I have a confession to make. For the past five days, I have spent nearly 15 hours a day glued to a screen.
I am a digital detox advocate. I am rebuilding a website dedicated to helping people spend less time on their phones. And yet, for almost an entire week, I have been doing exactly the opposite.
I have been sitting at my computer, talking to AI, fixing things, moving things around, changing settings, solving problems and rebuilding my websites.
So how did I get here?
Eight years ago, nobody thought this was a problem
I started Digital Detox about eight years ago. At the time, deliberately taking time away from phones and the internet seemed bizarre to a lot of people.
The internet was supposed to make life better. Smartphones were supposed to make everything easier. When I talked about the dangers of spending too much time online, people told me I was exaggerating, excessive or extreme.
Honestly, I felt so far ahead of the curve that almost nobody was listening. Eventually I stopped putting much energy into the website. I had barely touched it in years because it felt as though nobody cared.
Eight years later, the response is completely different. People no longer tell me I am exaggerating. They say, “Isn’t everyone addicted nowadays? What are you going to do?”
Somehow, that is even more heartbreaking. It is almost as though we have collectively given up.
Our work, businesses, banking, relationships, entertainment and communication are online. For many people, getting away from technology no longer feels like a choice.
Then I got hacked
My old WordPress websites had become a security headache. Recently, three of my websites and related accounts were compromised.
Someone got into my Facebook account and attempted to launch a $20,000 advertising campaign. Fortunately, it did not go through. Then my AI account was compromised and somebody spent about $400 before I realized what was happening. Then my hosting account was compromised and one of my websites was damaged.
At that point, I decided to stop patching the old setup and rebuild the websites from the ground up.
That is when the great irony began.
The digital detox guy gets addicted to AI
For almost a week, I have been spending around 15 hours a day working with AI. I am talking to it constantly.
The results have been astonishing. AI can build a website, troubleshoot technical problems and handle jobs that previously would have required a developer. If I gave it enough access, it could manage enormous parts of the process for me.
That is both exciting and unsettling, because the question quickly becomes: how much control are we willing to give these systems?
We are becoming AI minders
AI can increasingly do the repetitive work. Our value becomes knowing what should be done: having taste, knowing what good looks like, choosing the direction, giving better instructions and correcting the system when it goes wrong.
We are becoming less like traditional workers and more like AI minders, directors and editors.
That is powerful. But there is a catch. You can become so fascinated by the power of the tool that you forget to step away from it.
I have not been living up to my own standards
I have barely taken breaks this week. I have meditated briefly at the Buddhist stupa. I have gone out to buy food. I have taken a few naps. But for the most part, I have been on a screen.
I felt pressure to deal with the security problem before something worse happened. I wanted to rebuild everything so I could get back to my normal life. And I knew that when I stopped prompting the AI, the work stopped too.
So I pushed and pushed.
I think that is worth saying plainly: I do not always live up to my own standards.
Digital minimalism is not a purity test
Sometimes there is an emergency. Sometimes something breaks. Sometimes you work intensely for a few days because a real problem needs to be solved.
Digital detox and digital minimalism should not become another impossible standard that makes us feel guilty whenever we spend too much time online.
The job is to notice when technology is serving us and when we are serving it. We need to see when we are choosing to be online and when we have simply stopped choosing.
Once this project is finished, I am going to take a proper break. I am going to step away from the screens, get outside and return to the parts of life that make me feel alive.
Our lives are too valuable to spend them entirely inside technology.
If you are struggling with your phone, computer, AI or the internet, do not turn digital minimalism into another reason to attack yourself. Notice what happened. Make the next honest change. Then come back to your body, nature, the people you love and your actual life.
That is the part no technology can replace.
Love and blessings.
Other experiments that did not go to plan
This is not my first misadventure. These are the experiments that taught me more by going wrong than a perfect success story would have.
Choose one experiment you can finish
Do not copy my 15-hour workdays or turn your next change into a grand performance. Write down one boundary, what must remain available and when you will review what happened.
Michael has spent much of his working life online—and much of the rest of it trying to stop that technology taking over. He has thrown a phone into a lake, locked devices in boxes and experimented with long periods offline. He writes about what helped, what failed and how to keep the useful parts of digital life.
Published 12 August 2026. Written from Michael’s dictated account of rebuilding Digital Detox after several security breaches. The first-person claims are Michael’s own experience.