I am using reality to escape the internet…

Heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the latest health trends doing the rounds. In simple terms, HRV is about how well your body handles stress and recovers, measured by the tiny variations in time between heartbeats. If you have an Apple Watch or similar smartwatch, it’s probably measuring your HRV already, though the setting is often buried and the numbers themselves aren’t exactly self‑explanatory.

Out of curiosity, I installed an app called Stress Watch, which promises a more human-friendly interpretation of the data. From day one, it kept popping up to inform me that I was very stressed and that I urgently needed to do something about it. As you might imagine, this did not do wonders for my stress levels.

I’m aware that many experts are uneasy about digital health trackers, arguing that they fuel anxiety about sleep, fitness, and bodily functions, often doing more harm than good. Still, I decided to stick with the experiment and see what I could learn.

A lot of my afternoons are spent lying on the sofa under a weighted blanket. I had always assumed this was a fairly relaxing activity. Yet even then, my watch would flash up a red, sad face, warning me that I was highly stressed. This felt odd. I was doing nothing, surely this should count as rest?

Then it occurred to me that I wasn’t really doing nothing. I was lying there scrolling, clicking, half-reading, half-doomscrolling. In other words, arsing around on the internet. Could that be the source of the stress?

I’ve written before about how stressful I find the news and the constant stimulation of being online. Our nervous systems are frazzled, and very few of us get enough genuine rest away from the endless drip-feed of outrage, tragedy, and algorithmic noise. Rates of anxiety, depression, ADHD, and related conditions are at record highs, and I don’t think it’s controversial to say that smartphones and constant connectivity deserve a large share of the blame.

To be fair, smartphones can be used well:

• You can read books
• You can listen to podcasts
• You can meditate
• You can play genuinely relaxing games
• You can learn new skills

All positive uses of technology. But let’s be honest about how most of us actually use them:

• reading the news
• social media
• short-form video

Add in the darker corners of gambling and pornography, and it’s not exactly a recipe for a calm nervous system.

No matter what I tried, the little smiley on my watch never shifted from its look of concern. It all became mildly irritating. Until I started noticing something strange.

I was at a talk one evening when my watch buzzed. This time it showed a green, happy face, telling me I was doing great and that my stress levels were low. This surprised me. A talk requires attention. There’s noise, people, cognitive effort. You wouldn’t instinctively label it as ‘relaxing’.

Then, on another occasion, I was out in the pub with a friend and again the green face appeared, congratulating me on my excellent stress levels. The obvious scientific conclusion was that I should spend more time in the pub for the sake of my health.

So for the past few weeks, I’ve made a conscious effort to embrace reality and get the hell away from the internet. If I’m invited to something, I go. No dithering. No checking what else might be on. Just out the door.

In the past week alone, I’ve been to:

• an old-school disco
• a friend’s birthday party
• a traditional Irish session
• the QFT to watch a black-and-white French film (Nouvelle Vague if you are curious)
• a pub quiz
• a public talk
• a work networking event
• a bodhrán workshop

Whatever turns up in my calendar, I’m there. And according to my watch, it’s working. My stress levels have rarely been lower.

What I’m noticing is that the online world is saturated with pain and misery. It nudges you towards cynicism and nihilism. Endless scrolling exhausts you mentally and emotionally without giving anything back. By contrast, people in the real world are, by and large, lovely. I’ve had good conversations, unexpected laughs, and the sort of human warmth you simply don’t get through a screen.

There’s an old story, usually told as a Native American parable, about two wolves. One wolf represents anger, fear, envy, and despair. The other represents calm, kindness, curiosity, and hope. The wolves are always fighting inside us. When asked which one wins, the answer is simple: the one you feed.

The internet, especially the way most of us use it, is very good at feeding the worst wolf. Outrage, comparison, doom, anxiety, endless stimulation. Real life, imperfect and inconvenient as it is, tends to feed the other one.

Yes, the internet has real benefits. You can book flights, organise trips, buy obscure items, and read perspectives from all over the world. It’s also useful for finding your tribe; no matter how niche your interest, there’s probably a subreddit for it.

But it becomes a problem when it starts to displace real-world engagement rather than support it. When the internet stops being a tool and starts being a habitat.

For me at least, the data, the mood, and lived experience all point in the same direction: less scrolling, more showing up. Reality, it turns out, is surprisingly good for your nervous system.

Now some of you might be thinking: all this sounds exhausting. I barely have any energy when I come home from work; all I can manage is to slump on the sofa and watch Netflix. I hear you. I was like that too.

But the key thing to take away from this rant is that the internet and our devices are part of what’s making us so tired in the first place. I’m currently reading a book called Digital Exhaustion, which makes a convincing case that the endless barrage of emails, texts, WhatsApps, Slack messages, news alerts, Twitter posts, Instagram feeds, and TikTok reels is absolutely knackering us.

By contrast, heading out for some exercise or meeting a friend might look tiring, but it tends to be energising. The effort pays you back.

Another thing that reliably reduces stress is spending time in nature. A good dander is a free way to feel better. Yes, the rain makes it harder, but if you make the effort to get out the door, your nervous system will usually thank you.

I don’t think the answer is smashing your phone or retreating to a hut in the woods. It’s simpler than that. Use the internet deliberately, then close it. Feed it a little, don’t let it feed on you. Show up to things, even when you can’t be bothered. Talk to actual humans. Go for the walk, even in the rain. If HRV is really a proxy for how well we handle stress, then mine seems to be telling me something unfashionable but reassuring: the more I choose reality over the feed, the calmer my body becomes. Which suggests that the boring advice might still be the best. Look up. Get out. Be there.