Get Unplugged!

According to a 2005 survey, most Americans—including children—spend at least nine hours a day watching TV, surfing the web, or talking on their cell phones. Of those hours, one-third of the time is spent using two or more of those media at once.   That sounds like too much to me.

I'll be honest, I spend about 3 hours a day on the computer, on the internet. I am not a TV junkie, but its still on about 2 hours a day - for morning news while I'm getting ready for work, and some kind of TV the last hour of my day as I try and wind down.  Granted, its usually a DVD of my own choosing, and not something full of ads and hype.  But its still screen time.

Are we withdrawing from the world?  When did it become simpler to dash off a text or an email, and avoid those uncomfortable face to face conversations?  On the other hand, in doing so, just how much are we missing?????  The internet is a great way to gain information -- but is that information more important than the relationships in our lives??

I missed "Screen Free Week" in the beginning of May, but that doesn't mean I can't do it on my own.  I have the perfect reasons, the perfect opportunity, coming up.  I'll be having a weekend with "my girls" - my daughter and granddaughter.  And nothing replaces those hours that I'll spend with them -- I don't want to waste it on screen time.  I'll just have to do things differently.  I know that my healthy regimen program requires that I log my foods and my exercise at sparkpeople.com.  I will just have to keep meticulous notes and catch up next week.

I challenge you to try this experiment: 

Shut down your computer, 

turn off your cell phone, 

unplug your iPod, 

hide your Blackberry, 

and click off the television. 

Ahhhhh.  Silence.

Then, pick up a book. Read for an hour. 

When you’re done, pull out a sheet of paper and write a letter. 

And then, go for a walk outside.

It's time to get back to the basics.

Believe it or not, when you come back to the screen, Facebook and your emails will still be there; TV ads and programs will not have changed; there will still be internet news to read, blogs to write.  Life will be back to normal.  Make sure you consider what you have gained in just a few short days.  There's a real world that gets forgotten in our busy quest for what we think is "real life."

This Gal says Try it -- you might like it!