Disconnecting: The Last Act of Rebellion

The first car I ever owned, I bought after a couple of years of work. It must have been about twenty-five years ago or more. It was a red Atlantic, a predecessor of today’s Jetta—if I remember correctly. I got it for one reason only: to save time and visit a girlfriend in Apodaca more often.

I saved money for months, even years, to buy it. I never told her. And just when I had finished paying for it and was about to receive it, she dumped me—just like that. Suddenly, I had a car… but no destination. It was only useful for commuting to work and back home.

I remember she was the first person I knew who had a cell phone. It caught my attention. They were huge back then, nothing like today. The strange thing was that she was always "available" but rarely answered. No signal, missed calls, some other excuse. I didn’t understand much about it, but I listened.

With that car, in a time before mobile phones, I found a routine. On Saturdays, I would leave work at noon and just drive. Sometimes I took the national highway, other times the road to Nuevo Laredo or Saltillo. I drove aimlessly until I reached some small town, some forgotten roadside restaurant. I’d eat, walk around a plaza for a while, then head back.

My mother was still alive then. My father too. They always told me they couldn’t reach me, that I was disconnected, that it seemed like I was hiding from the world. And in a way, they were right. I was looking for that. To disconnect. From work, from the city, from traffic, from everything.

Today, that seems impossible. There’s WhatsApp, the internet, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. We live online and can be tracked practically at all times. We are always available, always waiting for a call, an email, a private message. We’re glued to the latest news, the latest scandal, the latest disaster. We’ve become compulsive consumers of information.

And we’ve also become addicts. We don’t want to miss anything. We don’t want to disconnect for even a second. We listen to music all day on YouTube, scroll endlessly through TikTok, check social media every five minutes. We live on the internet. And the gap between us and the real world keeps growing.

Ironically, when the pandemic hit, hyperconnectivity became even more extreme. Online classes, remote work, Zoom meetings. Everything was virtual. And in that isolation, we plunged even deeper into cyberspace. We lost track of time, physical connection, routine. We became more dependent on technology.

Now, many are starting to feel it. The exhaustion. The saturation. The need to unplug. Those endless Zoom meetings, those omnipresent screens, that constant state of being “online” is wearing us down. We want to meet face to face, talk without filters, without delays, without technical issues.

We want to take back our lives. We want schedules. We want to turn off our phones without guilt. We want to stop receiving work messages on weekends. We want to stop feeling like we’re missing out on something important if we don’t check Instagram or TikTok. We want to sleep without the temptation of watching “just one more video.”

Because this hyperconnection is costing us. It steals our time, our peace, our sleep. It’s not just Netflix or Prime Video. It’s also social media, notifications, memes, late-night messages. It’s the anxiety of always being available.

Maybe things will start to change. Maybe, at some point, we’ll realize that we need to disconnect to regain our sanity. That going back to “dumb” phones wouldn’t be such a bad idea. That the real revolution isn’t digital, but rather in those who choose to leave cyberspace of their own free will.

Maybe one day we’ll learn to use technology without letting it consume us. Maybe, at some point, we’ll remember that life is out there, beyond the screen.

Maybe disconnection will be the true luxury of the future.