The cost of digitally disconnecting

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Meghan McCarty Carino (0:55)

Digital detox is the new luxury good. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Meghan McCarty Carino.

Sure, you can put down your phone and go touch grass for free. But for those looking for a little help committing to a more disconnected lifestyle, Paula Mejia writes for Mother Jones, there's a growing market of products and services from retreats to apps to devices, that promise to supercharge your ability to unplug for a price.

Paula Mejia (1:38)

Golden Door has been around for a long time and it has been a preferred retreat of people who are famous, who have the funds to be able to unplug. But when I met with them, I spent an afternoon there walking around the grounds and speaking with their general manager, Cathy. She told me the retreat center has evolved in tandem with whatever anxieties people have at that current moment. Increasingly, people come to Golden Door specifically to detach from their devices. That's something that has been happening more and more, let's say over the last decade. She also told me that her clientele is getting younger, which I thought was really interesting.

Ordinarily, Golden Door's clientele would have been perhaps a little older, but now it's skewing younger, and I think people are trying to rest back that relationship that they have with technology as well.

Meghan McCarty Carino (2:33)

So how do they actually do digital detox at a place like Golden Door?

Paula Mejia (2:38)

It's a little reverse psychology is how I took it. Cathy told me that it's more of a choose your own adventure sort of thing, where you can use Wi-Fi and your phone in your rooms if you'd like, but as time goes on, people feel less inclined to use it, and you can't use your phone in the common areas or anything.

They also told me that they give everyone a sleep bag for their phones. Psychologically, there are studies that back this up, but if you put your phone in a place where you can't see it, you feel less inclined to reach for it. And so I think that it has a similar effect with people who were there wanting to have more of a disconnect with their phones.

Meghan McCarty Carino (3:21)

So how much does an experience like this cost?

Paula Mejia (3:25)

Well, you can do, I believe, three days, four days or a week. And the cheapest, I want to say, is about $9,000. So not cheap.

Meghan McCarty Carino (3:36)

So this was a little, I guess, rich for your blood. So you kind of did your own DIY, digital detox. Tell me about what you did, what did you use?

Paula Mejia (3:45)

After I spoke with people for this, I tried to be realistic about something that would work for me. And as a freelancer, I have to be very fastidious about checking my email all the time. And so I knew that I wouldn't be able to do something extremely drastic in that way. So I set a moderate goal to just try and do less of it, let's say an hour a day.

One of the digital detox coaches I spoke with suggested that maybe interrupting my early morning routine would be helpful because I have a terrible habit of the alarm goes off on my phone and I'm already on my phone checking email and answering texts. And I don't love that that's the first thing I do as soon as I open my eyes. So I tried to wake up maybe half an hour earlier to go on walks and I just press news all the time and so I said, okay, this is not, I'm not going to wake up half an hour earlier type and go on a walk. And so I opted for something else that I thought would be more manageable, which is I would either instead of looking at my phone, I just tried to read a chapter of a book that was on my nightstand, or I would read through a feature story in one of the many magazines piling up on the coffee table, or I would just pet my dog for a little bit because she's always there. And that, I think that was helpful in a small way to kind of set the tone for the day.