My Experience and Feelings After Five Days Without the Internet

This is an era of information explosion.

We are often bombarded by a mix of good and bad information. Just when we are reading a high-quality article, an eye-catching advertisement can easily divert our attention, leading us down a rabbit hole; the constantly updated trending topics stimulate our dopamine, leaving us with nothing once the hype fades; scrolling through useful and useless posts on social media, we constantly peek into others' privacy while forgetting our own lives...

Before this, I had been using some self-discipline methods, such as using a habit-forming app called "Ren Sheng" to set time limits on internet usage, allowing purchases only after completing certain tasks, but the results were not satisfactory—once I encountered highly attractive content, it was easy to exceed the time limit.

The First Night

I last checked Twitter, QQ Space, and Moments, and at 8:00 PM, I began my plan. For the next 7*24 hours, I would be an island isolated from the information age.

I did the following on my phone:

  • Turned off mobile data and Wi-Fi, hid the switches for data and Wi-Fi in the notification bar
  • Downloaded my frequently used Keep courses
  • Set the mobile network to 2G
  • Uninstalled QQ
  • Limited daily screen time to 2 hours
  • Communicated with friends via text messages

On my computer:

  • Downloaded the documents needed for coding (using this offline documentation aggregation site)
  • Downloaded my favorite music
  • Turned on airplane mode
  • Updated vscode and some dependencies to the latest versions

Then I took out my Kindle and finished reading A Lai's "Dust Settles."

The First Day

I was awakened by the alarm clock in the morning and instinctively reached for my phone, suddenly remembering that I had no internet.

So I put down my phone and picked up my Kindle to read essays by Zhou Guoping. Coincidentally, he was discussing "loneliness."

I discovered that I still had the installation package for "Rust Wars" (a game similar to Red Alert, playable offline) from my middle school days. I didn't expect to be able to play it. This game, developed by a foreign genius about five or six years ago, sparked a wave of MOD creation in China, featuring a simple interface without the "dopamine traps" and money-making desires prevalent in some modern games.

When I returned from piano practice, I needed to show my health code, so I quickly turned on the internet, opened the health app, and immediately turned off the internet again upon entering.

This shows that the existence of the internet is reasonable and beneficial; it only seems frightening because it inadvertently touches upon people's "dopamine mechanisms."

Back home, I used the exercise function of my fitness band to go for a 20-minute run, covering about 2KM. Then I began writing about my first day.

The Second Day

By the second day, withdrawal symptoms began to appear. I started to space out, feeling anxious... I flipped through the videos stored on my hard drive, but they seemed somewhat dull.

It seems I really do have an internet addiction.

I remembered a small house model that a friend had given me, which I hadn't assembled yet, so I took it out and started tinkering with it. A grown man painting a piece of wood the size of a fingernail... the whole evening passed just like that.

The Third Day

The Fourth Day

Reading,

The Fifth Day

Woke up at 7:00 AM

Suddenly remembered that I still had a radio...