I needed a major digital detox. So I did it, and soon, I was feeling better than I had in a long time.
Uh, well, that was short-lived!
Before I knew it, the pandemic and shutdown hit. When that happened, confusion, misinformation and political debates became the norm in my world.
My digital detox? Eh, I threw that to the wind. I yearned to understand what was happening with this pandemic, how to deal with a volatile stock market and how to teach in an online only format.
Digital detox? You got to be kidding me. The world faced so much uncertainty and confusion that worrying about too much screen time was a joke.
Maybe it's a good sign that Covid-19 numbers are trending down because here I am again, pondering a digital detox. One year ago, I curbed my phone usage to two hours a day, and I was cool with what I was doing — Spotify, reading, talking or texting.
Then, I asked my students how much screen time they averaged per day and if they were OK with it. The answers were all over the map, but my main takeaway was that many were cool with 8-10 hours a day on their phone. I felt that was overboard, but now with one year of online only school gone, where are we?
So let me ask students this: Hey, help Gen X parents figure this out. Should we be worried about your screen time, or should we just let it go? Should you be worried about your screen time, or is it a non-issue?
These are some questions I've been pondering, and my conclusion is: "I'll take the world, thank you." If younger generations are going to live more digitally than in what I perceive as the actual, real world, so be it. That's more world for this Gen Xer, or "Boomer" if you will.
I've been listening to Podcasts with interviews of billionaires. Honestly, I don't like these billionaires. No matter how reasonable Bill Gates or Mark Cuban might sound, they remain at the top of an economic system that is ridiculous. Yeah, I don't see major change coming with this billionaire system in my lifetime, and I know I have to accept it. But I don't believe we should laud Gates or Cuban as our world's most insightful scholars, and it appears that often occurs.
Isn't all of this screen time just us being manipulated by Big Tech? Have we traded our flesh and blood experiences to level up on whatever we're doing online?
The good news is that I've also listened to this Elon Musk, and it seems obvious to me that this guy is a dweeb. He should go to Mars; he'd be a good fit there. I guess he's the Andy Warhol of the day, but unlike Warhol, Musk is the opposite of cool. Good luck with your rocket ships, dude!
Let's get back to screen time. The way I see it is that this capitalistic system is so powerful and cruel that it has taken over the globe now. Yes, it's been that way for a while.
Isn't it enough for the system to take our money? Now, it's got to take our data and our time and create new money called cryptocurrency. Really? Isn't this going too far? Well, for this "Boomer" it is. I need a digital detox. I'm going outside to work on my short game and tend the Zen garden.
