Freeing My Mind on a Ten-Day Summer Holiday Digital Detox

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I recently returned from a ten-day digital detox, during a family holiday in Sicily, which not only involved me being completely offline — away from the internet and from all social media — but also involved me having no information whatsoever about the outside world, not watching any news or even glimpsing a single headline in a newspaper.

It was a liberating, albeit brief experience, and not just because summer holidays — unknown to the working class until the 20th century, and not widely involving foreign travel until the dawn of cheap flights and package holidays in the 1980s — are meant to be a time when we take a break from the stresses and strains of our working lives.

In my case, it was an important, perhaps crucial psychological break from an accumulation of often almost intolerable bleakness brought about by the particularly difficult times we’re all living through right now, largely involving the derangement of our leaders, and of almost all political discourse, all of which has been exacerbated by my presence in an often suffocating media and social media landscape.

By switching off, however temporarily, from everything that connected me to this frenetic, anxiety-inducing world, I was suddenly, instantly, able to relax, to feel, to dream in a way that seemed impossible while I was connected to my devices, frazzled by genocide and extinction.

Switching off

To provide some necessary context, I should say that I’m not entirely a stranger to the concept of switching off from the world of 24/7 digital connectedness. I don’t have a mobile phone (cellphone), so I’ve always straddled two worlds. One is the online world in which, as an independent journalist and activist, I’ve been almost entirely reliant, for nearly 20 years, for finding an audience for what I write, and how I make a living.

The other world, however, comes into play whenever I leave the house, and, for over a decade, throughout the whole of my 50s, it led to me, in an often random and always unsupervised manner, cycling tens of thousands of miles around the whole of London, chronicling it in photos and essays through a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which I published on Facebook on a daily basis from 2017 to 2023 — until, ironically, the digital research I undertook for my essays, on a punishing and entirely self-imposed daily basis, overwhelmed the supposedly carefree manner in which I was cycling around London and taking photos in the first place.

Nevertheless, the principle of being free of digital devices remains significant to me, as a manifestation of an older, almost extinct world of analogue autonomy, in which, when I’m away from home, I’m almost entirely free of the pervasive surveillance culture, free to think, without endlessly pinging notifications demanding my immediate response, free of algorithms that tell me that, if I like this, I’ll also like that, free to get lost without GPS, and to indulge in — or, at least, imagine — the revival of a world in which our closest friends are not hand-held computers.

In general, however, I have to concede that the reality of this analogue world is often only a form of therapy, an opportunity to merely take a break from the digital overload that otherwise threatens not only to bleed into but also to overwhelm every aspect of my intellectual and emotional autonomy.

The challenge of living in 2024

On this front, the last year has been particularly difficult, not just because of the jaw-dropping indifference to climate collapse, but also, very specifically, because of the State of Israel’s western-backed genocide of the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip, in response to a limited outburst of horrendous violence by Hamas and other militants in southern Israel on October 7 last year. The ongoing genocide, now just two weeks away from its first anniversary, has killed at least 40 times more Palestinians — mostly civilians — than were killed on October 7 (at least 40,000), and, if Israel’s assault ever stops, it may well be revealed that the total cumulative death toll will be closer to 200,000.

Because of the mainstream media’s abject failure to adequately address Israel’s unspeakably monstrous crimes — or, indeed, to meaningfully confront our own imminent and self-inflicted planet-wide annihilation through our addiction to fossil fuels — I have, like numerous other people, turned to social media, where, in relation to Israel’s genocide, X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform owned, since October 2022, by the generally troubling figure of Elon Musk, has, at least, allowed Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices to tell the story of Israel’s genocide in real time since October 7 last year.

This has been in marked contrast to Facebook and Instagram, where a more troubling censorship regime has continued to be imposed on those seeking to disseminate critical information about the unfolding genocide, but X is also a two-edged sword, much of it — outside of my own particular bubble — now an open sewer of largely unregulated far-right filth , and, as I have learned via my own efforts to repeatedly highlight Israel’s crimes, also a place where I have persistently struggled to reach an audience, despite having thousands of followers, which I can only attribute to algorithmic suppression.

Between this, and the increasing censorship I had been recently been encountering on Facebook, the social media landscape was becoming either toxic, or a place where whatever outlet for my voice that I had hoped to have was almost non-existent, and it was undoubtedly my hiatus from these platforms, during the course of my holiday, that instantly led to my sense of well-being.

There’s a lesson in that, and, since returning to my computer, I have tried to remember not to spend hours doom-scrolling on X, and posting for a non-existent audience, and also to be aware that Facebook, an arbitrary police state rigged with undeclared booby-traps, is not a healthy environment either.

Quite where this awareness will lead me in the months to come remains to be seen, but I suspect that the healthiest option is to set up a mailing list via a trustworthy company, and to engage with people directly on my website, as the best way of avoiding unaccountable algorithms and their deliberate manifestations of censorship and marginalization.

Pre-summer holiday environmental guilt

As my summer holiday approached, I was, of course, pricked with guilt that I was even flying at all, even though I’m not a frequent flier, having only, in general, flown twice a year in the decade preceding the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when the entire aviation industry almost collapsed, and having only flown once a year since 2022.

Climate experts consistently point out the significant environmental impact of flying. As the Mongabay website noted in an article in 2022, “Airplanes emit around 100 times more CO2 per hour than a shared bus or train ride, and the emissions of global aviation are around 1 billion tons of CO2 per year — more than the emissions of most countries, including Germany.”

In addition, “Aviation contributes an estimated 2.4% of global annual CO2 emissions, most of it from commercial travel”, although its additional environmental impacts, including the production of nitrogen oxides, soot, water vapour and sulphate aerosols, means that, overall, “aviation contributes around 4% to human-induced global warming”, so that, “If aviation were a country, it would be the world’s sixth-biggest emitter, after China, the US, India, Russia, and Japan.”

Much of the problem, of course, lies not with individuals flying off on family holidays, but with the super-rich. As a report by Oxfam, the Guardian and other organizations demonstrated in November 2023, “The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%”, making up a staggering 16 per cent of the world’s total CO2 emissions in 2019, with much of this attributable to their profligate use of private jets, super yachts and the maintenance of their extravagant mansions. As In These Times reported in May 2023, “just 1% of travelers are responsible for about half of all aviation carbon emissions.”

If we’re to halve our greenhouse gas emissions over the rest of this decade, as our governments collectively agreed to do in the Paris Agreement in 2015, but have largely failed to do, in most cases having failed to even begin making the necessary changes required to keep our planet habitable, curtailing the private jet use of the super-rich would be the perfect way to begin when it comes to aviation, largely bypassing the difficult choices regarding “consumer choice” when it comes to motor vehicle use, which makes up the majority of the 15% of global CO2 emissions attributable to transport.

The increasing environmental unviability of escaping to the sun

As well as fretting about the impact of flying, I was also aware that the very notion of flying out to the sun on a summer holiday needs to be recognized as taking place in a world in which the effects of climate change are manifesting themselves much more quickly than most climate scientists were warning even just a few years ago.

While the west has spent decades promoting an “entitlement” culture that frames flying abroad for summer holidays abroad as some kind of fundamental and eternal “right”, even though it only really began in the 1980s, increasing summer temperatures mean that, every summer now, the most pertinent question that holiday-goers should be asking themselves is: will we find ourselves not relaxing in the sun but baking in an unnerving manifestation of the coming climate apocalypse?

Looking back, I can recall how the super-heating effects of climate change have been increasing throughout the 21st century — via my memories of, for example, an excruciatingly hot holiday in Brittany, in 2003, a holiday in Granada in 2009, when it was so hot that we almost managed to cook an egg just by cracking it on a plate in the sun, and a holiday in Barcelona in 2016, when, on arrival, I ignored an evident heatwave to such an extent that, sunbathing without protection, I burned one of my thighs so severely that I was just a few steps down from needing hospitalization.

At the time, climate change — although obviously known about — hadn’t lodged itself so firmly in people’s consciousness that we were paying attention as closely as we should have to what was happening, but since 2018, when the reality of climate collapse first installed itself irrevocably in my consciousness via an alarming report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the activism of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion, the very notion of summer has changed forever, even as the “entitlement” culture has been struggling to keep up.

Over three of the last five summers, in 2019, 2022 and 2023 (excluding 2020 and 2021, when the Covid lockdowns almost entirely suspended foreign travel), my wife and I visited Bodrum in Turkey, where we have friends, and on each occasion the ravages of climate collapse became ever clearer, as as did an allied realization that that, in the neoliberal west, the damage caused by austerity — or of largely unfettered capitalist profiteering — had impacted poorer workers to such an extent that the lower end of the summer package tourist industry was being decimated.

By last year, Gumbet, where we stayed, which is next to Bodrum and had mushroomed over many years on the basis of cheap British and Irish tourism, had become a ghost town, and, just as noticeably, was getting ever hotter, to such an extent that the peak holiday season, in late July and the whole of August, was evidently becoming unviable, not just in Turkey, but across the whole of the Mediterranean.

Absurdly, however, the “entitlement” culture was still so strong that, although some people began working out how they might be able to avoid summer altogether, taking holidays in spring or autumn, others remained so wedded to their “right” to a summer holiday that when, for example, the Greek island of Rhodes was engulfed by wildfires in July 2023, tourists — via their accommodating airlines — insisted on continuing to fly into the inferno, as though their sense of entitlement could somehow override reality.

When my wife booked our Sicilian trip, which took place from September 4 to 13, I confess that I was instantly worried that it would be just a hot as August. In the end, my fears were largely realized. A fierce heatwave gripped Palermo, where we were staying for the first five nights, which meant that we were, fundamentally, permanently sweat-soaked, and only able to sleep because of ferocious air conditioning.

Digital detox and holiday joy

Despite the challenges of the heat, Palermo — on what was our third visit to the Sicilian capital — was a delight, and the Sicilian people were resolutely getting on with their lives. We lost count of the number of weddings taking place in our neighbourhood, and the historic old city, with its palaces and numerous churches, and its warren of small streets lined with picturesque and often time-ravaged apartment blocks, was still thronged with locals and tourists — mostly, it seemed, Italians — doing what Italians and Sicilians do best: delighting in food and family and friendship.

Behind it, there were undoubtedly hidden pressures, even though the historic Vucciria Market was still full of fresh produce and punters. Before I left home, I’d read an article in the Guardian warning that drought was “push[ing] Sicily’s farming heritage to the brink”, and that, “While tourists flock to the Italian island in greater numbers, a water crisis is intensifying for its rural population”, caused, in part, by the very tourism — or over-tourism — that I was part of, but, on arrival, instantly clearing my mind through switching off from all external stimuli, I put those nagging concerns aside for ten days.

This was undoubtedly selfish, and there is certainly something disquieting about mass tourism’s increasing tendency to only facilitate our own relaxation at the expense of others, who rely on tourism as a significant driver of their economy.

In the years to come, the particular stresses relating to climate collapse and over-tourism are likely to come a head, beyond the scattered incidents of ’Tourists Go Home’ graffiti that I saw on Palermo’s streets.

For now, however, I confess that I clung to my selfishness because, living in the moment, seduced by the sights and sounds and smells of Palermo, and immersed in, and enjoying the company of my family, I was suddenly free of the particular challenges of home, and the even more particular challenges of being plugged into a 24/7 account of relentless atrocities.

Glimpsing long-forgotten possibilities of other futures, slipping effortlessly into thinking in Italian (which had first happened to me, to my delight, in 1991, after many years of visiting with my then-girlfriend and not understanding a word), my immersion continued as the weather cooled slightly, and we took a short trip up the coast to Mondello, where we spent the last four days in blissful indulgence, enveloped in the sea, and repeatedly having lunch at a particularly friendly local restaurant.

By the end, I didn’t want to leave, but reality beckoned, of course, and we returned to London, where, fortunately, the bad weather that had visited these islands while we were away was replaced by moderate warmth and sunshine.

My joy hasn’t yet left me entirely, but reality has hit hard, as Israel, still unchecked, continues its atrocities, now with the intention of turning Lebanon into Gaza, while the social media world is even more of a disaster than it was before my holiday. X is now openly promoting more far-right, and largely pro-Israeli content than it was just a few weeks ago, while Facebook has launched a new wave of censorship that threatens to silence me entirely.

I’m trying to maintain my equilibrium, aware that, when possible, I should engage in another digital detox, and also aware that, for those of us opposing the many ugly faces of injustice worldwide, the struggle is constant, which is why we need to take the occasional break to preserve our sanity.

I can’t say with any certainty what the future holds, but I do know that something about Sicily has remained with me, a shaking off, perhaps, of an encroaching darkness that I couldn’t manage at home. Perhaps, in the end, that’s why we travel, when we try to do so with a modicum of consciousness — to immerse ourselves elsewhere, and to shake off the traps into which we so easily fall at home. I’m aware that this involves a huge amount of privilege on my part, and I can only hope that any renewed energy I have taken from my break will ultimately prove beneficial in other ways.

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Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here.

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