Have you ever overdosed on the internet? Some friends of mine used to joke about how I needed my daily fix.
Last night I went to bed with a full head after surfing the net – reading articles, blogs, status updates, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries, checking & replying to emails (Sorry if I haven’t replied to one of yours yet 🙂 )
I woke up this morning after a patchy night of sleep and realised that my brain hadn’t turned off before going to bed and it had affected my sleep. And it got me thinking about how often I allow this to happen. How often do I not truly “switch off” because there’s someone on-line to chat to, someone to respond to, or an interesting article to read.
With the internet available on laptops, iphones, ipads, itouch and idon’tknowwhatelse it’s all too easy to get cyberspace overload. What’s available on our hand-held devices can supersede what’s right there in front of us. The people God has put in our lives. The surroundings He wants us to take notice of. His voice talking to us in, and through, the everyday.
Nowadays if I’m on public transport I’ll often use it as a time to check my emails, or the news, or Facebook. A few years ago that time would be spent praying, or talking to the person sat next to me. Crazy, I know. On a recent train journey I found myself annoyed by the guy sat opposite me who was chatting about not-very-much because it was interrupting my time to prepare some work on my laptop. A few years ago I would have happily embraced the conversation.
So in the words of my very good friend, Jack Bauer, “I’m going dark”. I’ll start just one day a week. One whole day of not switching on my laptop, not checking stuff on my phone. One whole day of re-learning how to engage with what’s right under my nose, you know, like it used to be.
Want to join me?
posted by Anna
the robinsons 
Hi Anna. Welcome to the club.
For the same very reasons and many more, i am now keeping Sundays off ( with a 90% success rate ).
Plus i have cut down visiting Facebook to about only once a week. That for me is huge relief and surely looks like a step in the right direction.
I am not sure why when i started out against information-overload by blotting out the newspaper and tele from my life years ago( tele though only a few months back but newspaper for about 3 years now), have i overdosed on FB and the like.
I tell you one thing, i love my Sundays now!
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Thanks Sidd. I have a done a similar thing of cutting down on TV and, as you say, have then replaced it with other stuff. It’s just kind of crept in without me realising. I like the idea of cutting back on Facebook and other sites, I think that’s healthy. I’m looking forward to next Sunday, my first internet-free day!
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This is good and a really important example to be setting our children.
* We do nothing “digital” on Sundays – we can play the Wii TOGETHER or watch telly TOGETHER or get a board game out.
* No mobiles at dinner time.
* No hand-held devices when other people are in the room trying to be sociable (this one’s for Rich!).
* I try to not sit in front of Facebook when the children are around, which means no FB at weekends.
* No Nintendo DS’s or ipods with earphones ’til at least aged 10 (unless we get one that belongs to the WHOLE FAMILY & requires SHARING!!!)
Good luck with your efforts! xx
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Thanks Kathryn, these are really great, practical suggestions that many of us could implement.
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One of my grandsons was spending a LOT of time on his computer and was getting headaches. he was also a grumpy non-conversationalist teenager and we put down his attitude to puberty but the Doctor when visited about the headaches told hin “no electronics of any sort for 4 days” This grumpy teenager changed overnight back to the delightful, interesting boy he had always been. Now his time on electronics has been limited and he is still the delightful person he always was…..Thank God for headaches!
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I began to notice a while back that my days of fasting weren’t going anywhere. I still wasted time on the internet, etc. I realized that fasting the computer as well was way more effective in getting me into those times of meeting with God.
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