I offed my internet to get my family back together.

It is like a post apocalyptic movie scene where there are plenty of zombies created by an evil that has crept up in people's gadgets, attacked their functionality and brainwashed them. Leaving them glued to their cellphones unable to have conversations with each other, attend to their nagging children or create social bonding times as families or friends. These zombies occasionally swipe up and down their thumbs, bust into laughter or produce the weirdest sounds ever when they fail to bottle up their emotions, "take a look at this" they go.

The only time we break is when we are running out of battery. This is when we pee, make the bed or grab something to eat. In a few minutes we are back to it again, dazzled by the "beauty" or "evil" of it all.

I remember when I first encountered the internet some 15 years ago. It was a labour of love really because no one knew it would catch on and so it met resistance. When Facebook then arrived to us in 07, I was the first to have an account at my workplace and I had to persuade everyone else to join and befriend me.

Today, flip that and multiply that scenario by a hundred. Everyone is on every platform and every platform tries so hard not to let you go. They make sure you stay on for as long as it takes and because of the robots that see what you like, follow or request, they push more content to you until you barely have time to do anything else. There are many platform, all trying to get you on and once you do, welcome to the zombie apocalypse.

The aesthetics of it all encourage the spending of more time on your phone. The general appeal or beauty of your device, the screen colours and crisp imagery, the battery life, the sound, the mobile applications you download and how they connect your everyday life onto one gadget just about leaves you with no room to even fart. You are literally holding your breath all the times and it is amazing, the lengths at which these devices have been made to keep us drugged.

So when the Easter holidays where upon us, I felt like I needed to do something to make it work. Because everyone relies on the connectivity from the wifi connection, it was a no-brainer that it was the first gadget that I needed to work on. The hard part was also switching myself off to make it look legit as I was blaming it on the service provider. After a few reboots and enquiries on why the network was not available, everything came back to the way it ought to be during holidays. We spoke more, moved outside the house, sat under the shade of the tree, exchanged stories on life and laughed. We all needed it. Eventually when I switched it back, we hardly needed it because we had each other.

If online platforms are using aggressive ways to keep me and my family on, I too shall be using aggressive guerilla "chimurenga" tactics to get a little bit of time with the ones I love. It calls for it and I know I am right. I also know that I can never take them away from the internet as it constitutes a big part of our lives today (more so with the pandemic restrictions) but I can save them from turning totally into "zombies". Think of me as the warrior who saves the day.

With newbies coming in on social media platforms, Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces occupying the bulk of audio social platforms so far, it's about to get even tougher out there. I do have a soft spot for these two because I have always been a radio head myself and because I really don't have to be glued to the screen (though some still do) I can still participate. With audio, I can even create my on room or space and get instant reactions and comments in real time, eliminating the delay and unending discussions on a post or story. Just like a good old radio show, if you miss it, better try hard next time. All said and done I hope you picked up the lesson for today? UNPLUG yourself occasionally and encourage physical bonding as much as you can.