Can We Really Detox from Our Screens?

My Journey from the Grand Canyon to Digital Mindfulness

Cell Phone image captured by unamed tourist with the author and his wife .

There are layers of the Grand Canyon whose rocks are almost two billion years old. The canyon is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide in places, and over 6000ft deep. If there’s one place in the US you can go to gain a little perspective and escape the anxieties and absurdities of the modern world, it’s this stunning, world-renowned part of Arizona.

My wife and I went there recently, and I had the notion to leave my phone at home, and detox from screens for once.

Sometimes it’s enough to let the momentous moment live on in memory alone, I thought.

It’s true that, at times, I felt the instinctive urge to reach into my pocket for my phone, which was there, but I remember my phone detox goal. I wanted the freedom to breathe the hot desert air, listen to the rippling river at its base, and take in the spectacular views.

My wife, bless her, felt differently. She wanted a visual record of the occasion, as did almost all the other visitors we encountered during our trip. Countless selfies and landscape shots were being taken. There were even youngsters shooting TikToks, as close to the Canyon edge as these amateur cinematographers could safely go. For the sake of marital harmony, I succumbed to taking…