Having just seen the latest instalment of the BBC’s new Program, The Virtual Revolution, it prompted me to an idea.
The program, presented by Dr Aleks Krotoski, had the title of Homo Interneticus and started on location what looked like Euston train station in London.
I found most of the program focussing too much on extreme views and in my opinion distorting what is going on in the real world. This was also the first program i watched with my 9 year old daughter.
One view was a couple of children aged 9 and 13 (‘Generation web’) who said “life before the web was boring and before the web people read books which is dull”. At this point my daughter said “Rubbish!”
My daughter has a Wii, iPod touch, watches lots of YouTube videos and has email access, so is certainly not behind the times when it comes to gadgets and interacting with people electronically. However, what we have as a family is some balance which involves reading books. You know, the stuff made from paper? We go for walks, she goes swimming regularly and is member of various clubs which involves face to face communication.
During the program, Dr Aleks Krotoski commented on what are the consequences of this Digital revolution? Is there an effect on relationships? Is this all an experiment?
Which leads me to this simple experiment.
I’m an active user of many social networks, after all, its part of the work i do professionally aswell as socially.
What would happen if we did not use any form of Social Media for one week. Thats only 7 days. Can we do it?
What do you say? Shall we give it a go?
Maybe even keep a diary, electronic or otherwise, which we can all post on Youtube, Blogs etc, after the week of not going online.
Social media is just part of the current mix of life for many people including myself. A little like chocolate.
Chocolate however, I can give up for Lent and it should have a positive effect on my life. But to give up on social media for a period of time just for the sake of it wouldn’t have that same positive effect.
If social media was taking over my life, then giving it up for a week would probably be a great idea, if only to prove to me that very fact to me. But it’s not. As I said, it’s just part of the mix. (Not sure my wife would share that view though!)
I look forward to seeing the results of your experiment in a week’s time.
Hi Donato,
Good luck with the experiment. Even though I said on twitter that I wouldn’t last 5 minutes before having to log on to social media sites. I still have some form of balance. I’m not continually glued to social media sites.
I have tweetdeck running in the background, however I only check it probably once every couple of hours. I have been checking it more lately as a sort of catch up.
My main distraction away from Social Media is reading or playing World of Warcraft. However once I do gain employment once again, I’d probably be only spending a couple of hours a day during the week, so I would say I already partially ban myself from social media through natural means anyway.