Are you going to Join the National Day of Unplugging (March 7-8, 2014) and if so, how hard or easy will it be for you to disconnect from internet and cell phone for 24 hours?

Pssh, no. House of Cards.

Umm… it is terrific idea, at least for part of the day. I already do have a moratorium on all technology use during specific hours of the day, everyday, to curb my kids’ use of technology, and apply the same to myself. We already also have days without phone when we go camping into no-signal zones, so a 24 hour withdrawal would not be too much of a drastic change for us.

But that’s on a Friday/Saturday. That’s easy. What would be much more difficult would be to unplug for 24 hours on a workday- I’d have really angry colleagues the next day.

It depends on if my voice has returned from this horrible Bronchitis. No way I am unplugging if I can’t speak.

It would be a good change for most people. With my disabilities, internet and cell are required for me to interact with people. Now that I live in a new town, all my friends and most business contacts can only reach me through long distance means.

No. I don’t cater to stupid Natl. anything days.
Maybe I’ll unplug on March 17th instead. Who cares?

I interact with people off the Internet all the time. Everyone else can too. There is no reason to unplug.

There are all kinds of awareness days, and they all have inherent problems. This one seems to pose a few:
– I read all the time. However, my books happen to be ebooks that I read on my phone. Me and someone who signs the pledge could be reading the same book, but one would “unplugged”.
– As someone who uses the phone for talking approximately 6 minutes per year, I still have a need to have my phone on. When my son smashed his head open at school and needed stitches, I received a call from the nurse on my cell phone.
– I lead a busy life. Nearly every day I have things that I need to do. All of my scheduling and todo lists are managed on my phone. If someone does the same thing on paper lists and calendars, they can have the same thing but be “unplugged”.

Overall, I understand that there are people who go overboard and end up slipping away and are unaware of their surrounds, including the people in their lives. But this can happen without technology. A more useful experiment would be to take something that has no useful purpose (tv) and try doing without for a long period of time. You can learn a lot about yourself from unplugging your tv for a month. But choosing to remove something practical and valuable from your life for a single day seems silly.

@hominid Well said….the internet is part of my down time but it certainly does not replace my real life interactions and activities.

Nah. It’s a Friday, and I’ll be alone all day. So there would be no communication at all.

Silly populist claptrap.

No, I do not ever participate in these “national this or that day”.

Connecting, or not, is a personal choice based on one’s own situation. Any event like this is forced artificiality.

No, electronics are tools I use. They do not rule me. I am good at interpersonal communications in many forms, and I don’t need a specific day to remember I’m dealing with real people and not words on a screen.

I want to, but I’m a very forgetful person and unless someone remind me, I can never remember that I have to “unplug” that day. And of course no one will remind me until much later. And there’s my family too. They don’t want to “unplug” anything.

So… well, I attempted to stop using all electronic devices for that national day, but so far I haven’t done it :(