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One of these days, in an interview, I was asked this question and I, defender of digital, confess that I took a break to think.

I use email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, search on Google, browse the .pt website, and use apps like nikerun, uber, ipma, public, mbway, expresso and a few more almost daily. I cannot separate myself from my smartwatch, my smartphone, the tablet and the laptop. I use Spotify and Netflix daily. 

Recently, in the middle of a pandemic that threw us into remote work and home, I was 48 hours without Internet due to a malfunction in the service provider and I realized, more clearly, that my daily life depends on the access to digital. 

I repeat, when I was asked what "apps/software/gadgets/tools can't live without?”, I stopped to think. After that I answered: " I hope I can live without any."

I am often called upon to explain how digital inclusion is social inclusion. That no one can be left behind in the ongoing digital transition process.

It seems contradictory, but it is not. Know how to read, write, have social skills, education, digital skills. They are all tools that we should have and that we may or may not use. Can we live without Internet? Without electricity? Without books? Without music? Without mobile phone? Without clock? We can, like other living beings, but it wouldn't be the same.

Can we live without water, food, air, sun? We cannot, like other living beings.

We need the same, we survive without many things that we consider essential and we take for granted, but we lack each other to realize this and to feel joy and sadness, happiness and despair, belonging and loss, fear and courage, friendship, love.

With regard to this pandemic that puts us to the test, what does it lack most? Being with those we like the most, without fears or restrictions.