It's time for a digital detox - how do you switch off?

Does a digital detox bath count if I wrote this on my phone while in the tub? What about if I managed a full 15-minute soak without scrolling but grabbed my laptop as soon as I had a towel around me? I admit there is little time in the day when I am not absorbed in one screen or another. And, as I dumped sea salt and clay into my bath tub from a packet of Digital Detox Bath — a new product from health brand Pursoma — I cursed the idea as a waste of time. I don’t even like baths and this one would be murky with sediment.

Yet the sentiment with which this packet of minerals comes is not altogether silly. Whether its promise to wash away “the positively charged radiation that accumulate in the body through the use of cell phones and electronic devices” actually works or not (and I’m not sure I noticed the effects of being de-charged being any different from the daily feeling of being uncharged — aka exhausted), what it does is insist you take 30-50 minutes away from your tech — while in the bath and afterwards when it suggests you “relax under a warm blanket”. I figured going straight to bed would be as good. Either way, it’s surely the incentive to switch off that counts.

It’s one that many in the tech and digital industries are embracing. After all, we must be some of the most positively charged people out there and, contrary to how it sounds, that’s apparently not a good thing.

Nicola Mendelsohn recently told me that she practises a “techno-Sabbath”, switching off her devices every Saturday to observe the Jewish day of rest and “spend time with the family”. For the number one boss of Facebook in Europe that’s dedication to detox. Likewise, Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, recently wrote that we should “try unplugging.”

“Padmasree Warrior is the chief technology officer at Cisco. She oversees thousands of engineers. I saw her at a conference in New York and she said, ‘I sleep for eight hours a night. I meditate, and every Saturday I do a digital detox.’ I thought to myself, ‘If she oversees thousands of engineers and she can do a digital detox, so can I’.”

Indeed if Warrior and Huffington can do it, then surely so can we all. As if to facilitate this, 26-year-old London copywriter and digital marketeer Lucy Pearson has set up Unplugged Weekend with her business partner Vikki Bates. Aimed at the capital’s technology and digital professionals, it is a three-day retreat in the Brecon Beacons where your various electronic accoutrements are not welcome and your phone will be confiscated for the duration. Instead, you’ll indulge in yoga and organic food, workshops and some local beer. The first takes place from August 1-3.

“It’s useful for everybody,” says Pearson, who staged a trial run with friends and work associates earlier this year. “People who don’t have their mobile phones find it easier to connect with one another. There was a good bond by the end of the trial weekend, even though everyone was very excited to get their phones back at the end.”

Her inspiration for this came from a holiday in the Sahara desert, where she met Bates. “We didn’t have any phone signal and by the end of the retreat we were almost nervous about having phones again because of the effect they have on us — I definitely used to be the kind of person who would be looking at my phone at the dinner table.”

The pair took their lead from similar events in the US. An organisation called The Digital Detox, based in digi-addict’s paradise, San Francisco’s Bay Area, holds after work Device-Free Drinks in the city at which you’re asked to hand in your phone at the door and has been hosting tech-free retreats in beautiful locations in Cambodia and California, including luxury ranches and the well-being Esalen retreat on Big Sur. Delegates have included employees from Facebook, Apple, Square, Twitter and Google, as well as whole teams from Airbnb and US software company VMware. It’s Pearson’s aim to start expanding her Unplugged Weekend to accommodate businesses too — and if Mendelsohn and Warrior are anything to go by, Facebook and Cisco will surely soon sign up.

As for me, it’s going to take more than a bath to wash away my tech addiction.