Deprived?

I think obsessed is a perfect word to describe today's society and its reliance on media and communications technology. Today's society seems entrenched in cellphones, iPods, computers, internet, videogames, and many other forms of media. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, but I think it is essential to realize how much we rely on technology, and what consequences would be faced if we didn't have it.
My experiment to see if I could do without media or technology for 24 hours was pretty short of success. I made it to about 4 or 5 hours and gave in. My initial expectations though foresaw this, though. Over the Thanksgiving Break I had several important school assignments outside of this experiment, and the stress from needing to complete those is what I suspect what led to my downfall. Danna Walker's article, "The Longest Day", is an account of Danna Walker's similar assignment for her students at American University. Many of the activities her students described were things I had planned to do during my isolation from electronic media. From a long list of ideas I had, a few were reading a book, helping my father with yardwork, playing football with my friends.
I started my day at 11 A.M. and make myself a large breakfast. I had two over-easy eggs, a few slices of bacon, a bagel with cream cheese, and a glass of orange juice. After breakfast I went out to help my dad bring wood up onto our deck for our wood stove. At 1:30 A.M. I showered and started reading a book in my room. Around 2:45 or so I began to get edgy about my schoolwork was worried that I wouldn't be able to finish it all before coming back to school. I continued reading my book for another half hour before giving into temptation. It was then I began to work on my school assignments on my laptop and failed the experiment. I strongly believe that if I didn't have as much work to do I wouldn't have failed so quickly or at all. Though I found it very easy not to use my cellphone, mostly because I am not very attached to it to begin with. I do text a lot sometimes, and call my friends occasionally, but I found it fairly easy to just turn it off. Before I started I had alerted all my friends that I would be busy all day so they shouldn't plan anything too fun because I won't be able to contact them. One of my friends suggested that we play football. I was okay with that, but by the time they were ready to play at four, I had already failed. I just couldn't let my work go untouched because my grades this semester are vital to continuing my college career at UMBC. I think our reliance on technology has become so advanced that we can't do normal things without the internet. I agree with one of Walker's students who said that we have over media-medicated our society. Her student also claimed that as long as we don't forget our addiction to media and remember our personal responsibility to appreciate it, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think the media has become apart of our culture and evolution as a species. Being constantly connected has positives and negatives, but as long as you are proactive against the negatives, it's not such a horrible thing. For example, a positive would be that if you have an emergency and need to contact a family member or friend, you can just pull out your cellphone and call them. Negatively though, relying on media so much can be misinformative. If you just watch the evening news every night without looking for more information on your own, you may not see the entire side of the issue. Personal responsibility and being more proactive and skeptical of the media is important to realizing it's faults and becoming a more intelligent society. My own personal experience has really shown how important the media is to me. I need to be able to contact my friends and family in multiple ways, but usually I don't overload it. As well, music is essential to my happiness. It's a huge part of my life; I spend at least 4 hours a day listening to music amongst doing other things. The biggest thing I learned from this experiment was that I believe I am able to survive comfortably without media, but academic constraints were what lead to my failure. I think the internet had a huge role in this because many of my assignments were on Blackboard and could not be done without the Internet. Our reliance on the Internet is pretty extreme at this point, both in casual life as well as academic and professional life. The fact that most professors insist that college paper be typed and formatted in a specific way is the prospect that bothers me to most. I would say most college students prefer to type their papers, but I love to write them. I get a lot more satisfaction in writing by hand. As well, it is a lot easier for me edit my papers and improve them.
Overall, this was a positive experience for me as it reminded me of the things I don't normally do anymore. I use to read a lot than I do now, but because of college and the media I don't as much. An important thing that I noticed after my failure, was while I am home I spend more time outside because we don't have a good internet connection. I think it's important to remember the things that can be done and enjoyed without electronic media. Going outside and just being in the sun is something that people take for granted sometimes. Even at live concerts now they have large TVs to allow patrons to see better. While it is a good convenience, it can also detract from the real thing.
Though my reliance on media and technology is strong, the purposes I use it for seem to me to be okay, and I think that I would be pretty bored without my iPod. But this experience has shown me to be more self-conscious about my media habits and my reliance on technology.