fb-pixelStudents give up digital lives for a weekend - The Boston Globe Skip to main content

Students give up digital lives for a weekend

Bentley sophomores (from left) Ashley Caporoso, Joey Milici, and Jassi Gonzalez discuss how they fared during their digital fast weekend.Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff/Boston Globe

The professor called it a “digital fast,’’ but for his students it looked more like starvation.

Last weekend, Jeffrey Stern endeavored to deprive some digital natives of the defining feature of their generation as part of a media-and-society class he teaches at Bentley University.

His assignment called for the students to foreswear interaction with any digital device for 48 hours. They could not text or call anyone, check e-mail, watch television or movies, take selfies, update Facebook statuses, or type papers. I, a 30-something digital nonnative but devoted user, would join them.

“We talked about it on the first day of class two months ago, and they totally freaked out about it,” Stern, 41, told me the day before his students set off on their lonely march. “They think it’s so funny that I didn’t have the Internet when I was in college. They got their first cellphones when they were in middle school.”

Advertisement



On the last class before the fast, the students shared their anxieties.

“For me, the scariest part is going to Seasons [dining hall],” said Joey Milici. “I don’t sit by myself or eat dinner by myself, and scheduling dinnertime or lunchtime in advance is weird. I never do that. I just text whoever I’m going to eat with.”

Others worried they would not be able to finish their homework or respond to their parents’ texts. But strangely enough, their greatest and most universal concern involved being able to tell the time, as they largely depended on cellphones for that.

“On Saturday, I’m going to Harvard Book Store, and I need to figure out what I’m going to do on the bus” without a phone to look at, said Tricia Reinken. “Plus I don’t have a watch. How am I going to find out when the shuttle is?”

Another student worried about knowing the time while she was in her room, since she didn’t own a clock.

Advertisement



“We don’t need to necessarily break this down,” said Stern, trying to allay fears. “When do we really need to know what time it is?” Someone suggested looking at the clock on dorm-room microwaves, a piece of advice greeted by relief.

My own anxieties were manifold. As a reporter I check Twitter over breakfast. I work from home and use Facebook to replace human interaction. I watch at least two movies, one television show, and a dozen YouTube videos on my laptop every week. I often look at cute animals on my phone’s Reddit app before I fall asleep. In short, I am often snugly tethered to a screen.

And that is the point. Stern’s mission was to make his students aware of how much technology is a part of their lives and affects their relationships. He was inspired by the writings of tech pundit Douglas Rushkoff, whose book “Present Shock” he adopted for the course. In that work, Rushkoff examines how our devices steal our attention away from our actual lives and experiences. “Moments get shattered by technology over and over again,” Stern said. “Too many of us let our devices dictate the terms.”

It seems that much of America frets over a possible unhealthy dependence on devices. Recently, writer Mark Bittman popularized the practice of the “Digital Sabbath,” a weekly respite from television, computers, and phones. In 2011, the Boston-based nonprofit Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood began organizing an initiative known as Screen-Free Week. Last year, the foundation reports, more than 3,000 people signed up to organize the event in their communities.

Advertisement



Now it was our turn. I had to work late on Friday and missed the first hour of a former colleague’s farewell party at a bar downtown. Without the ability to text, call, or e-mail, I couldn’t check whether my friends had moved on to another venue, so I resigned myself to staying home.

Without the pleading eyes of tiny kittens to soothe me, I was forced to look at my actual cats and read the novel I had checked out of the library. To my horror, it was mediocre. To make matters worse, I was banished to the southern half of my apartment while my husband cheerfully watched a horror film on the couch.

Failure came sooner than I expected. On Saturday, I felt compelled to field a work call (a woman’s gotta earn a living, right?) and ended up using my phone’s GPS to get me back to Bentley, where I went to check in with the students.

On campus it occurred to me that while a cold-turkey fast had proved insurmountable for me, it surely must be worse for them. For starters, they are digital natives, with all that implies about their reliance on gadgets.

Couple that with their setting. Bentley, primarily a business school, has a state-of-the art campus. In the entryway to Smith Hall, the building where Stern’s class meets twice a week, an LED ticker flashes stock-market quotes in real time, and a large, flat-screen television broadcasts the news. Business happens in the now.

Advertisement



But the kids weren’t broken and twitching. In fact, they had fared a lot better than I.

“My family freaked out about it way more than I did,” said Title Nongsuwan, whose family lives in Thailand and contacts her twice a day on the weekends. Her mother was particularly upset she could not watch a live stream of her upcoming dance performance, but Nongsuwan stood her ground.

Jassi Gonzalez’s father had planned to pick her up on Friday night to take her home for the weekend but was too daunted by the prospect of not being able to call her to tell her when he’d arrive. Instead, she helped a classmate with statistics homework. “All of our stats homework is on computers,” she said. “I hope that doesn’t count.”

Niki Aldieri faced a bumpy night with her friends. “I realized the conversation revolves around what you’re doing on your phone,” she said. “They were looking at Tinder [a dating site] and showing each other pictures, and I had to look away.”

Ashley Caporoso went grocery shopping with a friend and was terrified of losing her. “I was worried she’d have to page me on the intercom,” she said.

Despite these obstacles, most of Stern’s students largely succeeded. Four managed to avoid all digital interaction; 11 used computers only for homework. Like me, two failed outright.

“I’m very impressed with them,’’ Stern said. “I was expecting a much higher failure rate.”

Advertisement



And I was expecting not to fail. I did learn that, besides for work, I use the Internet as a way to pass the time and, all too often, to connect with the world that exists outside my home office. I found that I had much in common with the digital natives in my midst, and one big thing was a sense of isolation.

“I discovered that while face-to-face communication is important, it can only include the people I run into or plan to meet up with in advance on a particular day,” Aldieri said. “I found myself missing my family and friends back home.”

So did Nongsuwan. “Even though [my family] knew I couldn’t be reached, they still sent me over 40 texts and pictures of their weekend. Although I was disconnected from the world for a weekend, it didn’t mean that everyone else was too.”

Still they were more successful than me. Perhaps its because they had more people to talk to? I probably need to get out more.


Eugenia Williamson is a writer and editor living in Somerville. She can be reached ateugenia.williamson@gmail.com.