Our Presence Not Presents Christmas digital detox campaign challenged twelve bloggers to put down their phones for two days, to experience logging-off and focusing on family and friends. We hope that their stories about their experiences will inspire you to consider a digital detox of your own. Next up in the series is …

Suburban Mum’s Christmas digital detox

Suburban Mum, Maria. juggles being a busy mum to two little boys (6 and 3) with being a designer by day and a blogger by night so she was the perfect person to try the digital detox challenge!

“I am constantly in front of a computer, laptop or phone. My iPhone? It’s like an extension of me.”

Maria said she was initially ‘horrified’ at the thought of doing the challenge “Technology surrounds us every single day and as a blogger, one of the most important things is being ‘connected’. Whether that’s through social media, the blog or checking your emails. Being online and is a way of life.” The whole prospect made her very nervous and she actually missed starting on the designated day as she had just too many deadlines to meet but she got herself set-up and ready to go on the following day.

“When I told Mr H of my plans to switch off he just laughed at me!”

One of Maria’s challenges was the reaction of her friends and family when she first told them about the challenge. Her husband’s reaction wasn’t quite what she hoped for and her sister just assumed something was very wrong when she told her she couldn’t be contacted by Whatsapp or text “Why? What have you done?”

“I made sure I kept myself busy”

But with that out of the way, Maria’s strategy to get through her practice Christmas digital detox was to keep herself busy “I spent a couple of hours crafting and making bits and bobs with the boys. I did a bit of baking, the laundry and tidied the house. I spent the rest of the day chilling out with my boys and really focused on them.” Focusing on family was the whole point of the challenge for us, and why we set it, so we were really delighted to hear that’s how Maria spent her extra phone-free time.

“I learnt that nothing drastic is actually going to happen if I don’t have my phone on me 24/7.”

Even thought Maria found the challenge hard we loved that she did it and that she found out that she can continue to take breaks from her phone without anything disastrous happening! FOMO is a big fear for our digital detox retreat guests but they all report that they haven’t missed anything important when they log back on.

Give our Christmas digital detox challenge a go! It’s just two days offline and Christmas is the perfect time to be focusing on family and friends.