Phone, iPad, MacBook, iMac – repeat! As travel bloggers technology, access to the internet and the online community are vital. However, sometimes it is nice/important to step away and have a digital detox. Since the beginning of the year we have made a concerted effort not to spend too much time on social media and when we recently took our ‘babymoon’ in Dubai, we decided to forgo social media altogether (or at least try).
As this was a holiday there was no pressure/ expectations/ contract in place for us to post across our social media channels, take photographs or write blog posts. Therefore, we could simply sit back relax and drink as many cocktails as we liked. This is because we did not have to worry about fulfilling deliverables or pleasing the tourist board/company we were working for. We only had ourselves to please. And please ourselves we did.
Normally we travel everywhere with our laptops. This is just in case some urgent work pops into the inbox. Or we have a free 10 minutes to write a blog post. However, not this time. It stayed firmly at home. Our phones were only used for three reasons:
- For us to text home to say we had arrived safely
- In order to receive information from our best friends to say that their new baby had arrived. (He did and he’s an absolute beaut!)
- To listen to music
Here are the benefits we found from our week-long digital detox. Together with reasons why we will endeavour to step away from the technology whenever we travel for pleasure in the future.
Talk To Each Other More
As a couple who travel together it’s important we get on. And as a married couple who have been together for 13 years – we can confirm that we do (honestly!). However, it wasn’t until we put the phones, cameras and laptops down that we realised how much more we talk to each other without technology distracting us. We strolled and talked, we sat and enjoyed a glass (or 6) of wine and talked, we ate dinner and talked. It was wonderful. There was no snapping our surroundings for the ‘gram or tweeting about where we were and/or what we were doing. Our sole focus was on each other. We reminisced, we laughed, we made plans – we just enjoyed being where we were and being with each other.
Less Bickering
‘Put that bloody phone down’ was not uttered once! We never argue but we can bicker (come on what couple doesn’t?) and quite often it’s about our over use of technology. So by leaving our phones in our pocket/bag/hotel room, the issue wasn’t there. Also, if we’re working on a campaign we can bicker about getting the ‘perfect’ shot, how things should be staged or from what angle the photo should be taken. Not this time. This time we took the grand total of 12 snaps (5 of them were for a product review). In fact, there were days we didn’t take the camera (we only took one to start with) out of its case. Even though we don’t have pictures, we have memories and they’re more than good enough.
See More
Often our surroundings are seen through the viewfinder of our cameras. Quite often we’ll spend a lot of time in one spot taking photographs until we get the ‘right’ one. Therefore taking up precious time that could be spent exploring somewhere different. We found that by not spending ages trying to get the perfect shot we could visit somewhere, see it, speak about it and then move on. On our recent trip to Dubai, we saw loads of things that we may never have seen if we were Tweeting, Insta-storying, Facebooking etc our trip. This is because we would’ve been focusing on our screens and not on our surroundings. Therefore, we were more in the moment and even visited places we didn’t know existed.
Can Relax
Not having to, or not feeling that we had to update statues, scroll threw feeds for opportunities, check and reply to emails made us both feel more relaxed. We were away for a week, seriously, what cannot wait for a week? We live in a world where people expect other people to be available all of the time. They also expect a response to things instantly. That puts a lot of pressure on everyone, including us. We hate not replying to Tweets, messages or emails straight away. But now after our week-long digital detox, we’re definitely going to let things slide (a bit) more often. The time we would normally spend scrolling we used to sunbathe, take a dip in the pool, sip cocktails and just to generally chill out instead.
Sleep Better
By not looking at a screen all day, every day, especially close to bedtime, helped us sleep a lot better. This was a great benefit for us as we were both suffering a bit with jet lag. Also by not worrying where we were visiting/had to visit the next day or having to plan out photographs or what angle we wanted our blog post to take meant that our heads were clearer. Again this helped us sleep a lot easier. Vicky suffers from night terrors (yes those things that toddlers have) which are often triggered by being in unfamiliar surroundings and stress. Both of which are heightened when travelling. Therefore anything that helps her sleep soundly and not scream blue murder at the top her lungs in the middle of the night gets a massive thumbs up from us.
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