At
the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, students who enroll in a special course
taught by Justin McDaniel, professor of religious studies, get to experience a
taste of the monastic life, including a vow of silence. In what may be even
more of a trial for digital natives, they also relinquish use of their phone,
texts, Internet, computer, TV, and radio for a month.
Rather
than phone-addicted students running the other way, the pool of applicants is
larger than the class can accommodate.
The
tech abstinence extends beyond just the course, which is called Living
Deliberately: Monks, Saints, and the Contemplative Life. They aren’t supposed
to speak to anyone, including family, classmates, or even professors teaching
other classes (in the event of an emergency, they can speak to family members,
police, or health-care workers). They can’t use the web or computers for other
classes either, having to acquire printed copies of readings and use
handwritten notes to communicate with instructors and workgroups.
Other
aspects of the course include writing in a journal every 30 minutes as long as
they’re awake and taking part in kindness projects on campus or in the
community.
McDaniel
told NPR that it was surprisingly easy for the students to go cold turkey on
their electronics. “What is hard is a feeling that they are missing out on
activities, chances to meet other people (in person), and loneliness,” he said.
“They actually love not having the electronics.”
He
added that very few students in the course try to sneak in tech use—and when
they do he can usually spot it from their behavior and their journal entries.
As
NPR noted, the course suggests that patterns of tech use, including addiction, may
be shaped more by the communities of which we’re a part—in other words, by
people—than by neural interactions with the technology itself.
