Tag Archives: technology

#DigitalDetox Challenges, Lockdowns and Teenagers… Oh My!

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I'm at the end of the third week of my #DigitalDetox challenge adventure... and talk about adventures. Things got totally derailed in ways that were expected, just not this soon. And it made doing the little challenges within my little #DigitalDetox coloring book all the more important. Because it gave me time to breathe!

So... This week, not only was I attempting to finish last week's challenge of writing someone a letter, but I had this week's challenge of spend 30 minutes looking at the clouds. AND my home country of New Zealand decided to go into Level 4 Lockdown in the middle of all of this, thrusting two teenagers into home learning situations again.

Yeah... Life is always filled with unexpected turns.

So... Here's how the week went.

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#DigitalDetox Challenge 2: Write someone a letter

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So... It turns out that not only am I obsessed with minimizing the influence that social media and the internet have on my daily life, but I'm also incredibly busy that I forget to take just a few short minutes to do the simple things.

This week's #DigitalDetox challenge was to write someone a letter. You would think that for a writer, this one would be simple. But the truth was a bitter pill to take.

I had colored in the picture for the challenge, and... Yeah... Um... That is sort of where it ended. I had allowed my busy schedule and my interactions with others to take over, and when it came time to recharge... Well... I binge watched Friends on Netflix.

So, there were a few lessons to learn from this week's experience.

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#DigitalDetox Challenge 1: Walk with no technology

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I'll admit it: I'm a little obsessed with my over usage of social media and the internet in general. It goes beyond a need to understand everything regarding security on the internet. It's mainly because I know how much of a time suck that social media can be.

And my obsession isn't just because of myself alone. I see within my husband and children how technology (namely the games and Netflix) are designed to be additive. And when I see my family struggling to get enough sleep because of the addictive nature of devices, I'm going to take active steps to try to do something out it.

I have tried multiple times to put the family on Device-Free days, only for the idea to fail abysmally. And in all my attempts, there is one thing that I have learned: I can't control the actions of the other adults (and even though my youngest is 16 years old, she's effectively an adult). BUT, I can make other adults feel guilty when they see the results of the minimal device usage life.

For that to have the impact I want it to have, I need to get my own dependance on devices and the internet under control.

To that end, I have started a #DigitalDetox challenge.

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Is the next generation really that disconnected?

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There is no doubt about it: the world that I grew up in is gone. It was filled with kids having water fights in the streets, our house being the place where all the hoses seemed to converge. It was bikes and bells, and doing what we could to get the ball away from the dog. It was riding the Tonka toy fashioned to look like a Jeep down the driveway (mom rode that toy down the driveway too). And it was pen pals with snail mail and waiting for the postman to come.

Pay phone

Who remembers these? They used to be on every street corner. Now, you don't seem them at all. At least, that's the case in Christchurch, New Zealand.

You were at the mercy of whatever the TV networks decided to air. You didn’t like what was on, you either lumped it or read a book. Phone conversations were scratchy at best and, in some areas, party lines were still a thing. There were phone boxes on every street corner, and cash paid for everything.

The concept of cell phones didn’t exist in my youth. Car phones were for the rich only. The internet was this unheard-of thing, and modems required you to place the handset from the phone onto this chunky device with pulses and high-pitched noises going down the phone line.

Video calls and streaming your favorite show to a handheld device wirelessly was something seen only in science fiction. Genetic modification of human embryos was the source of freaky war storylines from Star Trek. Yet, here we are.

Science fiction has become science fact. (And yes, genetic modification of human embryos is now science fact.)

Yeah, the world I grew up in is definitely gone, but there will always be those who wish we could go back to the way things were. Their reasoning is often linked to some comment as to how out of touch with the rest of the world the next generation has become—how the next generation is so caught up in an internet world that they're missing the life in the local neighborhoods. In some aspects, I agree with them. But while I would love to cling to those go-outside aspects of the world that have vanished without me even noticing, there are other aspects of this new internet-based world that I have openly embraced and would never look back.

But these changes that I see in my world and in myself, was it really just technology that brought them on? Have we, as a society, really changed all that much?

Has our new level of technology brought about a level of disconnect between the generations that wasn't there before?

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We Let Them In: Is Privacy Dead?

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Protecting oneself on the internet is something that I'm highly passionate about. There are so many ways to get into big trouble within our online interactions that I've made it a personal mission to understand the true nature of the dangers out there.

This is the world that my children are growing up in. They have never known a life when the internet didn't exist. Social media in its various forms has become a massive part of the way they're expected to interact with the world at large, and it's my job, as their mother, to ensure that they know how to navigate this internet-based world safely.

With the increase in internet dependency within our daily lives, there are certain questions that have started to leak to the surface of my consciousness. Almost everything that we do is now online, with very few exceptions.

Sure, you have social media, YouTube and blogs, and TV through the internet means that we can watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it. However, you also have online banking, and you can buy your groceries online. I can pay for my car registration and file my taxes online. I order replacement gas bottles for the house through an app on my phone and I can report issues regarding water leaks or other hazards in my neighborhood using a different app.

My children are expected to submit their homework assignments online. They are even required to sit major exams using online tools. When they were still in high school, I got their report cards sent to me through an online website.

My husband gets his payslips online, and I get paid by overseas clients through online services. Even my royalty checks come in through online payments.

Everything about our world has shifted to online.

New Zealand, as a whole, has become a near cashless society, with EftPos found almost everywhere you go. Those payments go through the internet. Sure, I do have some cash in my wallet, but not much. Everything of importance is bought and paid for using online means.

Yes, this shift to an internet-based society has, for the most part, made our lives easier, but has it really made it safer?

How has this push to doing everything online affected our sense of privacy and security?

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