Holiday Lights Slow Down Wi-Fi. Not a Bad Thing.

With a few doors already open on your advent calendar and Coca-Cola officially declaring that the ‘holidays are coming’ it’s time to think about putting up your elaborate holiday decorations and giving your home the perfect festive appearance that even Clark Griswold would be proud of.

Before you get too excited, I just read on a series of leading US publisher websites that the UK’s independent telephony regulator Ofcom has stepped in to warn consumers that those pretty holiday lights could in fact be slowing down your home Wi-Fi speeds! I am assuming the same to be the case here in the US as well. Now before you consider canceling your festive celebrations, it’s not quite as alarming as the headlines will have you believe.

In a nutshell, the electromagnetic interference is what will grind your YouTube and Netflix to a halt on a wintry evening, and although holiday lights can be part of the problem, they cause little interference compared to everything else in your home that might be already bad for your wireless internet in the first place.

Microwave ovens and baby monitors are notorious for slowing down Wi-Fi but thankfully there are not too many people that are crazy enough to place their routers next to devices like these. In fact, most of your home appliances such as fridges, radiators, washing machines, dishwashers, toasters and cordless telephones all have the power to deliver a buffering page near you.

However, it’s our human bodies (that mostly consist of water) that are likely to fetter your wireless speeds if you have Gatsby style holiday parties with lots of people walking around. Frankly even this would only really be an issue in some rare circumstances if a large crowd of people ended up standing right in front of your router antenna, something that is not likely to happen often.

The OFCOM press release was conveniently released on December 1st to promote their new Wi-Fi Checker so any talk of a wireless-free holiday season once the decorations go up is nothing but a tale of exaggerated worst case scenarios.

The story was covered by the usual suspects in media all of who presented some apocalyptic festive period where families would need to make a decision between putting up holiday lights and keeping their Wi-Fi Internet connection!

But….and please hear me out here. For arguments sake, would an Internet free Christmas or Hanukkah really be such a bad thing?

Only ten years ago, I clearly remember a perfect family Christmas where all generations were in a room together laughing, exchanging anecdotes and even playing games together. On this one-day a year, family members gave each other their one hundred percent attention.

Fast forward a few years and very often the rooms are silent as children, parents and even their grandparents can be seen staring down at their smartphone or tablet as we invest more precious time into our gadgets than each other.

To solely blame technology is a tad unfair and it is we humans that need to shoulder some of the responsibility for our actions and realize that the people we will be spending our time with will not be around forever and the holidays should be about cherishing these priceless moments that shape who we are and what we stand for. I for one will not have my dad for the first time this holiday season, as I lost him to Cancer at the young age of 69 back in July. I would sacrifice a thousand Wi-Fi connections in a heartbeat to have him back.

So when you find yourself in the company of those a little too obsessed with their tech this holiday season, maybe it is time for us to break the cycle and try to engage them in some conversation or better still just unplug that Wi-Fi connection! What are their hopes dreams and fears for the year ahead? What are their passions and what funny stories do they have to share this Christmas? We need to savor moments like this and get to know our own families and friends face to face.

Technology works best when it brings people together. Even in the unlikely event of the holiday lights blocking your Wi-Fi, maybe, just maybe this is the Universe’s way of telling you to put down your tech for at least one day of the year to concentrate on living in the moment, and that can certainly not be a bad thing.

Thank you for reading. If my daily LinkedIn business blogs help you and you'd like to nominate me for the LinkedIN Top Voices List then please fill out this short form.