Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

Have you ever thought about how much time you spend online? Many people are online more than 8 hours a day, which is more than any other activity, including sleep. The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly added to this. We are online while studying, working, keeping in touch with others, and spending our free time. However, this kind of lifestyle is not very beneficial to our physical or mental health. Of course, we don’t want to live like this, but often we can’t seem to help it.

Our project focuses on reminding and encouraging people to spend more time offline. We targeted our peers – young adults, and confronted them directly online via ‘instagram stories’. Firstly, we had them think about their online/offline lives through a series of questions.

Right after that came our reaction – we confronted them with scientific facts about the negative effects of particular behaviours. These facts were supposed to target mainly those who answered according to our expectations. In the next image, we offered them our advice, under the motto GO OFFLINE.

More than 150 people viewed our stories and around 50 respondents actively took part. The questions were:
1. How much time do you spend online? (by swiping on a scale)
The average answer was around 75%.
2. Are you satisfied with the amount of time you spend online?
76% answered no.
3. Are you online shortly before going to sleep?
96% answered yes.
4. Are you online right after waking up?
64% answered yes.
5. Do you constantly check your phone?
63% answered yes.
6. Do you experience headaches, sore eyes or neck pain?
53% answered yes.

Since our project reflects online life, we worked on a phone screen. It served as a background for questions and the subsequent facts also arrived as ‘new messages’. On the next screen was a turn-off sign, stating GO OFFLINE, indicating it was time to turn off our devices, or at least the internet.

We were pleasantly surprised by the target group’s response. Many people even sent a private message, almost defending themselves or feeling remorse. Overall, the responses to the project were positive. People were angry with themselves for their answers.

Therefore, we believe the project fulfilled its purpose – our followers became aware of their behaviour and learned about its negative effects.

To verify this conclusion, we asked one more question: What have you realised? I may be addicted / I am okay. 53% answered that they may be addicted. It’s a quite high percentage, but it is positive that people opened their minds. We believe this could be their first step towardss changing their personal lifestyle.

We also provided a space to our followers to share their own gimmicks or advice. This way they have become actively involved in resolving their online/offline lives.

The last few months have mainly proved to us that time spent offline needs to be greater than time spent online. Face-to-face human interaction cannot be replaced by technology. We should not forget that. So, GO OFFLINE.