Today, we achieve the remotest reach of our annual family vacation — a tiny flyspeck of an island miles off the East Coast. We are hosted by my brother-in-law in rustic cottages of endless charm. No TV or cable. The plumbing is primitive and somewhat suspect (“In these isles of sun and fun, we never flush for number one.”) No A/C, washing machines, or traffic. Finally, blissfully unplugged.
That is, if you don’t count: five iPods of various types and generations, three cell phones (the coverage here is excellent), three digital cameras plus a Flip video, a Nintendo DS, a Garmin GPS, a Kindle (how did I ever travel without one), and a laptop. And thanks to my sister-in-law, the island now features wireless internet.
Unplugged = FAIL.
I treat my gadget addiction like I do most of my dependencies: I recognize it, offer it occasional resistance and periodic abstinence, but ultimately I have no strong urge to give it up. I felt a twinge of guilt when I came downstairs to find Coop curled up in an ancient wicker chair watching SpongeBob on the iPod Touch 16G, but I was confident that by the time I sat down to write this post that the thing would lie abandoned on the coffee table. The call of the beach is stronger. And there it sits.
Maybe it’s a sign of my addiction that I don’t really see the need to quit cold turkey. It’s a part of our life. If the imaginations of the kids on the island are stunted by the level of media saturation we permit, I didn’t see much evidence of it last night. There was an media enabled device on just about every flat surface they screamed past in their elaborate games of hide-and-seek.
Am I sounding defensive? Then allow me to hit the save button and post this blog to the internets and you can give me your thoughts on the subject. Vacations: plugged or not?
My little household does not vacation well – we only do trips to see family. With family spread from the Atlantic to the west side of the Rockies there is not really time for other fun travel. We have chosen to embrace it.
That being said – during our Easter trip to Casper Holy-freaking-crap-it-is-perfect-swinging-weather, Wyoming, I will admit that there was a point when there were four laptops and two cell phones in use at one time. The reality is that technology is a part of everyday now, like eating breakfast.
My two cents.
I prefer to trust parents to decide what works for themselves, I think in theory unplugged is good, but sometimes it’s hard to enjoy the unplugged moments, especially if kids plug in to soothe themselves (as do we sometimes…). Still, when we are unplugged, the [i]way[i] we interact with nature can teach us a lot about parenting. A recent article in the New York Times about whales, got me thinking about what whales might teach us about relating to kids… (http://tiny.cc/gfc92)
Namaste, Bruce
While I certainly admire the notion of “going completely unplugged” during vacation time, it only makes sense if it’s not painful.
If you were addicted to smoking, would you attempt to just stop smoking completely for the two weeks of the year that are supposed to be “stress free”? No. Of course not. That would completely defeat the purpose of a vacation.
I think the aim should be to check the Internet a lot less often during vacation, but still enough that you’re not feeling anxious or stressed out about “being out of touch”.
Instead of going cold turkey for a couple weeks, it makes more sense to use the vacation as a mental milestone and commit to yourself that “after vacation I’m going to be a little bit less plugged in”. Consider it like a vacation resolution.
The time to change your behavior is not during vacation – it’s throughout every day of your normal life.