When Was The Last Time You Unplugged?

I recently shared my passion for "Wait Until 8th." For the next few IMAGINEs, I will share more of my passion for breaking Social Media's stranglehold on all of us—myself included.

Let's be clear: there is huge promise in what Social Media can and does do for us on the positive side, and there is a huge addictive danger on the flip side.?

Think OxyContin; the promise of pain relief was a blessing…until it became a curse.?

This IMAGINE is about how to regulate that very issue. Most of my readers need to use various forms of social media for business and life in general….I include email, messaging, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, etc., etc. in my definition of social media.?

We all need a break from time to time…from just about everything and anything. We have to turn off the firehose...smell the roses…sip the wine…or whatever.

My simple view is that we all need to unplug every once in a while…AND in a regular fashion to break the addiction.

UNPLUG and RECONNECT. Read on…

Unplugging does not mean disconnecting. No way! In fact, it actually means reconnecting with our lives...our friends, our families, and our feelings...with business, ideas, and the world.

This isn’t a screed against technology—far from it. Technology allows me to unplug and connect in new and meaningful ways.

Esteemed MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who has been writing for years on the impact of technology, especially its human costs, ?wrote in the New York Times way back in 2012 (imagine…),? that the more we connect through devices, the less we truly converse. Our "I share, therefore I am," connectivity is changing not merely what we do but, more importantly, who we are detrimentally.?

This aligns with what Jonathan Haidt pointed out in his book "The Anxious Generation," as I shared in my previous IMAGINE.?

It is critical to understand that devices, apps, and social platforms do not define us. They are mere amplifiers in and of themselves, not creators.

Other child development experts beyond Haidt are similarly concerned. One specialist thinks that too many babies are shortchanged by their moms, who are often so engaged with their smartphones that they are cheating their babies out of face-to-face interactions. It’s a tragedy because F2F is critical for future development:? "They learn language, they learn about their own emotions, they learn how to regulate them."

Clearly, the moms and dads checking their phones incessantly (us) are also the parents handing their kids iPads and iPhones every time they intuit that they are about to get "restless." It must be evolutionary. Back when I was raising my kids, the going concern was keeping kids away from the perceived dangers of TV viewing.

At Google, the wellspring of so much of today's innovation and technology, their original research (back in the day) showed that people are happier when they are not always connected with work. So, how do they disconnect? By not reflexively, obsessively checking their email. Think about that...now add the layers of Social Media that exist today…. This was Google talking, folks. Pay attention.?

And what does it say when the elite of Silicon Valley have opted to send their children to a Waldorf school there (75% of the students have parents in high tech)—a school that is entirely computer-free, unwired, unplugged in the belief that computers hamper learning and creativity. My loyal readers know my obsession with such schools.

In fact, my Oscar-winning movie scenario is one in which a single deadly Google-spread virus kills all the computers in the world. The survivors who inherit the earth are all children of Google executives and all Waldorf grads.

So we unplug.

Not because we are opposed to technology. We know that tech, smartly applied, makes our lives better.

Not because we think it is destroying humanity. We understand that it can do massive, good…or not…think Opioids.

Not because we are scared of it. We all get that technology is our friend. Or not…

In fact, the real digital revolution is humanist at its core. It's not about gamification, valuation, or monetization. It's about using technology to solve real problems. Societal problems. Human problems. Having real use cases….not advertising revenue as the only outcome.?

The real digital revolution recognized that you can't have 15,000 real friends and have anything resembling meaningful interactions. Hence, the rise of apps to accommodate the shrinking size of social networks. Look at Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp.

The real digital revolution must value dumbphones as much as smartphones (imagine actively promoting something other than the latest and greatest) because, in some parts of the world, dumbphones are an affordable, doable way to help bring water or supplies or knowledge to places in need….Because "Wait Until 8th" will change the paradigm.?

The real digital revolution recognizes that being unplugged adds to your ability to be plugged in because our technology solutions will only be as good as the people who make them.

If we continue to make our human interactions merely transactional, if we keep our thumbs active and our emotions still, and if we lose the ability to connect as people, down the road, technology will suffer, too.?

Digital is everything, but not everything is digital.

I'd wager that unplugging will make us smarter about how we use technology....and technology smarter about us.

As a former student of existentialist literature, I have always loved Thoreau. He obviously never saw or even imagined our digital, socially skewed world; nevertheless, re-reading him, it's clear what he would think:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.”?—Henry David Thoreau

Every once in a while (pick your while), we all need to go to the woods, live deliberately, and face the essential facts of life. Otherwise, we'll be looking for places to go where we can ignore everything but the screen in front of us….and that's sad. N'est pas??

What’s your view?