Posted on 01/04/2016 4:51:36 AM PST by simpson96
Could you give up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn for 24 hours? How about for an entire week? A year, anyone?
One woman in Washington, D.C., with hundreds of Facebook friends, more than 4,000 Twitter followers and more than 500 LinkedIn connections, is giving up social media for 365 days.
After deleting those apps for 30 days last September, Darla Bunting said that the mini-digital detox wasn't enough.
"I went right back to my old habits," the education advocate told ABC News. "I fell victim to posting and scrolling all the time. I didn't unplug enough to develop new habits.
"By living in a connected world our mind doesn't get an opportunity to rest," Bunting, 30, said. "We don't get an opportunity to focus on one particular thing at at time. As humans that's how we learn. We learn through in-depth studies and spending months, even years sometimes to master our craft. In the digital age, that becomes harder because we acquire a lot of information, but we lose our ability to focus." (snip)
Bunting also said her initial detox helped her "gain a certain peace of mind."
"I was able to really get a good night's sleep and my weekends finally felt like enough," she detailed. "Normally, my weekends felt too short, but I felt like I had enough time to recharge and get all of the things done that I needed to do to prepare for the upcoming week."
Bunting said she hopes to spend the year reallocating her time in productive and meaningful ways such as saving to buy her first home and going to the gym.
"I look forward to getting back to basics and getting back to things that are most important to me," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Good on her.
The fact that anyone has to do this is a shame.
The last time my computer broke down I went about six months before I bought a new one. This was around 2009, I think. It was actually pretty nice, I read a lot of books. It would be harder now because I use the computer more. Pay all my bills, depend on Amazon too much, lots of folks only know how to get in touch with me by e-mail, and....I do almost all my reading on a Kindle now....sigh
I quit FB in August. I felt like it had become a chore.
I find it depressing that so many people who grew up in the era before computers, now have little to no desire to communicate face-to-face or even by phone with others anymore. It’s all texting. Or Facebook. It’s disturbing to see how they are embracing a removal from real interaction with people. They’re losing their humanity.
I have to admit . . I had to do it, too. I had hundreds of friends on Facebook, but my family started complaining that I was too involved with virtual strangers and not giving enough time to the real-life family and friends all around me. I quit the first time for about three months, with the intent to limit my exposure when I returned. Within mere days, I was enthralled with the pace of ‘talking’ to hundreds of people across America, and even the rest of the world. It IS addicting . . at least it is/was to me. I quit again over 8 months ago. It was hard to not post pics of my newest Grandson who was born October 15th . . and especially hard to not post pics of him when he played Baby Jesus at our church this Christmas. It is hard to not have daily contact with my old friends and my distant relatives . . but I’ve found there is a price to pay for being on social media . . and that price includes stress, less sleep, less time for real life projects, and somewhat losing control of my own life. I am much more content now.
“Could you give up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn for 24 hours? How about for an entire week? A year, anyone?”
Yes, I have never and don’t plan to subscribe to any of these. People act as if this is a part of life that cannot be done without. There is life outside of the virtual world.
Welcome to cyberspace, I’m lost in the fog
Everything’s digital I’m still analog
When something goes wrong
I don’t have a clue
Some 10-year-old smart ass has to show me what to do
Sign on with high speed you don’t have to wait
Sit there for days and vegetate
I access my email, read all my spam, I’m an analog man.
The whole world’s living in a digital dream
It’s not really there
It’s all on the screen
Makes me forget who I am
I’m an analog man
Yeah I’m an analog man in a digital world
I’m gonna get me an analog girl
Who loves me for what I am
I’m an analog man
What’s wrong with vinyl, I think it sounds great
LPs, 45s, 78s but that’s just the way I am
I’m an analog man
Turn on the tube, watch until dawn
One hundred channels, nothing is on
Endless commercials, endless commercials, endless commercials
The whole world’s glued to the cable TV
It looks so real on the big LCD
Murder and violence are rated PG, too bad for the children
They are what they see
The whole world’s living in a digital dream
It’s not really there
It’s all on the screen
Makes me forget who I am
I’m an analog man
Yeah I’m an analog man in a digital world
I’m gonna get me an analog girl
Who loves me for what I am
I’m an analog man
Yeah I’m an analog man in a digital world
_ JOE WALSH “Analog Man”
Sure, I could give up social media. But how could I give up FR?
And . . I am very happy to know I am no longer helping to support Mark Zuckerberg.
Anyone have the over/under on this?
Younger adults have already moved on. Millennial are too busy with their careers and kids. I think it’s mainly the middle aged and older adults who are social media addicts. Eventually, there will be a backlash and everyone will move on.
I don’t spend any time with social media, but I would miss streaming video if I didn’t have a computer.
My daughter was dealing with some kids online that were picking on her. She was wasting alot of time going back and forth with them.
I showed her how to fix it. I closed her laptop. I powered off her cell phone.
There... problem solved.
Easy enough to do if you haven't gotten involved with Social Media to start with. What a gigantic waste of time.
Bump!
The people I observe who ‘can’t put the phone down’ are, hands down, the millennials. Doesn’t matter where they are, either - at a restaurant, commuting on a train or bus, walking down the street. Even at baseball games (where they presumably paid good money and took the trouble to get there) they are looking down at their phones way, way more than they are watching anything happening. It’s incredible.
That’s the irony, isn’t it?
FR is “social media lite” without all the bells, whistles, and trappings of the huge systems. Sure Jim didn’t create a “friend” or “like” or “image” toolset, but we all have friends here and our own ways of “liking” a post.
Plus friends here are bonded by something truly important — love of country, the Constitution, freedom, and liberty.
Giving up FR would be a challenge, indeed.
The night Obama on reelection, I shut down my facebook account and never looked back. Any friend I have is in my rolodex. I don’t know if my cell phone has internet nor do I care. LinkedIn is used strictly for work. The only pleasure I derive from technology is coming to FR and playing World of Warcraft a couple of times a week.
I think they paid to be included on her list!
I don’t do FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn. Relatives keep encouraging me to get on FB, but I don’t know what I would “not do”, in order to make time for that. I WOULD miss FR, and a handful of blogs and sewing sites, which I check most days.
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