Sentimental Saturdays (A Life Without Internet)

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What do people do without internet? No, serious. What do people do? Close your eyes for a second and imagine that life was simpler- no internet (or minimal access to it). Pretty much rewind back to when you were younger, when the world wasn’t as connected as now, and when all you probably cared about was watching TV (on the TV), Nintendo (or Playstation), or catching up with friends- face to face, rather than nowadays with facebook, skype, video-phones and iPads.

I know what I was doing when there was no internet. Well, there was internet, but in the 1990’s, we were ignorant of the vast expanse of the technological realm. We talked more with our friends and family, had more interactions, helped our parents cook (more than we do right now I think), interacted with our pets, played board games, exercised, helped Dad with the barbecue, and only went on the computer for school work. When Dad was younger, he said that he played with marbles and rocks, and watched his daily half an hour show when he and his brother came back from school, of which the name escapes me (maybe it was The Lone Ranger or Lassie?), and he also drove with his friends to pick fruit in a nearby town; while Mum was working in her mum’s farm most of her teenage years.

Take a moment to ponder what you were doing when you were younger when the internet and technology were less developed than now. And while computers and the internet have connected everyone in ways unimaginable; it has somewhat made our lives all the more complicated, and disconnected in many ways. We facebook with our ‘friends’ from around the world, and yet I’ve noticed a trend where we can barely have a conversation with our loved ones without a quick sneak peek at our mobile phones or our iPads. With the accessibility of the web, our choice of movies, TV shows, and music has become exponentially great (with iTunes, Amazon and various other ways to obtain media). And sadly, with all the information, media, data and communication at our fingertips, we have become a generation of people who consume far more than we’d care to admit.

Sometimes I wonder at the changes that have occurred and think to myself. Back then, we weren’t as worried. We didn’t really care that much about our facebook likes, our twitter followers, how many retweets or shares our post has. We didn’t worry about listening to the latest music song because frankly, all we had were cassette tapes. To think about streaming a TV show minutes or hours after it aired in the U.S. is a luxury, compared to our inability to do such a thing 10-15 years ago- when all we had was the TV in our own house. We watched what we watched, and if I can remember back then, we (Josh and myself) were happy doing so. Maybe we were ignorant in our music, TV watching and our entertainment choices, but in that, we were also happy and not as anxious, worried, intense and preoccupied as now (I often catch myself wondering about what shows are on in the U.S. on any given day and what music I need to listen to on Spotify if I want to catch up with the latest).

How has the introduction of the internet and the accessibility of anything and everything media and entertainment related affected you, your health, and outlook in your life so far? Do you think we as a global culture have become more instantaneous and worry when we’re apart from our devices (or internet), for fear that we’ll be missing out on important ‘news’? How do you think you would cope if you didn’t have the internet connected for a day, a week, or even a month? Let us all remember that internet, just like anything else, ought not to be consuming our lives more than we want it to, and let us remember this- that where our treasure is, there will our hearts be also. Try out a day without the internet, and let us know in the comments the results of your ‘experiment’!

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