Internet Addiction According to Buddha

I’ve been reading a book by Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, called How to Fight. Each morning I read a section, and this morning, my section was called “Feeding Our Suffering.” According to the Buddha, “nothing can survive without food”—not love or suffering. I was struck by this statement by Thich Nhat Hanh: “If you continue to suffer, it’s because you feed your suffering every day.” He goes on: “Thoughts, conversations, films, books, magazines, and the Internet are sensory foods that we consume.”
 
Thich Nhat Hanh is calling for intentionality when it comes to our media consumption. He believes in applying the tenets of Buddhism to all aspects of our life. “If we don’t carefully choose what we consume,” he writes, “these things can water the seeds of anger, fear, violence, and discrimination within us.”
 
How often do we consume mindlessly? It seems as if social media and the internet are built to promote mindless behavior. Videos play on continuous loop on YouTube, whether you want them to or not. Scrolling through Instagram or Facebook is a never-ending, Sisyphean task; no matter how long you scroll, you will never be done. The possibility of falling into a black hole on the internet is a constant risk, and it might be hours before you come out on the other side.
 
Do we ever make the connection between our mindless social media addiction and watering seeds of dis-ease in our souls?
 
This weekend, I reacquainted myself with a habit that I used to have during my pre-smartphone era: no internet on the weekends. This was an easy habit to maintain when I didn’t carry the internet with me in my pocket. But post-smartphone me doesn’t always have the strength of character to stop myself from falling prey to the throes of Google, Facebook or Instagram.
 
From the outset of the weekend, I didn’t make a conscious decision to avoid checking my email or googling something on my phone; I just made the decision to only do things that brought joy and promoted restfulness. My partner had just returned from a stressful work trip and I wanted to support him in truly unplugging for maximum relaxation. I think there’s something to be said for the religious concept of the Sabbath, and I encourage everyone to apply it to the technology that dominates so much of our modern life.
 
We didn’t just lay on the beach all weekend, though. Instead, we plunged into projects around the house, connected with our neighborhood by going on a community bike ride and attended a local farmer’s market. We made time for cooking epic meals full of fresh and local products: avocadoes, breadfruit, papaya, quenepas, plantains, coconut, and more. We napped and read and sat and talked and swam and lingered. We acted with intention and reaped the benefits of a joyful weekend.
 

There was a moment when we were trying to remember the name of the local beer we drank all the time when we were living in Colombia. We eyed the phone lying on the counter, but then shook our heads and dug deeper in our memories to conjure up the name. I’ll be honest; Google won out in the end. “Aguila!” we exclaimed as the hits came up on our search, slapping our palms to our foreheads. How could we have forgotten? We found satisfaction in having our curiosity sated, but I believe we could have just as easily skipped on Google and still have been satisfied.
 
Still, we didn’t let ourselves tumble down the rabbit hole. I’d done research during the week to organize our participation in the bike ride and written down details about the farmer’s market in my agenda, so there was no need to go digging into my email or Facebook to gather necessary information. Little acts like writing down an address or making a note to write an email on Monday promote intentionality and consciousness when it comes to our internet consumption—or rather, the consumption of our attention by the internet. There were many moments over the course of the weekend that I had to stop myself from opening the web browser on my phone, but I had to asked myself: What are you avoiding by going online? Will this bring you joy? Do you legitimately need to do something online—and if so, do you need to do that right now? Or are you simply pursuing mindless distraction? By Sunday evening, the urge had weakened substantially.
 
It’s not easy, but I strive to live by my mantra: the internet is a tool, not a lifestyle.
 
Thich Nhat Hanh believes “if you stop feeding your suffering, it will also die.” Internet addiction or mindlessness is a certain kind of suffering, perhaps low-level compared to other kids of suffering, but suffering in its own right. By succumbing to its temptation day after day without intention or care, we might unwittingly be watering seeds of anger, fear, loneliness, jealousy, and dis-ease in our souls.
 
As the Buddha says, nothing can survive without food—including mindless internet habits. How are you feeding these habits on a daily basis? And are there easy ways that you can starve it to extinction?

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Thanks for reading,
Carmella