I’ve long relished international vacations as a time to completely disconnect. It’s far more socially acceptable to say that you can’t receive calls or texts for an extended period of time because you’re traveling with no cell service, than to completely drop off the connectivity grid for a week or more spent at home.

We recently returned from our eleven-day honeymoon to Greece, during which my phone spent the entirety of the trip in airplane mode. I prepared by downloading “offline maps” in Google Maps for the areas that we’d be visiting. Since GPS connects to satellites and not cell phone towers, offline maps work fine for navigation without a data connection.

I’m using the application StayFree to monitor screen time on my Android phone, because I find that it has a couple more useful features and retains data for longer than the built-in Digital Wellbeing app.

My hunch of the need for navigation when walking around dense and unfamiliar cities and islands was correct; around 40% of my total screen time was consumed by Google Maps — which isn’t true “screen time” as you’re not staring at the map the whole time when having it open. But I like to keep Maps in the usage totals to get a relative idea of what I’m using my phone for.

16% of my screen time went towards camera and photos. 15% was messaging apps and email used when on hotel Wi-Fi, and 10% was consumed by my Android’s launcher (i.e. “in between” time when the screen is on but one is not actively using an application). The remaining 19% was split many ways between various apps such as weather, notes, and my podcast player.

Hardly a Phone-Free Paradise

While I’m satisfied with minimizing my own smartphone use on vacation to mostly utilitarian tasks, the contrast makes others’ heavy use more apparent. I’m not talking about things like taking pictures or videos. Being able to take decent photos without carrying around a separate digital camera is one of the best features of modern smartphones.

There were certainly several curious cases such as people scrolling through Instagram Reels or TikTok at the beach or restaurants — giving themselves away by having their phone speakers on in public, spewing that strange disjointed audio that rapidly scrolling through short-form video content produces.

At dinner on a rooftop restaurant in Santorini, a middle-aged man seated next to us spent the whole time waiting for his food to arrive, and a full five minutes after his meal had been placed in front of him, furiously swiping and pecking away at his phone. His wife looked miserable.

Here was the sunset view on offer from the restaurant:

Obviously everyone is free to use their devices as much as they wish, and my observations come more from a place of empathy than judgement. A good view with an ocean breeze, great food and wine, some jazz piano… that was certainly the most thoroughly relaxed I have felt in recent memory. It would have been a shame to miss out on the full weight of that experience for whatever is happening on a screen.

Vacation Reading

I always strive to get some deep reading done when on vacation. My e-reader is one device that I have no qualms about maximizing my usage of.

Seneca’s Letters on Ethics to Lucilius (trans. Graver and Long)

This is a book I’ve been reading for a while, very slowly. I find it most valuable to read one letter at a time while trying to digest it. This is an excellent and approachable modern translation. I figured it would be appropriate to try and read some ancient literature while surrounded by all of that history. Since no complete works from the Greek Stoics survived to this day, those of the Roman Stoics like Seneca are the next best thing. The ebook is an absolute steal at just $2 for anybody interested in reading a cornerstone work of Stoic philosophy.

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr

This is an excellent book that, despite being written in 2010, is still very relevant today, and certain passages are quite prescient in terms of how negative effects of the net on our functions and mental states have intensified. I already knew most of the overarching conclusions from my own reflections and research, however Carr presents a fun narrative, relevant studies, and frequent hard-hitting “so what” moments that I felt expanded my understanding.

It’s a deep look at the linear mind of the reader versus the mind of the internet browser and ever-connected multitasker. I found the sections on neuroplasticity to be a hopeful answer to the question of whether we as individuals can reverse the detriments of too much exposure to the internet on our brains, although Carr acknowledges that it’s almost certain society as a whole will not be turning back.

This book is purely investigative, and does not offer anything in the way of solutions to this issue in the way one will find in Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism or in Part II of my own book. I reached the end and found myself wishing that Carr had provided some practical advice and personal experiences with disconnecting. He does admit to the reader:

As for me, I’m already backsliding. With the end of this book in sight, I’ve gone back to keeping my e-mail running all the time and I’ve jacked into my RSS feed again. I’ve been playing around with a few new social-networking services and have been posting some new entries to my blog.

I don’t let that fault this book too much as I got some wonderful value out of it; perhaps Carr didn’t feel as if he was in a position to offer an antidote. I think The Shallows easily ranks among the “must reads” for anyone in the early to middling stages of questioning their use of the internet and technology.

This Naked Mind by Annie Grace

Utter drivel, and the worst book that I’ve read in years. This is a book marketed as helping anyone question the role of alcohol in their life, where Grace “presents the psychological and neurological components of alcohol use based on the latest science, and reveals the cultural, social, and industry factors that support alcohol dependence in all of us.” I’m always open to questioning my attitudes and assumptions, and I had already decided to take a 30 day break from alcohol upon returning from vacation to see if it made an impact on my life, so I decided to give it a shot on those grounds.

Very shortly into starting this book, I realized that it is not a book for moderate drinkers to open their mind and question the value of alcohol. It’s a preachy gospel for an alcoholic to attempt to use in order to demonize alcohol at any cost to attempt to save themselves from addiction. I’m shocked at how highly-rated This Naked Mind is.

On its surface this gives the impression of being a thoroughly-cited and researched book, however it quickly becomes clear that Grace has no understanding of the scientific method (her background is in marketing/advertising) or of basic concepts such as sampling bias that affect the significance of data. Multiple times in the book she makes the outrageous claim that alcohol is more dangerous and harmful than heroin. Grace asserts that because alcohol can be addictive, we’re all precipitously close to ending up drinking two bottles of wine per night and beers with lunch just like her, and anyone who says they drink in moderation is either lying or will increase their consumption over time. There’s an entire chapter where she claims that nobody actually enjoys the taste of alcoholic beverages, based on the premise that she didn’t like drinking non-alcoholic beer because it was the alcohol she was after. Some of the non-alcoholic beers are pretty good, and I’ve been perfectly content to sip on those.

I was barely able to get halfway through the book and skimmed the rest, which seemed mostly like repetition of the same concepts over and over, and opinion-as-universal-fact worldview one finds all over Reddit. It’s incredibly rare that I chalk a book up as having zero value, but at least I got some other good reading done on vacation.

Back in the real world, or back from the real world?

As our plane descended towards the US to conclude the twelve hour flight, a woman behind us took her phone out of airplane mode around 5,000 feet and began scrolling through TikTok or Reels with her phone volume on. I wondered if she felt a similar relief that a smoker must when they’re finally able to get off the plane and light up that first cigarette.

Most people waited until landing, as demonstrated by notification sounds chirping out all around the plane. I hesitated for a few minutes. I wasn’t ready to reconnect, despite being fully aware of how impractical that would be long-term. Eventually I followed suit, and my phone buzzed with several text messages and notifications.

Our first morning back home, I was punished with five different spam calls that didn’t get flagged as such. Almost like they were awaiting my reconnecting. It’s, uh, good to be back?