Going dark for peace of mind: from the phone to the gun safe

## Digital blackout as a safety recipe: from the phone to the shotgun

There is a trend that takes responsible consumption to the extreme: switching off the router, removing the phone battery, unplugging the TV aerial and cancelling every entertainment subscription such as Netflix. The theory, presented as "healthy living", holds that peace of mind is not bought with more insurance but with less technological surface area. The only verifiable effect is the saving on fees: a recommendation that cuts advertising noise and fixed spending.

The disconnection manual starts with the phone: learning to remove the battery so the microphone and GPS cannot switch on without permission. Next comes the TV, reduced to a monitor after ripping out the aerial and disconnecting the internal speakers. It recommends doing without Windows 10 except for gaming, with the option of setting up two or three drives with different operating systems. And every night, the router's power strip: off. The web is credited with the ability to induce adverse moods, from tiredness to sadness; faced with that, switching off the computer is the proposed remedy. That leap from caution to the theory of influence is the point where the trend becomes superstition.

At the opposite extreme of the same search for security, another recommendation heads towards a gun licence and a safe at home. If one trend tries to make the world stop seeing us, the other prepares for the world to know we are armed. Same obsession, two technologies.

Between light bulbs that supposedly contain speakers and drives with parallel operating systems, the only provable thing is that the subscription bill goes down. If you sleep better with the router off, good for you. What does not add up is why the person who switches everything off still feels watched. There, security stops being a consumption problem.