It’s digital detox time for film-maker Alex Lykos, as he attempts to go cold turkey on his phone and other devices for 30 days for this documentary belonging to the lower-budget end of the sub-genre of personal challenge films; previous entries include the likes of Super Size Me (man eats lots of fast food) and America Unchained (man tries to travel across America without giving any money to multinationals).
Lykos begins his offline odyssey with a fun potted history of the mobile phone, starting with a 1973 model which is heavier than a four-pint carton of milk. (This comparison is illustrated by Lykos walking along holding said carton of milk to his ear.) The film is strongest in these lighter sections which lean into Lykos’ naturally upbeat high-school science teacher vibe. These handy pop-quiz explainers are peppered with stats around smartphone use – there are eight billion smartphones in existence today, we apparently touch them 2,600 times a day, and Lykos himself spends an average of six hours a day using his.
Where the film wanders into stickier territory is when it shifts into complex areas where a touch more rigour around sourcing, attribution and citation with regard to the stats quoted would help tease out facts from speculation. We’re told that the more screen time toddlers experience, the worse their outcomes in later childhood. This might or might not be the case, but there’s nothing on how the studies cited were conducted; methodology matters here, because of the vast potential for social bias. Perhaps screen time is destroying children’s brains? Or perhaps the parents who want or need to stick their kids in front of an iPad for six hours a day are facing challenges in other areas too, compared to parents who read and interact with their children? Are we looking at a consequence based on direct causality or something which is part of wider social circumstances?
It’d be great to know, but you won’t be able to work that out from watching this film. Still, it seems like a common sense proposition that decreased dependency on smartphones would be a good thing, and taken on those broad terms, Lykos gives an affable and personal survey of different issues associated with smartphone use, from self-esteem to attention span. But he’s just too discreet for his own good; he says, for example, not having his phone has strained his relationship with his wife, but we don’t see much of that. More of this would have made his film more interesting.
• Disconnect Me is released on 26 February on the Icon Film Channel and on 1 April on digital platforms.
