My Digital Addiction

Would you - a shy Brit - rather spend a weekend locked up in a forest with a load of crazy Americans? Or would you give up your phone, tablet and eveything else and go cold turkey for four days? I did both this summer - and I felt like I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown an hour in.
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Would you - a shy Brit - rather spend a weekend locked up in a forest with a load of crazy Americans?

Or would you give up your phone, tablet and eveything else and go cold turkey for four days?

I did both this summer - and I felt like I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown an hour in.

My journey started in a hotel restaurant in February - where I was on deployment for a fortnight to cover the Berlin Film Festival for my employer, Al Jazeera English. As I sat there, minus my laptop (that was charging in my room), I surveyed the table in front of me. A smartphone, a tablet, a pair of noise cancelling headphones and a Kindle. Not to mention the fitness band on my wrist. Had I been mugged, said criminal could probably have retired on those gains.

But it hit me - clear as day. I was an addict. A digital addict. I hadn't even been able to leave my hotel room and travel two floors without taking my swag along.

And as I discussed it with friends, I came to the realisation that I most definitely wasn't alone. We seem to spend our lives engrossed in our digital devices. A ten minute walk to the station not complete without a pair of white headphones in our ears. A dinner date not fully realised unless we break off conversation mid-way to interact with a screen and talk virtually to a person in another timezone about something trivial.

I'm a TV reporter so my life revolves around being connected. Standing in front of live cameras, I need constant news updates when I'm talking to viewers. I need to be able to interact with producers in the office and get feedback from viewers on Twitter. But I'm kidding myself if I tell you that's all. Fact is, I enjoy being part of a generation that loves being connected. Day and night, I'm switched on. I'm on the grid. Like Terminator - without the violent bits.

And so, I went on a quest to find out why. Traveling across the US, I spoke to various people as I tried to unpick this obsession engulfing society. It was fascinating. From the psychiatrist who told me of the chemical release that comes from being connected (the same one that cocaine addicts get) to the former Apple employee revealing why stores have former SWAT teams hiding in them, to Randi Zuckerberg - an early Facebook member - who explained her fears about what this technology is doing to the brains of children the world over. The message was clear - we are a world that is hooked on a legal, electronic drug. And there are few recovery programmes.

I did find myself on one though - deep in the Californian countryside. Hidden in the Redwood Mountains - an area of outstanding beauty - a collection of the most random, eclectic digital addicts, overseen by a group of organisers who, on first glance, you'd swear were crazy.

Camp Grounded prides itself on giving you time out. Completely. All electronics (even watches) are confiscated. Names are forgotten and replaced with fun replacements (you're looking at Lightning McQueen) and all talk of age and employment is considered blasphemy.

The logic is simple - when we meet people, we tend to ask a name and what a person does. We instantly form an impression and first impressions are hard to shake. They wanted everybody here - from whatever background, with whatever issues - to be on a clean slate.

That said, there is no secret that the Digital Detox camp markets itself as a place where tech addicts can be forcibly removed from their devices. This is, after all, just a couple of hours north of Silicon Valley and the bus that took us from downtown San Fran clearly had tech nerds on board. I should know. I was one of them.

I hated it at first. I really did. This is a place that aims to take people back to a time in their lives when they were truly happy with no worries: Childhood. And so, the traditional American summer camp brings that release. Problem was, I've never done that. As a Brit, I didn't get it. As I watched my first night of campers dressing up, dancing on tables and singing Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" but replacing every single word with the word "miaow" (try it - not as easy as it sounds!), I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be less.

But I soon warmed. Whether it was the tranquility, the learning to love nature, the laughter yoga (google it - nothing I can write will make sense!), the campfires, the wood carving, the yoga, the colour war games, redisovering the art of meaningful conversation or the typing a journal using a typewrite and appreciating all of its flaws, I was soon won over. Four days later, 300 strangers who'd now become friends sat around a guitar singing songs and I cried. I'd just experienced one of the most exhilerating experiences of my life. And now, I was dreading the moment where that paper bag would be handed back containing the keys to my digital identity.

As we left Camp Grounded, our (undercover) filming complete, I pondered what would happen when I turned that smartphone back on. It was 4pm in California - late at night back in the UK. And so I consoled myself, knowing I could leave it switched off for a while because all those who mattered to me would be in bed for a few more hours. It was three hours before I turned it back on as I slurped a diet coke and waited for the world to catch up.

The barrage of notifications didn't deafen me. In fact, I was surprised how few people had tried to get in contact with me over that four days. A testament to what I'd learned at camp - that only a handful of interactions are really worth our time or emotion. And as I surveyed the world, I tried to explain this to my cameramen. But they were too busy looking at their own devices, replying to a stream of messages themselves.

I learned a lot in four days. Question is: did it make any long term difference?

You can find out on Al Jazeera Correspondent: My Digital Addiction.

Thursday 6th November. 2000GMT