels as if our generation has been trained to seek constant stimulation and to find anything else boring. Unfortunately for us, some new research says that’s exactly what’s happened. Studies show that boredom intolerance is one of the strongest predictors of heavy smartphone use, and that people now reach for digital sources almost automatically when faced with even a few seconds of stillness.

It is our sad reality, but that’s why offline exists. Offline is here to retrain us and help us reconnect with nature, with others, and with ourselves. Whether you adopt a dual setup, convince your boss to let you use a dumbphone, or simply strip your smartphone down to the essentials, the point is the same. We need offline. If we want our lives back, we have to prioritize offline activities and shared experiences. Decades ago, the labor movement demanded 8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, and 8 hours for what we will. Our always‑on culture has quietly flipped that equation into 4 hours for sleep and 20 for what they will.

I know this may breed resentment or despair, but I want to remind you that you do not need to fix everything at once. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Start today, embrace offline, and find small ways to disconnect from work. Test the waters, push a little, and you may discover that your boss is just as tired of being connected as you are.

This post is from the Moving Offline newsletter. There are some affiliate links in the post, just FYI: https://josebriones.substack.com/p/how-to-resist-technology-without

Do you know the number one reason people fail at adopting Digital Minimalism? They try doing too much. I read these failed attempts every day: emails, comments, posts, and threads from people who feel defeated because technology has taken over modern life and owning simple tech feels impossible.

Some explain that their work requires them to stay plugged in through Slack or email. Others bemoan the QR code only menu at the neighborhood restaurant or the new sign at the store announcing they no longer accept cash. A growing number share that their transit system requires an app for schedules or even to board the bus. And finally, the final boss within the community, many cite the dread of telling friends they no longer use WhatsApp, iMessage, or RCS.

Without much surprise, this environment breeds stress and confusion for anyone seeking a simple life. Moreover, the pressure only intensifies with the fetishization of digital minimalism as a kind of seventh circle enlightenment. In other words, if you do not own a Light Phone 3, an E-ink monitor to reduce blue light, an analog watch, plus an abundance of free time to record your offline hobbies and post them on socials, are you really achieving the level of disconnected living that Instagram insists you should aspire to?

This pattern, unfortunately, is not new. The pit of perfection and performance shows up in every niche community. It shows itself in the productivity world, in vegetarian and vegan circles, and in the fitness community where “purity” is idolized, and anything less is deemed as failure. This is exactly why I want to share five principles that help you actually resist technology instead of simply wishing your busy life would transform into a simple one.

Principle 1: One Area Per Quarter

Most people believe that once their phone goes away, everything gets solved. And it does, for about one weekend. Then, on Monday, life returns with a reality check and brings you back to square one. You remember that your child’s school only communicates through an app, that you need a way to join a Zoom meeting while traveling abroad, or that the concert you booked months in advance requires a QR ticket you can no longer access on a flip phone. Many at this point go back to the smartphone “temporarily,” but the convenience pulls them in again.

This is what happens when you switch on impulse and all at once, without considering the larger implications of the change. I had this experience during the pandemic. I moved to the Light Phone 2, the pandemic hit a few months later, and I found myself back on a Pixel because I was afraid I would miss work meetings. It took four weeks of deep planning and research to understand how to operate in this new world without a smartphone and still keep my job. Only then did the switch become sustainable for me and I went back to the Light Phone full time.

Since then, I have learned to focus on changing one area at a time, and I advise you to do the same. Pick one: work, family communication, entertainment and travel, school, etc. Then, give yourself 3 months to experiment. A quarterly focus gives you enough space to understand the dependencies, find alternatives, and build habits that can survive everything the new tech-driven world will throw at you.

Instead of ripping out every digital convenience at once, you choose a single domain, redesign it methodically, and let the adjustment settle. I also recommend keeping a paper notebook for this process. Write down the apps you rely on, the workarounds that felt manageable, and the ones that did not. Over time, these notes become a map of your digital habits and a reference point for where you used to be and where you are going.

Principle 2: Redefine what “normal” means

It is not only your inner voice that resists the change. Society has shifted to a new model of interaction, and any challenge to the status quo is met with pressure. Your family wonders why you have not replied to their WhatsApp message. Your boss grows impatient even though you clearly said you would reply by the end of the day. People get irritated that you are no longer participating in the system. Their expectations are not malicious. They are simply following the norms they have been sold by tech giants.

The new normal for our society is instant. AI can generate a design or a video idea in seconds. Doordash gives you the location of your driver, so you don’t have any gap in your mind to wonder or wait. Slowly, we are all trained to assume that everything should move at that speed. If a tool can respond immediately, if your dinner can be tracked at every stop, why can’t everyone know everything all at once? This mindset, a terrible one at that, creates constant pressure to be available, reachable, and responsive 24/7. Therefore, when you step outside that expectation, even for good reasons, it feels like you are breaking an unwritten rule.

Thus, what do you do? You redefine normal. Take some time out of your day to establish a set of rules that are normal for you. Put them on your fridge. Do not prioritize society’s expectations, but reflect and write down what is acceptable to your new lifestyle. For example, you might decide that 24 hours is a reasonable window for group chat replies. You might tell your boss that after 5 p.m., you are offline unless someone is dying or the project will fail.

When you set a new standard for yourself, you stop trying to keep up with a culture that treats urgency as a default. Once you define your own expectations, you give others a chance to adjust to them. And over time, they do.

Principle 3: Reinhabiting the physical world

This is probably the most important principle. The internet has convinced us that it has all the answers. And our brains, developed over the years to value information, love to drink from its torrential stream. Videos, articles, opinions, shorts, reels, and reactions, our nervous system eats them up. Until it doesn’t and it feels fatigued. Research shows that the brain needs breaks and processing time. The current status quo is designed to eliminate both.

Blaise Pascal already observed this in the 17th century when he wrote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” The tragedy for us is that the noise now follows us everywhere. Information is no longer confined to a desktop at home or the evening news at five. It floods our attention at the bus stop, on our work computer, and soon, if companies have their way to redraft this plan from 2016, it will affect our national parks.

As a result of this onslaught on our attention, we must be deliberate in planning to reinhabit the physical world. Many overthink it with elaborate plans, but it should be simple. One day per week, choose to go for a walk without your phone. One weekend per month, head to a friend’s backyard to play board games or cook on the grill. And once a year, take a long trip (7-10 days) to a quiet cabin to reset your dopamine and explore the woods. In between, you can add hobbies like sewing, going to the local museum, building LEGO, woodworking, gardening, or meditating. Once you incorporate more of these physical‑world activities, you realize something obvious: screen time wasn’t the problem, but a symptom of not regularly scheduling human connection and offline life.

Principle 4: Become a late adopter

The magic of these principles is that they build on each other. Once you redefine what normal means, slow down your new lifestyle changes to one area per quarter, and spend more time offline, there is a natural habit switch in technology adoption. However, this doesn’t mean that the pull of innovation will cease to have its effect altogether. Tech companies are experts at manufacturing urgency. They will try to convince you that you must have the latest and greatest. That’s where principle 4 comes to the fore. As a bonus, this principle also saves you money.

Becoming a late adopter is counterintuitive to the human brain. We want more, better, faster, greater. Our instincts reward novelty, and our culture worships it. Late adopters, on the other hand, are treated as slow, out of touch, cantankerous, even stubborn. They are seen as vestiges of a past that is soon to disappear. Yet here’s the irony: the biggest tech innovators, the very people building the future, imposed strict late‑adoption rules on their own children. The Silicon Valley giants understand that rapid change is not compatible with the way our brains develop. As a result, we should take a page out of their playbook and first observe, analyze, and incorporate new technologies only when they make sense to the life that you are trying to build.

The glue of this principle is that it invites you to be content with what you already have and to accept new technology only when the exchange of payment for value is outsized. When you adopt slowly, you avoid buying products that become obsolete the moment a company gets sold, pivots to a subscription, or collapses under unsustainable hype. You stop paying for experiments disguised as innovation (like I did with the Rabbit R11) and start choosing tools that have proven their worth in the real world. You get to protect your attention and wallet by letting time, not marketing, determine what deserves a place at home.

Principle 5: Build a community of the willing

And finally, we arrive at principle 5 for sustainable tech resistance: shifting to low tech together. Movements need people, and as much as I’d like to say that you can do this alone, you cannot. The gravitational pull of the digital world is too strong, and the social pressure to stay plugged in is relentless. Therefore, you find allies in the battle.

Start by having conversations with your inner circle: family members, close friends, maybe one coworker or two. They don’t need to align 100% on the same path as you, but they may agree on shifting email culture, dinners without phones, being ok with slower replies to messages, or keeping tech out of family trips. Any digital shift you create as a community will make moving offline smooth and sustainable. It builds an environment where your choices are supported and you’re less likely to slide back to the digital abyss. And even if you do, you’ll have a surrounding team to pull you back out of the pit.

Hannah Arendt reminds us of this when she wrote: “Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together.” My hope for your digital minimalism path is that you get to create a beautiful melody, a concert where humans are the artists, not the instruments played by systems designed to extract from us.

Conclusion

I hope today’s newsletter encourages you to take action. These five principles are meant to help you build a calmer and more intentional relationship with technology. You do not need dramatic gestures or a perfect system. You only need a steady framework that slows the pace and helps you process the world. In the end the goal is not less technology, it’s more life.

Most of these were taken with V2, some V1, and of course B&W. Love changing the filters with the push of a button. It is super versatile.

Link: https://www.campsnapphoto.com/products/camp-snap-2

This post is from the Moving Offline newsletter, a reader supported newsletter. It contains some links to research, articles, and affiliate marketing to support the writing.

After reading Body Electric by Manoush Zomorodi, I am convinced of something I instinctively knew but never had neatly organized research for: screens are polluting our lives. I use the word “pollute” intentionally. Like the smog that settles over the skyscrapers of rapidly growing cities, this issue is mostly avoidable. Yet, everywhere we go, a screen is waiting for us. At work, there’s the laptop. At home, we have our phones. Ordering food means tapping through a glowing menu. Even at the salon or barbershop, a TV plays a sports game or a scenic view on repeat. This ambient screen pollution is more concerning than our individual habits for two reasons. First, it reinforces the notion that we can only experience the world through a technological filter. Second, it harms the way our bodies are meant to move, sense, and exist in the physical world.

This issue of “public sphere screen expansion” should concern us far more than the screen time numbers on our kids’ tablets. It is the signal that points to a world where opting out of electro-smog is not a viable choice.

How We Got Here

Cost and convenience. Those are the key words that brought screens into every part of our lives. Each industry adopted them for its own reasons. Bars used them to provide entertainment. Car manufacturers relied on them to make driving “easier.” Book publishers embraced them to open new revenue streams, and doctor’s offices installed them to distract patients from the stress of waiting. Over time, screens created a world where we could escape the harsh realities around us without needing to interact with anyone. They offered a private refuge in public spaces, a way to retreat into ourselves even when surrounded by others.

But the deeper issue is that we accepted this change without much pushback. We allowed screens to live in our pockets, in the backs of restaurants, and at grocery store checkouts. We didn’t protest when they replaced human workers or influenced our decisions through constant advertising. If anything, many people welcomed this shift. By letting screens handle tasks, we could go through our days without needing to interact, socialize, or confront the tumult of the world. The convenience has been appealing, and the cost to our shared social environment easier to overlook.

As a result, we are now reckoning with the effects. Our brains are overloaded with information, and our bodies are paying for a life spent sitting and staring. The book from Zomorodi describes how constant screen use traps us in what researchers call “low-grade immobility,” a state where we are technically awake but physiologically still.

You can see the effects everywhere. Our kids struggle to handle the discomfort of a plane ride without an iPad because their bodies are conditioned to expect constant stimulation. Adults find it difficult to locate a book in the library using the classification codes because our spatial memory weakens when we rely on screens for navigation. Even this newsletter, this very newsletter encouraging you to move offline is delivered through a screen and typed by someone looking at one.1 Screens, unfortunately, have become the easiest option and the unquestioned norm, and our bodies have adapted in ways that make it harder to live without them.

What To Do Then?

It is ironic to me that the solution to the smog of the city is the same solution to our screen saturated lives: time spent in nature. Many people try to restrict their way into digital minimalism. And while it works for a moment, it is rarely sustainable. The greatest predictor of an offline life is not the app blockers systems or the fancy dumbphones, but time dedicated to experiencing the world without the mediation of glowing rectangles.

Physical movement and planning ahead are far more effective cures for the electro smog surrounding us 24/7 than any trick or tool. Even as an advocate of dumbphones, I know firsthand that people often buy these basic devices and, instead of going out to live life and enjoy the free time they just reclaimed from the internet, they simply shift their habits to overstimulation in front of laptops or TVs.

And how could they not? The internet has taught us that it is filled with interesting things our brains want. It is easier to feel satisfied by the web’s constant novelty than to sit with the silence of a boring afternoon at the park or a slow day at the office. Screens offer instant stimulation whereas the physical world asks for patience. One is engineered to keep us hooked. The other requires us to relearn how to be present.

Therefore, choosing to step outside of the confines of screens is hard. Not impossible, but a continuous choice. It requires that we take a break from work and go for a walk. It demands we choose paper money instead of the credit card. It asks us to get lost in the city over the certainty that Google Maps delivers. And while here in this newsletter I am not asking you to forego all screens, I want to encourage you to leave them aside more often and advocate for public spaces to turn them off.

Rebalancing Screens

What we need with the topic of screens in public view is a rebalancing act. Similar to how society eventually regulated smoking in public, I am convinced that screens deserve their own boundaries. The default in shared spaces should be that screens are off or absent. Some restaurants and bars are catching on this already. Moreover, in places where screens are needed, they should be free of advertisements and distractions. Human spaces should prioritize human connection, not digital noise.

I know I am asking for a lot from a society that is more interested in collecting and controlling our data than giving us the decency of paying for a tank of gas without being prompted to use Klarna. Yet I know this is possible.

We already do it at The Masters, where phones are banned and spectators willingly comply. One town in France and another in Japan are experimenting with screen‑free zones at a larger scale. These examples prove that a different relationship with public technology is not only imaginable but achievable.

The road to a screenless experience is almost vanishing, but I know many of you long for places where humans belong outside the digital void. So do not just dream of that space. Make it happen. Talk to your local business about turning off the TV. Ask your boss for a screen free work retreat. Plan a weekend at a cabin without the smartphone. Create a Friday dinner tradition with friends where the table stays clear of devices. You and I can do this. The world will not rebalance itself. It needs people willing to live their own lives instead of watching someone else’s through Instagram.