At first blush I may not seem like a prime candidate for a digital detox.

I got a smartphone only a few months ago and don’t permit push notifications on it, nor do I have many apps. I’m a sporadic Facebook and Twitter poster. I recently acquired an e-reader for travel but have yet to put anything on it. I have a Roku box with a Netflix account, but have never owned a DVR. And I don’t work in a lightning-paced corporate office.

But on closer inspection, I haven’t resisted the downloadable siren song of tech addiction as much I’d hope. I receive email alerts on my computer, which I’m on the majority of the day — and check my new smartphone repeatedly while out. I aimlessly browse the Internet, scanning short articles, lists and videos when I could be reading long-form journalism or books. I also visit Facebook and Twitter too often to surveil friends, acquaintances, strangers and enemies, not always in that order. And ever since my Walkman days in college, I move through the world listening to music nearly all the time.

We know the downsides: distractibility, wasted time and shallow “ ‘sips’ of online connection,” as the psychologist and professor Sherry Turkle calls it.

So for one week in January, inspired by the example of the powerful media triumvirate of Arianna Huffington, Cindi Leive and Mika Brzezinski, I unplugged. It was surely less of a sacrifice for me than for these hyper-connected women, but to be fair, they did so on Christmas vacation, with two of them jetting off to Hawaii and “a faraway island.” I disconnected during a regular workweek and, in lieu of tropical seclusion, enjoyed the subfreezing and proximal isle of Manhattan.