The New Family Time?

So, I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed this new cultural phenomenon lately where people seem to be spending an awful lot of time on their laptops and smart phones…

Okay, I’m being kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but it is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. My wife and I were talking about it last night, and we both realized that when we’re at home, we’re mostly doing stuff on our computers, and then we go to bed (usually pretty late), and then we go to work, and the cycle repeats itself.

I’m kind of conflicted about it, because I really like being on my computer. It’s one of the things I do to relax and entertain myself. The problem is, I also happen to sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day to keep the lights on, the upshot of which is aching hands and wrists, an aching neck, tingling forearms and other various afflictions that are so familiar to so many of us these days.

Besides the physical side effects, of course, there are the effects on our relationships, our concentration, our ability to learn and retain information. There are tons of books and articles exploring all of these questions, so I won’t delve too deeply into it here, except to say that at least we’ve started to talk about it in our house, which I think is a good first step. 

Anyway, for a while now, I’ve had the idea to start playing around and exploring how our online time is encroaching on our meatspace time via a series of photographs, so keep an eye on this space for more… I just need to check Facebook and Twitter first.