How to Avoid the Internet Taking Over Your Life!
Of course (like electricity), the Internet can be used for good. But we’re talking here about ‘big Internet’ – youngsters who can’t be apart from their smartphones for more than a few minutes, bots controlling what we see and how we learn, what we buy and how we vote.
Internet billionaires controlling what we watch and know, big media, AI-gone-wrong, techno-capitalism, and a refusal to see the link between our survival and both spirituality. And a respect that Nature is more important than technology.
Against the Machine is the latest publication from writer Paul Kingsnorth. Now as interested in his newfound Christian faith as the natural world, this is kind of a blasting of both philosophies together, an almost terrifying account of where we could end up, if people don’t retain their personal boundaries with everything to do with Paul calls ‘modernity’:
The internet and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. This is an extreme statement, but I’m in an extreme mood.
A terrifying account of what modern people have sacrificed, in exchange for technology’s promise of power and autonomy. Christianity Today
This is the most powerful and important book I have read in years. It is simply brilliant. This book should be required reading not only for politicians, technocrats, teachers and all who help shared our world. But for every still-living soul in this terrifying age of the Machine. Iain McGilchrist
Kingsnorth has done something extraordinary. He has captured the spiritual crisis of our time in language so compelling, I could not put the book down. Mary Harrington
Thank God for Paul Kingsnorth! Serious, furious and always consistent, this is a Christian thinker who does not sugar-coat his convictions. Justin Smith-Riui
Paul Kingsnorth is an English writer (who has been nominated for the Booker Prize) who now lives in the west of Ireland, where he has transitioned from an environmentalist activist to more spiritual writer, interested in how faith and nature collide.
He has been described in various terms (his favourite is ‘environmental activist turned apocalyptic mystic’). But two things he has been called (to inspire you to read the book!) are ‘furiously gifted’ (The Washington Post) and ‘England’s greatest living writer (Aris Roussinos). High praise indeed!
Find Paul’s writings on Substack.
Download Free Adblock Plus (to stop online ads)
Now here’s a secret that you would like to hear, you’re welcome!
Just visit one site to download free Adplus Block (it’s free!) Seriously, in one second – all the annoying pop-ups, ads and other annoying stuff to surf through when you work online completely disappears – pop!
Of course, some sites then won’t let you visit (so be it). If you do wish to visit certain sites that only allow ads, you can ‘whitelist list’, but the rest goes! Once downloaded, you”ll never go back.
While you’re at it, also download Unhook (this will remove all the ‘recommended videos’ in the sidebar, if you want or have to watch a YouTube video). It’s just then a blank site on the right-hand site.
And while we’re at it (there’s a theme here), download I Don’t Care About Cookies (so each time you visit a site, you won’t have to keep clicking pop-ups to reach the page you want). Saves you time, then you can turn off and go outside in to the fresh air!
In her wonderful book The Joy of Missing Out, writer Christina Crook decided to take a 31-day Internet fast, to simply learn about a world that wasn’t totally revolved around the web. She did this after hearing a ‘man of the cloth’ blessing Blackberries (the phones, not the fruits).
She did eventually go back to working alone, but set her own rules on how and when to do so. And felt a lot better for it.
How apps are designed to hook you
These days the world and his wife entice you to buy a smartphone (it’s difficult to get ID, open a bank account or move home without one, due to apps). But of course they have created a world of ‘infinite scrollers’ who can never get off the damn things.
People scroll their phones at the bus stop, when ‘talking to you’ in pubs, and some people have even been tweeting as they had miscarriages (a few have even fallen to their deaths, due to selfies gone wrong). Not funny, but they were so intent on making the images good, they didn’t see the danger behind.
It’s a world gone mad. ‘Free trials’ rolled into paid plans because you forgot (not because you decided). It’s the modern equivalent of forgetting the direct debit payments for the lapsed gym membership. Only more sinister, as it’s not so easy to pop down the gym and cancel.
People who decide to sign to Facebook can do so in a minute. But see how difficult it is to cancel. Rather than get discouraged, try a quick reset to empower yourself, your rules, your time, your life:
- Turn off non-essential notifications.
- Move unnecessary apps off screens.
- Only check for socials and news twice daily.
- ‘Park’ your phone (away from your bed) at night.
- Unsubscribe from marketing emails.
- Use notification summaries (so pings arrive in batches)
- Use tracker blocking and clear cookies.
To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid – for all these marvellous reasons, delete your accounts. Jaron Lanier
Bad Influence (how the internet hijacked our health)
Bad Influence is a timely book on how the internet has hijacked our health. Although being online can help others in many ways, not usually when medical advice is coming from influencers:
The author begins the book with the obvious:
You used to see a doctor. Now you go online.
Jaron Lanier (who famously campaigns against social media) once wrote that ‘It’s impossible to improve health using Facebook. Because every time you get good medical advice, it’ll eventually be overwhelmed by bad medical advice, which will be more engaging’.
Especially when most people have smartphones, if you want to know something, you just go look it up. But that’s not always such a smart move:
Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A library can bring you back the right one. Neil Gaiman
Need to focus? Lose weight? Build muscle? Advice is just a click away. But now with fewer face-to-face GP appointments (and the government bringing in online appointments as if that’s a good thing), ‘influencers’ have stepped into the breach.
From ‘weird cleanses’ to dodgy detoxes, and corporate-funded bad nutrition advice, it’s all out there for the taking. And you have to decide which is real, without studying seven years for a medical degree.
In this book, a real medical doctor reveals the truth behind AI-powered diagnoses to ‘preventative’ screening, and how the Internet has now resulted in not being able to distinguish medicine from marketing.
This book is a much-needed prescription for the unregulated world of online health misinformation, by an expert who knows and understands what she is talking about. I’ll be telling my patients to read this! Dr Ellie Cannon
This book will hopefully influence how you access healthcare information. And maybe think twice before you make (often complex) decisions about your body, based solely on your social media feed. Prof. John Tregoning
Dr Deborah Cohen is a journalist and editor, who was previously health correspondent for BBC Newsnight, leading their coverage during the pandemic.
