In a world where we’re all a little bit too reliant on the internet, what happens when you switch off for five days? We tasked social media influencer Laura Dove, who lives in Lancashire with her husband Gareth and four children, with giving it a go.
Rewind 30 years back to 1995 and you may remember a time before the internet really took off when we had landlines, knocked on our friends’ doors to see if they could play out and came home when the streetlights came on. So if you were asked to go back 30 years and give up the internet for five days, could you?
Social media influencer Laura, 44, who relies on the internet to share the best bits of her family life with her 107k Instagram followers, agreed to take on the challenge of switching off the wifi for five days.
Her children Lewis, 21, Eva, 12, Megan, 11 and Harrison, 10, are also avid internet users and have unlimited access to Nintendo and EA Sports FC games, Disney +, Netflix and SnapChat.
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Laura says the funniest thing that happened during the five day switch off was when her 10 year old asked her ‘Where did the internet come from?’ “I had to tell him I had no idea because I couldn’t Google it,” she laughs. “The experiment was great at first but the kids soon got annoyed with each other, because they had to spend more time together and they missed talking to their friends.
“We talked more, there were less distractions and we watched TV together as a family because there was no streaming so we couldn’t all watch separate things. I really enjoyed taking the kids back to 1995, because I grew up in the 1990s and telling them if we wanted to play with our friends we knocked on their doors.”
Surprisingly, when Laura told the kids they were going to be going without WiFi, data, or their phones for five days they were actually excited about it. One of the highlights of the experiment was when they plugged in the old dial up landline.
“Megan was like ‘This is like something I’ve seen in a museum’ which was devastating for me, as I remember them. They used the phone to ring their grandparents which was nice, as they usually just text them. But they couldn’t ring their friends as they didn’t know their phone numbers.
“In the evening, without our normal gadgets, I suggested we listen to some music on the personal headset – I made them listen to the Spice Girls, and they were like: ‘Did you really listen to this?’ I told them I did, I even went to see them live. They quite liked playing with Tamagotchis too – they have made a bit of a comeback recently so they weren’t as unfamiliar as some of the other gadgets we had.”
But two days in and the cracks began to show. “After a couple of days I started to feel quite stressed about not being able to connect – not just for work but also for things like banking, school updates and reminders from other parents. Our day-to-day lives are not set up to live in a world without the internet – I even do my banking online as my local branch has shut down.”
“Harry asked me: ‘How long is this going to last?’ and I have to admit I could see where he was coming from – as I wasn’t enjoying it either,” Laura says. “Literally everything we do now is online – my job, the kids’ homework, school correspondence, our food shop, banking. I wouldn’t want to do it again unless I had a whole week off work and I didn’t have any commitments. It’s nice for a weekend but Monday to Friday, no.”
That said the experiment did have some positives as well as negatives. “We’re constantly being bombarded with noise from everything – pings from our phones, watches – so it’s nice to switch off as we don’t need to be constantly connected.
“There are also a lot of positives to social media, working from home, connecting with other people but I’m glad I had the experiences I did growing up.
“And the experiment wasn’t all bad – at bedtime Eva was reading, Harry was doing Lego, and Megan was playing with loom-bands. And when I said it was bedtime they just went: ‘Ok.’ We’ll be having more screen free nights going forward – even if it’s only once or twice a week. I was surprised there were no major meltdowns and my marriage didn’t end.”
Katie Milligan, Deputy CEO of Openreach, said: “It’s fascinating to see how different parts of the UK are embracing the online world and adapting to it in unique ways. At the same time, it’s encouraging that many recognise the importance of taking time away from devices and digital connectivity.”
“With full fibre now available to almost 19 million homes and businesses across the UK, thanks to the dedication of Openreach engineers, we’re proud to provide the nation’s most reliable broadband technology. It’s a game-changer, allowing people to do what they need to do – only faster and more efficiently.”
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