If you have a regular job (and right here I’ve lost my recent college graduate audience), and get a decent amount of sleep every night, and we throw in the time it takes getting ready for work, traveling to work and back, preparing meals, etc., it’s startling to read that we North Americans spend, on average, a little over eight hours a day “consuming media,” according to a study by ZenithOptimedia ( http://qz.com/416416/we-now-spend-more-than-eight-hours-a-day-consuming-media/ ).
Eight hours surfing the Internet, watching TV, listening to the radio, reading this or that–that’s a huge chunk of your life. Even more amazingly, Latin Americans are said to spend 13 hours a day (!) consuming media.
Doesn’t leave much time for love, friendship, exercise, play, or other old-fashioned aspects of human existence, does it? It also might suggest a reason for the current world-wide obesity plague. Those eight hours, for many people, represent virtually every waking minute apart from work.
Wow! Gee whiz–do you think it might matter at all: the content of the media consumed?
Is it possible that, if the content of the media consumed is full of filth, violence, lewdness, crime, and despair, the consumer’s mind and spirit might become filled with filth, violence, lewdness, crime, and despair?
Is it possible that we are programming ourselves to be lazy and immoral bastards?
Just askin’.
Of late, I find myself concluding that smartphones, tablets, and the like, have caused more harm than good. They have definitely damaged interpersonal relationships of all sorts. Sitting together for a meal is no longer a time of interaction for many people. Instead, everyone at the table is engrossed with social media, text messages, etc.
Yeah, I’ve seen that–half a dozen teens show up at the pizza parlor together, sit down together at the same table, and then spend the whole time talking on their phones and texting, with never a word for one another.
I hope I can live my whole life without ever having owned a cell phone.
Mobile telephones are essential to my employment. Even as I type, the desk phone in my office is forwarded to the cell phone in my kitchen. I look forward to retiring and demoting my cell phone when I do. I’ll probably have one, but I intend it to be used quite sparingly.
I still have no idea what an iPad (?) is… Please don’t bother to tell me.
The technologies aren’t really the problem, it’s the way they are misused which causes trouble.
Spent most of my life enjoying “love, friendship, exercise, play, or other old-fashioned aspects of human existence.” Now that i’m retired, I spend most of my time reading news on the Internet, watching Netflix and being with my family when they visit. Once every week or two, I spend the whole night until the sun just begins to come up, sitting outside in front of a homemade fire pit with my neighbor, or 2 or 3 – chopping wood in his garage and feeding the fire – IN THE CITY. However, I hate my HP computer!!! I hate Verizon! And I hate every company I have to deal with just get on the d*amn computer! I hate facebook! I even hate the news these days! Ah well, maybe I’ve got things backwards?
Just sayin’.
Completely understandable… Welcome to the club.