My Return to Simpler, Happier Times

The first time I heard about Punkt was at the “Digital Detox Festival” near Sauris.

There were many reasons why I decided to go, but the most fundamental one — the one that pushed me to take a solo trip to that small village in Friuli — was the search for a solution to the excessive amount of time I was spending on social media.

To give some context: I’m 25 years old, and I created my first social media account when I was around 13. My first phone — what today we might call a sort of dumbphone — I got when I was about 7, and I mainly used it to call my family.

It feels like, in an instant, a billion things arrived and completely reshaped reality. The smartphone is definitely one of them.

So convenient, so beautiful, so useful.

I don’t even know how things worked before, because I was born into these technologies.

I’ve lived my life in apparent harmony with these innovations. I’ve never known anything about IT, and I’ve never read a manual to understand how to use them.

Everything was natural. Intuitive. Almost like an imprinting.

Growing Up Inside Social Media

When Facebook and other social media platforms like Ask, Musical.ly, Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr, and Snapchat arrived, it felt exactly the same.

They seemed incredibly exciting.

My friends and I were almost always connected. It felt like we had an entire world in our hands, where we had the power to show ourselves.

Where we had the “right” to exist, to express ourselves, to be seen, to share ideas and thoughts — just like anyone else.

I discovered this world on my own, together with the same group of friends who shared that small yet infinite universe.

Over the years, owning a smartphone — and knowing how to use it — became almost essential.

Its uses seemed endless, and that very versatility became its Trojan horse.

We talk about digital identity, online banking, e-commerce, and more. Everything in the palm of your hand. Apparently.

When I Realized I Had a Problem

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I had the chance to experience the invisible — and I started paying attention to things that had previously gone unnoticed.

That’s when I realized I had a problem.

My daily social media usage was around 7 hours. Even after the pandemic ended, the problem remained.

I was heading straight into brain rot: consuming fast, shallow, repetitive, uncreative content.

I knew I had a problem, and I tried several times to fix it: I turned off notifications, set time limits, changed my phone interface to make it less appealing.

But nothing worked.

I think everyone has a preferred platform. In my case, it was Instagram.

At first, I was an active user — posting, commenting, reacting.

Over time, I became a ghost.

I spent my time consuming content I didn’t even interact with anymore.

I couldn’t even justify it as “staying informed”: during the pandemic, I had stopped following all news outlets on social media.

I felt constant anxiety.

And more than that, I felt manipulated.

Like a small fish seeing hooks everywhere.

At first, I bit: clickbait titles, unfinished content designed to keep me scrolling deeper and deeper.

I saw the internet — but not the way its pioneers imagined it.

Instead, I saw it like a fish sees a fishing net.

I had been hooked.

Technology, Dependency and Contradictions

I’m neither a Luddite nor technophobic, but I can’t help thinking that there is something deeply contradictory in all of this.

I’m holding an incredibly powerful tool — one that not only needs to be used, but also understood.

From the materials it’s made of — which include a large portion of the periodic table — to its assembly and hardware.

How sustainable is it to keep changing phones when, in most cases, the issue is just the battery?

These are market dynamics that belong to our society.

Belonging, being part of something — like organs in a body: part of a larger organism that you don’t control on your own.

An ecosystem that feeds on attention and stimulation.

Drawing a Line

So I drew a line. A “Punkt.”

It was a long process, but a satisfying one.

Over the past months, the setup of my smartphone has completely changed.

I deleted most of my apps: no more Instagram, TikTok, Google Maps, YouTube.

I switched to different applications — equally valid — that better protect my data and don’t follow hyper-addictive algorithmic logic.

The MP02 helped me in this process of awareness.

And the library became a great ally for all the information I gathered.

I used the Punkt MP02 for several days — not always, but on various occasions, especially while traveling.

Traveling Without a Smartphone

One experience that is definitely worth telling is riding the Alpe Adria cycle path without a smartphone.

My boyfriend and I started from a small Slovenian town near the Italian border, cycling across Friuli all the way to Austria, near Salzburg, and then back again.

We slept in a tent every night, setting up camp wherever we felt like it.

We didn’t have digital maps — only signs along the route.

And during those days, we were never bored.

We were always on our bikes, looking around, talking, listening to each other.

We were in contact with our mind and body.

But not only that.

It felt like I was seeing the world differently.

I paid attention to where I was going — to the details of every village, every street, every city.

And it was beautiful.

I felt a new kind of curiosity growing inside me. A sense of wonder.

I was “photographing” moments with my eyes, finding creative solutions to problems — even technical ones — that came up during the journey.

A Different Kind of Time

In the end, Punkt was also this for me:

a return to a different kind of time — a more authentic one.

A time where I learned to divide my days between study, rest, work, and discovery.

A balance that, as a student, I feel I have finally achieved — and that I want to carry with me into the future.

— by Chiara Stella Lorenzi