2023-11-17 05:45:00
If Belgians are always addicted to new technologies, this is not the case for everyone. Vincent, 42, for example, decided to limit his smartphone consumption. “I spend a lot of time working on a computer during the day,” confides the forty-year-old. And to this time on screen was added the time spent on GSM. Thanks to a digital well-being tool, I realized the enormous amount of time that I was wasting. I was addicted. And it didn’t look good to my kids and my friends.”
An awareness that has pushed Walloon Brabançon to limit the use of smartphones as much as possible with family and friends. “So I drastically cut back on social media.”
Vincent retired from Facebook on January 1st. “Facebook content is polluted by the algorithm which provides ads, videos and content that I had not chosen. More and more friends no longer post anything interesting anyway. And when we want to share things between friends or in the family, we do it directly via Whatsapp. On Facebook, all that remained were the publications of haters or lecturers. I didn’t need that.”
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Vincent also limits his time on Youtube and Linkedin, which has become “like Facebook” but “which remains a professional address book”.
His assessment? “I feel like I’ve gotten some real quality time back. To get news from friends, just ask. Until now, I’ve missed few events because there was always plenty a person to invite me live. On the other hand, I miss little information like the new menu of a small restaurant. But it’s marginal.”
Thomas, a young worker, also decided to put the brakes on his use of connected technologies. Two years following buying a smartphone, he decided to go back to a basic phone, in particular to limit the time spent on social networks. “I realized that with my smartphone, when I was in a place, I no longer looked around me and that on top of that, the smartphone no longer allowed me to organize my time the way I wanted : when I received an email, I felt obliged to read it and respond to it immediately whereas without a smartphone, I might only check my emails when I decided. I felt invaded. Having a smartphone means too time-consuming: we find ourselves endlessly scrolling through content tailored to our interests and in the end, we spend a lot of time looking at what is actually ,” he believes.
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