25 Nov Digital Detox Gift Guide 2016
Welcome to our festive round-up of our favourite digital detox gifts! Whether you’re buying for yourself to use on your digital detox breaks, or buying for a loved one to gently encourage them to spend more time off-screen, these are the perfect accompaniment for the 2017 unplugged lifestyle.
A jigsaw
On our retreats we’ve found everyone loves getting stuck into a group jigsaw puzzle! It’s a great activity to start a digital detox with if you haven’t already. Not only does it help get the whole family involved, but you get a pretty cool piece of art at the end of it. There are plenty of options to choose from out there; whether you’re looking for 1000 pieces or 100 pieces, remember to always choose something you and the family will appreciate having in the house.
If you’re stuck on deciding which jigsaws would suit you best we love this London Underground Map (£10.00), a challenging 1000 piece puzzle. By the time you finish it you’ll know all the stations by heart and won’t need to look up TFL on your phone! For something a bit more challenging this gorgeous Gustav Klimt ‘The Kiss’ puzzle (£12.99) is definitely worth a go!
A life-changing course
We know, don’t we, that experiences are always better than ‘things’? So how about giving someone the gift of a course that might literally change their lives? Our friends at Action for Happiness have teamed up with Do Something Different to offer a 12-week online course (£25.00) that could make 2017 the best year yet for your recipient.
Drawing on everything science knows about what makes us happy the ‘Do Happiness’ course is designed is bring all that good stuff directly into your life. If there’s someone special who would really appreciate this, or even as a treat for yourself, we think this gift could be really special.
A digital detox book
There’s no better antidote to scrolling aimlessly on your smartphone screen than getting stuck into a good book. There are too many great fiction titles for us to recommend just one, but for a thought-provoking non-fiction read try this digital detox tome ‘Reclaiming Conversation’ by Sherry Tuckle(£12.08).
Tuckle’s book investigates what special benefits face to face conversation gives us and argues that we are in danger of losing out on some of these by focusing too much on the online world. We highly recommend this for some digital detox inspiration!
A smartphone ‘bed’!
Throw away all your smartphone bed mounts and get an actual smartphone bed. What’s a smartphone bed? Well it’s exactly what it sounds like, a bed, but for a smartphone.
Arianna Huffington‘s newly launched venture Thrive, includes in the first batch of products for sale ‘The Phoned Bed’ $100 (£80). The idea behind the bed is that it helps all the family get into the routine of putting their phone to ‘sleep’ at night and not bringing it into the bedroom. Huffington uses one herself and says that every night at around 10pm all her family leave their individual smartphones in the bed which ensures a screen-free deep sleep at night. It’s not cheap but what price would you put on a really good night’s sleep for all of you…? We’re going to be giving this one a try!
An anti-smartphone
There’s been a recent resurgence in demand for what we call the ‘anti-smartphone’ (aka the ‘dumbphone’), i.e. a phone that retains old school phone functions and let’s you call and text but doesn’t include any ‘smart’ features, specifically a digital screen for getting online.
We’re big fans of this very cool version from Punkt (£229.00) which comes with the tagline ‘technology tamed’. Not only does it look good, but it enables you to swap a smartphone sim in and out of it, meaning you can keep the same number while doing a digital detox but still be contactable. How clever is that?
A badminton racket or table tennis bat
Both badminton and table tennis are very accessible sports. They’re easily manageable on weekends or after work, you don’t need a lot of kit (especially if you use an existing table rather than buy a table tennis table) and what you do need can be bought quite cheaply. Not only do they keep you active but they keep your hands and eyes busy and away from your digital devices.
We’ve found a really good value badminton racket (£8.99) for you and if you want a complete table tennis set of bats and balls (£12.99) this one is very good value for money too.
A game to exercise the brain cells
If you’re looking for something challenging for someone who likes an intellectual challenge we highly recommend ‘The Thinker Game‘ (£10.00). This card-based ‘guess who’ game features 52 thinkers drawn from The School of Life’s curriculum. Players take on the personas of leading figures from the worlds of anthropology, architecture, art, design, literature etc and their opponent tries to guess who they are by asking ‘yes’/’no’ questions. This will definitely bring a bit of focus back into a screen-distracted brain!
A digital detox t-shirt
Finally, our digital detox gift guide wouldn’t be complete without a plug for one of our own t-shirts. We have a range of styles and colours but this ‘unplugged’ design comes white with a black logo for both men and women (£20) – all tees are available on the shop on our site!
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