Category Archives: Family Life

The Strangers We Let See Facebook

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It's been a while since I've written on my personal blog. This has been for a few reasons, the biggest of which I've been focusing on my fictional writing, trying to finish my crime novel.

Well, the draft of my crime novel is complete, and it currently in the hands of a developmental editor. While I wait patiently for his comments (and trust me, it has been a patient wait, as I'm not ready to delve back into edits yet), I thought I'd turn my attention back to something else that I'm just as passionate about.

Protecting ourselves on the internet.

For years, on the Editor's Blog on Black Wolf Editorial, I've been writing about some of the hidden traps associated with working online. Back in February, I decided to start a series here on my personal blog that delves into the mind of the bad guys who use the internet to prey on the innocent.

In the first post, I wrote about Twitter and how it's actually what we post that can be more of the security risk. Today, I want to look at some of the settings on Facebook, things that many of us never bothered to consider a risk.

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Emotions and Talking About It

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As many are aware by now, on Friday March 15, 2019, my home city of Christchurch, New Zealand came under attack. On the morning after that attack, I posted my thoughts about what had happened, trying to make some sort of sense to the insanity. While that post was well received, there were other things going on in the background that highlighted a few others things to me about myself and how people react to stress in general.

As a country as a whole, this is going to be a long road back to any sense of normalcy. This event will change our perceptions of our home forever, and in ways that none of us can predict right now. A friend said to me that this event, in a way, is our 9/11. She’s right.

But we will heal. How do I know this? Because I refuse to go into a shell and hide like a turtle. And I refuse to let others do the same.

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Device-Free Experiment Gone Awry!

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So, over the Christmas holidays, my family and I began an experiment where we would go device-free for one day a week. In the beginning, I saw the withdrawal on my teenage children’s faces, and my husband was just as bad. A month later, we started to notice patterns within our activities on how so much of our lives actually revolved around the internet. (Stationary lists for the school were online.)

We’re now at the beginning of March 2019, and the experiment has gone completely awry!

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Smartphone

A Month Into the Device-Free Experiment

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It's been just over a month since my family started this device-free experiment. Each week seems to have presented a different set of challenges, along with some further insights into how the internet and technology has changed our lives. Things have been said that make me cringe, but when I take a step back and really look at what we're doing, those comments really are a slap in society's face.

Let me just further build this picture for you.

I started this little device-free experiment, turning off the internet and the devices for one day a week, because my children seemed to be sinking themselves into computer games and Netflix, and I didn't like it. That first week was incredibly difficult for them. (It was difficult on my husband too.) But I pushed through...

The weeks that have followed have tales of their own.

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Device-Free Days: It’s an Experiment

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I’ve noticed that both of my children seem to have an aversion to reading. This is not something that I like to see, especially considering I’m a writer and editor, but I do understand it.

My 17-year-old son spends almost all of his free time playing computer games, either on his computer or 3DS. My 13-year-old daughter seems to be obsessed with Netflix and YouTube (and the movies on the hard drives or discs). Whenever I suggest to either one of them that they read a book, they just roll their eyes at me and chill out in their own fashion.

My husband and I aren’t much better. Every morning, my hubby is on his phone, surfing the internet and watching C-SPAN… or playing a game… or watching anime. And I spend a significant amount of time either on the computer or the tablet, writing or editing (and talking to my writing partner in the US via video chat).

So, I had the idea of going device free for one day a week: no smart phones, no tablets, no computers and no TV — and certainly NO INTERNET. The only exception to this device-free rule is Kindles — simply because not all books are in paper formats. Besides, have you ever tried to surf the internet on a Kindle? (I’m not talking about the Kindle Fire. I’m talking about the traditional Kindle that is an eBook reader only. They have an internet browser, but talk about frustrating in the extreme.)

To start encouraging the good reading and other non-technology-based habits, my husband and I decided to do this once a week, every week. We’re only one week down, and have encountered some interesting results.
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