Staying Connected in a Digital World

I was on my morning run and noticed something deeply unsettling. As I stared at the beautiful view of the Potomac River on a sunny, humid, and cotton-cloudy sky, I observed a man on his kayak. He wasn’t paddling, nor staring in awe at his surroundings. He was scrolling, what appeared to be, aimlessly on his phone.

Despite knowing this already and having done it so many times, that particular moment felt like a wake-up call. I’ve been fully aware of how trapped and hypnotized we have become-reliant creatures on a superficial screen that provides nothing but a feed that aims to suck us back in and ignore the very thing that’s in front of us. True beauty. Authenticity.

Let’s stop and think about this for a second. We understand how highly addictive technology has become. Yet, like any dopamine-releasing substance, we can’t get ourselves to stop. Yes, its uses have become widely beneficial for several reasons, yet here we are-becoming prisoners behind a screen that will also regress us in so many ways: socially, intellectually, further creating the potential to develop isolation, distractibility, and fear. And we have already seen that happen.

We rarely know how to get to places without technology. We have lessened our adaptive and instinctual ability to learn our surroundings, map the land we are in, and understand how to get around on our own-a highly important skill to establish safety.

I, of course, am guilty of this. Scrolling tirelessly through the same reels on social media. Different people, different flavors, short, engaging, yet no longer original. It’s all the same, yet we still become enthralled, laughing by ourselves as we stare. Not realizing that it has now become an automatic and addictive process that keeps us wanting more. Yet even when we’re aware of how much time we’ve spent "doomscrolling", it’s difficult to stop. It has now become easier to send memes to each other than to pick up the phone and call someone we miss.

I mostly become aware of this when I see people in action-laughing at their screen instead of looking at the butterfly that landed on their leg. So involved in whatever they are staring at, they flick the beautiful monarch butterfly, with its patterned colors, away from them as if it were just another thing distracting them from the superficial world they’ve become so attached to.

We're constantly exposed to toxic information without realizing the toll it takes on our psychological, emotional, and physical health. It's like consuming a steady diet of junk food, draining our energy, disrupting our mood, and deeply influencing how we feel and behave.

To cleanse this toxicity, we need to be intentional about what we consume. This means limiting exposure to negative media, curating our social feeds, spending more time in nature, engaging in real, uplifting conversations, and feeding our minds with content that inspires growth, peace, and clarity. Just as we nourish our bodies with clean food, we must nourish our minds with grounding energy that reconnects us to Earth, nature, and our place in it.

Future generations will not know what it's like to not have to rely on technology, and that is worrisome. I am not sure what to do except to encourage us to pause every now and then, and truly allow ourselves to admire our surroundings.

Challenge yourself to have a full day without technology, get to know where you live, move around by observation: trial and error. If we can’t get ourselves to do that, then where are we headed as a species?

Creating intentionality around staying present and connected is important, and a practice that we can’t ignore. Let this be an invitation to pause, to look around, and to engage more consciously and deliberately. The world is still rich with so much beauty, but we have to choose to see it. We have to be willing to disconnect in order to reconnect-with nature, with others, and with ourselves.

Because if we continue to scroll past life, we risk missing it entirely.