Embracing Analogue Connection: A Journey to Emotional Stability

In early December, a group of college students at St. John’s College in Santa Fe taped up typewritten flyers announcing a six-day “tech fast.” Participants voluntarily gave up smartphones and internet-connected devices. They woke each other up in person instead of with alarms, wrote notes on chalkboards instead of texting, and made plans face-to-face instead of over group chats. If I had to ask myself how many 20-year-olds in my life would volunteer for this, I would have guessed maybe 0.

Twenty students showed up.

In a world where young people are often portrayed as inseparable from their phones, this was striking. No administrator mandated it. No parent insisted on it. They designed it. But why?

Because many of them were tired. Not just tired in the way college students are always tired, but cognitively overwhelmed, socially frazzled, and emotionally exhausted. For this most digital of generations, technology seemed the most likely culprit.

Understanding Burnout and Cognitive Fragmentation

We often think of burnout as something that happens in high-pressure jobs. Yet, there’s another, quieter form of burnout that comes from constant digital stimulation. Every notification, every scroll, every micro-hit of content asks the brain to switch gears. Our attention shifts constantly, and with it, our thoughts and emotions. Over and over, all day long.

This is cognitive fragmentation.

Instead of sustained focus, we live in a state of constant interruption. Instead of depth, we get superficiality. Over time, this constant switching taxes working memory and executive function. It becomes harder to concentrate, harder to read long texts, and harder to tolerate boredom. Boredom used to be the space where creativity and reflection lived. Now it’s something to anesthetize immediately.

Many of the students in the tech fast described reflexively reaching into empty pockets, as if their phones were still there. Others described deleting Instagram only to start scrolling something else, anything else—even Google Maps!

That’s not a moral or intellectual failing. It’s a product of a nervous system trained to seek stimulation and a digital ecosystem constantly providing it. When the stream of input never stops, the brain rarely gets to settle. And when the brain never settles, I start to feel depleted.

Loneliness in a Hyperconnected World

Cognitive dysfunction wasn’t the only thing the students described. They talked about feeling alienated from one another, sometimes sitting in the same room while everyone scrolled separately. They expressed wanting more real contact but felt inexperienced in how to initiate it. This is the paradox of modern loneliness: we are constantly reachable yet increasingly isolated.

Social media offers proximity without vulnerability. We have seemingly great visibility into each other's lives, but this is mediated through our phone screens instead of being shared in active communication. Messaging allows coordination without tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, or any of the other paraverbal cues we have evolved to process. Does true connection require a little more friction than we have become accustomed to?

Connection requires patience, showing up even when it's inconvenient, risking awkwardness, and being vulnerable without irony. During the fast, students had to physically search their campus for one another. They used a chalkboard in the dining hall as a hub to leave messages for one another and knocked on doors in the morning instead of setting alarms. They couldn’t text that they were running late—they had to actually show up on time.

These small inconveniences created something else: shared experience. When communication over distance was removed, investment in the present moment increased. Because loneliness isn’t just about the absence of people in our social proximity; it’s often about the absence of depth in the interactions we have with those people.

Analogue Friction and Emotional Regulation

There was something else psychologically interesting about this experiment. The students weren’t rejecting technology entirely. They were experimenting with friction. By making their lives more complicated, they paradoxically felt freer and more present. Denied the constant distractions of doomscrolling, they made concrete plans with one another.

Modern technology is designed to remove friction. We can see this in the way we shop, in the way we have food delivered, in the way we bank, learn, and find partners. But friction isn’t always bad! Friction slows us down, forces intention, and creates boundaries.

In therapy, I often work on increasing a person’s tolerance for emotional discomfort—boredom, anxiety, uncertainty, fear. Phones are incredibly efficient tools for avoiding those feelings. The moment discomfort appears, you reach for relief. Over time, that reflex can weaken your ability to sit with yourself. However, it is my true clinical belief that you can never distract those feelings away forever. By experiencing them, you process them, come to terms with them, wrestle with them, and ultimately move past them.

The students’ week without phones wasn’t about nostalgia for a pre-digital era, although that is also an interesting trend among young people. It was about testing whether their constant stimulation was crowding out parts of themselves that needed room to breathe.

Is This a Generational Problem?

It’s tempting to frame this as a Gen Z issue. But most adults I work with describe similar patterns:

• Checking email compulsively.

• Scrolling late into the night despite groggy mornings the day after.

• Feeling scattered and unable to focus.

• Being “in touch” with many people but deeply connected to few.

  
  

Young people may simply be noticing it earlier. Unlike previous generations, they grew up with this level of stimulation as the baseline. The fact that some are now choosing to step back, voluntarily, suggests a growing awareness that something feels unsustainable.

Burnout, Loneliness, and the Nervous System

When I put these pieces together, a pattern emerges.

Chronic digital stimulation → fragmented attention → reduced tolerance for stillness → avoidance of discomfort → superficial connection → increased loneliness → more scrolling to cope. It becomes a recursive loop that I can feel progressively less able to escape.

Breaking that loop doesn’t necessarily require giving up my phone forever. It might mean:

• Phone-free hours.

• Leaving devices out of the bedroom.

• Scheduling in-person contact intentionally.

• Creating small pockets of analogue life.

  
  

The goal isn’t absolute abstinence; most of us would find that completely impossible. But I do think it is possible to be more conscious of my digital engagement and to be more intentional about stepping back from passive consumption and towards greater intentionality.

What This Means for Mental Health

We are living through a historically unique technological shift. The question isn’t whether technology is good or bad, but rather how much of my cognitive and emotional bandwidth I allow, and can survive, outsourcing to it.

The students at St. John’s didn’t all abandon their smartphones permanently. Many returned to them with mixed feelings—hundreds of unread messages waiting. But several described something important: a new clarity about how they wanted to relate to their devices. When they picked their phones back up, much of what had felt urgent suddenly looked trivial. That awareness alone can be powerful.

As a therapist, I see how easily overstimulation can masquerade as productivity, connection, or relaxation. A nervous system that never rests struggles to regulate itself. And connection that never deepens leaves me feeling lonely and adrift in a world that, through my screens, seems to be rife with other people connecting with one another.

If I’m feeling burned out, scattered, or lonely despite being constantly plugged in, I’m not alone. Sometimes the first step isn’t dramatic. It’s simply noticing what I reach for when I’m uncomfortable, what feels nourishing versus numbing, and where friction might actually be helpful. Analogue connection isn’t about rejecting modern life. It’s about remembering that depth still requires presence.

If I am feeling lonely, fragmented, or like I have an unhealthy dependence on my devices or the internet, I can reach out on the Contact Page.