Digital Disengagement

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digital disengagmentAs someone who runs her own blog I spend a large majority of my time “plugged in.” I am always retweeting, re-pinning, and finding new ways to engage digitally in my life. All of the time I have spent investing in my blog has got me thinking. “Do I no longer have a good balance of knowing when to unplug myself from the internet?” So I made a plan for myself to have some digital disengagement.

Most of my work over the past couple years has been centered on working with students. In doing this work, I have studied and researched several different parenting styles and techniques. I have jumped into researching Generation Z. I am becoming more and more concerned with the amount of time parents are ignoring their child to be digitally connected. Instead of taking the time to have face to face conversations full of kind words and physical touch, parents are now utilizing a “like” on facebook or a “retweet” on twitter to show appreciation and pride toward their kids.

What happened to the art of making good old fashioned memories that aren’t embedded into the social media timelines of our lives? I feel like I am constantly hearing others talk about how busy they have gotten. Myself included. I feel like I need an additional five hours in each day just to make it through my daily tasks. Have I actually gotten busier? But how can that be when I am spending more time engaged in social media than ever?

Don’t get me wrong. I really enjoy having a digital scrapbook of the time I am spending with my husband, children, parents, and extended family. I know that when I have the time to look back on my posts from six years ago I am filled with joy. However, I lost the art of actually making those memories because I am so busy staging them for Facebook.  

Digital Disengagement is hard to control. Life has become so digitally convenient over the past couple of years that it actually might be more “work” to ignore social media. Knowing it wouldn’t be an easy task to digitally disengage, I started to think about what I would gain from digital disengagement?

·         Quality time with my kids

·         Greater commitment to my marriage

·         Taking more personal time for myself

·         Doing absolutely nothing, turning my brain off

So how am I going to make this work? Implementing some small steps into my life is how I hope to gain a good balance of being a social media queen and finding time to digitally disengage.

Below are some tips I plan to implement for life outside of the device.  

·         Take a ten minute break every hour

·         Have a no phones at dinner rule

·         Reading a chapter of a book

·         Organizing/cleaning

·         Watching a movie (not on your mobile device)

·         Adult Coloring Books

·         Get up and get moving

·         Run a personal errand

·         Volunteer

I hope that you all can work some of these tips into your life to take some time to digitally disengage.

What are your thoughts? Comment below!

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