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unplugged
By audhill | January 19, 2008
Here’s an admission: sometimes…. surfing the net and social networking makes me feel guilty. It makes me feel the same way I feel about watching TV … I feel so guilty that if the phone rings and I’m watching it, I turn the sound down.. not so I can hear you, but so that YOU don’t hear me (and know what I am doing). I don’t know what you will think listening to The Wire, Lost, or Heroes in the background, but I feel like I’ve been caught doing nothing, when I should be out hiking or making art or writing an article.
My fear is that the person who spends all of his or her time chatting people up online, commenting, watching TV or surfing around is a person whose real life is molding away. And my worry for children is that we have the wrong idea. We think we should find ways of engaging them while they are playing video games or IMing and texting their friends, when maybe what we should be doing, is forcing them to go outside, make them learn and do in the real, real world. I’m not a luddite, but even Bill Gates limits his children’s use of media to 45 minutes a day (and he includes video games in that time).
I’m wondering if I should limit mine. Should we limit our children’s? Maybe so. Clearly there’s purpose and value in establishing guidelines for internet use and for looking carefully at what the endgame is.
I used to say that content is everything, but I don’t think so anymore. I can’t fool myself into believing that if it’s educational (The We only watch the Discovery Channel and PBS Defense), it’s okay to stay online all day. This should be my measurement: online activity that replaces an offline life is addiction and is something to avoid. Successful living depends on balancing the different aspects of one’s life and being sure to have a rich, daily life offline as well as on.
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