Logging Off Isn't the Only Answer

An English-language reflection on digital autonomy and the internet we can still build.

Inspired by “Notas sobre la desconexión digital,” by Marta G. Franco · September 27, 2026

Some people suggest turning off your phone to reconnect with the world. It's not bad advice. A day without notifications can do you good. What's curious is that even taking a break from digital life has become something to sell: we pay someone to give us, for a few hours, a reprieve from the very things we've been taught we can't live without.

That contradiction is what drew me to Marta G. Franco's reflections. In her essay, she asks us to look beyond our screens and our individual exhaustion. The question stops being just “How can I spend less time on my phone?” and becomes “Why does so much of our lives depend on platforms we have no control over?” That shift in perspective is worth exploring.

Going offline doesn't cost everyone the same. For some, it's as simple as putting the phone in a drawer. For others, staying connected means access to work, transportation, money, documents, and essential services. So it makes little sense to sell digital abstinence as a universal test of balance or self-discipline. The freedom to log off depends, first and foremost, on actually having the option.

It's also worth separating two things we tend to lump together: the internet and the dominant platforms. A network of pages, protocols, files, and people can still be an extraordinary place. That's quite different from an interface built to keep us scrolling, with ads wedged into every spare moment and decisions made by systems hardly anyone can examine.

That's where the small web comes in. A blog with RSS, a mailing list, a well-run forum, a community server, a pubnix, a personal homepage: none of these needs to compete with the reach of a giant social network. They only need to make a smaller, and perhaps more honest, promise: a place where people can read, publish, talk, and return whenever they like.

Of course, the independent internet is no paradise. Servers need maintenance; communities need rules; people need time. Not everyone wants to learn how to configure DNS, manage backups, or install software just to join a conversation. If we want alternatives that last, we'll have to make them welcoming without expecting every visitor to become a system administrator.

There's another trap in treating all this as a battle between the disciplined and the distracted. Blaming users for the time they spend online is convenient for the companies designing products to fight for their attention. We can change our habits, yes, but we can also demand interoperability, data portability, responsible moderation, and the right to decide how our tools work.

Maybe the answer isn't to vanish from the internet, but to reclaim the ability to choose where we want to be. Spend less time on what drains us; support what makes our lives better; keep the possibility of a diverse internet alive. There's no need to romanticize any of it. There's work, there's conflict, and there's the quiet joy of finding that not every corner of the web has to feel like a shopping mall.

In the end, I prefer that question to any promise of a digital detox: if the internet we've come to know wears us down, what can we do, together, to make the next one better?

Credits, authorship and thanks

Essay that inspired this piece: “Notas sobre la desconexión digital”, by Marta G. Franco, published on Redes nuestras on September 27, 2026.

Rights: The publication lists the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license (attribution, noncommercial use, and share-alike). Rights to the photograph should be checked separately before any commercial republication.

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Thanks: My sincere thanks to Marta G. Franco for such wonderful inspiration. Her essay reminds us that we can criticize today's internet without giving up on the possibility of building a better one.