Liberation of the silent Junkie


“Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…”

I’m not saying that having no internet in my apartment has been the best thing that has happened to me in Ecuador, because my Latina girlfriend would kill me, but it is most certainly in the top ten. I am part of the generation which can’t remember a time when the internet wasn’t around.  When I was a little boy, my parents had dial-up internet. Then, as we moved to our new apartment and I turned eleven, we got proper cable internet. And by the time I got my first smart phone, we had Wi-Fi installed throughout the house.

When I went to high school, some of my teachers started using programs like Quizlet, or posted our homework on a blog. As the world of the internet grew, my generation got more and more attached to it, with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and all the others slowly consuming all of our time. We talked without speaking, we heard without listening, and listened to songs that voices never shared.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago, when my roommate moved out, taking the landline and the internet with him, that I realized how much time I spent on the internet. I woke up and checked Vice News on the glaring screen of my phone, then went to the bathroom and took a shower. While shaving, I watched the previous night’s monologue by Stephen Colbert on YouTube. Trever Noah, Sam Bee and Jordan Klepper’s shows accompanied me as I made myself some breakfast. And I scrolled through Facebook while eating on the couch or in my bed. By the time I was done with all this, I must have watched at least an hour of videos and ten to fifteen minutes reading about things that didn’t really affect me or had any real significance in my life. All in all, I spent about an hour and a half absentmindedly, first thing in the morning. The sound of silence echoing in my brain.

However, since I haven’t got internet, this has all changed. I wake up and text my girlfriend good morning. I read for an hour in bed, then work on my novel for about the same amount of time (yes, I’m writing a novel). Then I take a shower, shave and make myself some breakfast (or lunch, depending on when I wake up), which I eat at the dining table, all in silence or listening to downloaded albums on Spotify, which gives me plenty of opportunity to think about the day, my tasks and my novel.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to pretentiously preach that the internet is bad and everyone should follow my example. All I’m exclaiming is, giving it up, liberated a lot of my time and brainpower. I still look at social media pages almost every day, but only at work during breaks between classes, which is usually not more than five minutes. The internet is a wonderful place, where one can learn about quantum physics and watch debates on free speech, and yes, occasionally watch a cat video or two, but we should all remember that it’s merely a tool; it is something that we should be using, not the other way around, whispering the sound of silence.

A.D



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