Planning Your Digital Detox, Ctd

And Now a Moment With Kanye, Kim, Selfies and Mirrors: Shouldn't…shouldn't Kanye be in the mirror? pic.twitter.com/fipm1ZJYJw — Kath…

— :.｡.™н≈в≈đ 27.｡.: (@FlowUrbano_x3) March 24, 2014

The 5th annual National Day of Unplugging was earlier this month. Casey Cep throws cold water on the idea, claiming that “we’ve focussed our collective anxiety on digital excess, and reconnecting with the ‘real’ world around us represents one effort to control it”:

[T]he “real” world, like the “real” America, is an insidious idea. It suggests that the selves we are online aren’t authentic, and that the relationships that we forge in digital spaces aren’t meaningful. This is odd, because some of our closest friends and most significant professional connections are people we’ve only ever met on the Internet, and a third of recently married couples met online. It’s odder still because we not only love and socialize online but live and work there, too. Is it any less real when we fall in love and break up over Gchat than when we get fired over e-mail and then find a new job on LinkedIn?

Lindsay Holmes pushes back:

Now don’t get me wrong, I love technology just as much as the next person and I see the immense value of it (after all, I do work for an online media company). I also agree with Cep when she argues that it connects us with others in ways we were never able to before. But there are extreme advantages to going off the grid for a while — and there’s science behind it that can’t be ignored. Studies have shown that being constantly plugged into our devices can make us feel more lonely, less likely to engage in prosocial behavior, can severely mess with our sleep and can even cause weight gain.

And it’s not just ourselves we’re protecting by being mindful of technology — it’s future generations. Now more than ever, children as young as 2 have their eyes fixated on screens — and it’s negatively affecting their growth. Children’s excessive technology use has the potential to cause attention, brain and behavioral problems. When I think back on my childhood, I think about playing jump rope outside and going swimming. The only faint recollection I have of technology is the grating sound of dial up. When the next generation gets older, what will be the source of their nostalgia? Angry Birds over the real birds they’d hear if they were playing outside?

Recent Dish on digital detoxing here.