#screen fast

[timdawe-blog]

A Week Without Screens

I love watching great tv shows, and I enjoy using the internet and playing games like minecraft, but I feel they are becoming to great of a distraction in my life.

I'm in university and am getting bogged down with my papers and exams but instead of dealing with the things that are in my life I've been burying my head in a constant stream of distractions. I feel disjointed and far from knowing who I am and even further from knowing who I want to be.

So starting tomorrow no screens. I'm putting a beautiful Exploding Tardis picture in front of my tv and leaving my laptop safely stored away.

The Boundaries:

I do need to communcate through email for my job and school so i'm allowing 20 mins each day to read and respond to anything that can't wait till next monday.

other than that it is pretty simple: no tv and no computer

The phone will be the hardest obstical but I am only using my lovely Iphone as a phone and will not be playing any games or checking twitter or tumblr, if I get texts I will read but only respond to the ugent stuff, my friends all no what I'm doing so I suspect I will only get important messages from my boss and the like.

My blog has a little queue, but I'll be back to let you know how this all turned out in a week or so!

[oncrickethill]

National Screen Fast Day

 As No Child Left Behind changes our schools, another movement is starting - No Child Left Inside.  In Maine every teenager has a laptop provided by the school district.  What does this do?  How does playing COD and WOW constantly affect people?  I spend almost 40 hours (40!) on a screen during the week - much is for school but a large portion is TV shows and Facebook.  What could I do during these 40 hours if I unplugged myself?

...Imagine a world where everyone uplugged themselves from their screens (TVs, computers, cell phones, etc) and actually interacted!

But screen addiction is so strong; I'm sure I'm addicted.  I'm sure dopamine is flooding my brain from the mid-brain to the pre-frontal cortex.  Later in the year my environmental studies class is going to attempt a screen fast - I'm excited but scared.  What if I'm really addicted?  What if I can't go more than one day?  But just the thought of the screen fast is helping my to cut down my hours of screen time.  So maybe I can do it.

What if screen fasts became more popular?  There should be a National Screen Fast Day - people across the nation would for one day (it should be longer but I'll be realistic) stop looking at screens.  No TVs, computers, cell phones, iPods, iPads, iThings.  What would happen during that day?  It would be interesting to see.  My new goal: start National Screen Fast Day.

And the most ironic thing?  I'm writing this on a screen.

                                        excerpts from Arden J's Thinking Out Loud response.

                                                                                                     --Holly