I know I’ve been a bit MIA lately, but you know…life happens! (Although I hear that Tals made a guest appearance?! Sneaky dog!) As I previously mentioned, I spent Christmas at my parents’ mountain home with my family and followed that up with a NYE trip to Park City with some of my fellow Omniten. Naturally, I’ll share those stories with you later this week, but I wanted to spend today touching on a topic I heard about on Dateline last night: a digital diet.
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| We’re not talking about this type of diet! |
I’m not a regular watcher of the program, but I had originally thought the season premier of Biggest Loser started at 7pm. Alas, I had to wait till 8pm to catch up with Jillian and her gang, but the plot behind the Dateline episode totally caught my attention. In essence, the show featured four female 20-somethings who are self-admittedly obsessed with social media and their smart phones. Datelines took away their phones and their laptops, locking them away for two weeks. They were allowed to check email for work, but that was it. No additional email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, checking news online, etc. Nothing.
Initially, I was a bit disgusted with some of the girls and one in particular. During their “final moments” with their technology, one of the gals panicked and spent her last seconds sending out tweets and Instagram photos. One girl even said that she felt like she was going to her death. For two weeks? Come on, girls! They even got lost while driving in the mountains but since they couldn’t use their phones for navigation, they had to bust out legit maps….and they had no idea how to work them. They finally asked for directions; how old school! 😉
However, the more I watched the episode, the more I began to think about it. After all, I am pretty dialed into the social media world myself! I’m on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and I have a blog…. that is more than most people out there. Most of my friends (along with Will!) are the opposite of me and tend to shy away from any social media platforms, so I’m a bit of an anomaly. Luckily, I don’t consider myself obsessed. I am happy to shut my phone off for a week in the backcountry, and I will never, ever ignore a conversation to focus on the beeps from my phone.
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| I’m always happy to take the time to play with Tals! |
Regardless, I did decide to make a few changes after watching the show. Because I was grandfathered into my AT&T data plan, I have unlimited data. As such, I receive push notifications for all of my Twitter, IG, and Facebook stuff. Until yesterday, these all popped up onto the lock screen of my phone so I could see any or all of them by just glancing at my phone. Y’all, that is absurd and totally unnecessary for me. I changed the notifications, so now they only pop up when I look at each individual platform on my phone. Now, I won’t have any pesky pop-up banners that will distract me from living in the moment. May seem like a little thing, but I already think it’s making a big difference!