This summer
I’m taking my final three classes and then I will have my Master’s Degree in
Sport Management. One class I’m talking
is called New Media and Technology in Sport.
For this class we have a minimum of five blogs to do (that’s why I’m
starting this blog). I may decide to do
more and even continue this blog after the class, we’ll just have to see if I
like it or not.
For the
first blog I have to engage in a technology deprivation experiment. Basically I was not allowed to use email,
texting, web browsing, social media, streaming, etc. I also decided to not allow myself to play
any video games or anything like that.
Basically all I could do for technology was watch TV. I also conned my wife in to
participating. I was successful in
lasting 24 hours buy my wife on the other hand was not.
So, I
started my 24 hour technology deprivation at noon on Tuesday (May 27th)
and ended at noon on Wednesday (May 28th). Before I began I made sure I played a
Facebook game that I’m kind of addicted to, it’s called Marvel: Avengers
Alliance. I wanted to make sure that I was
still able to get all the perks of signing in each day (yeah I know, it’s kind
of lame). I did all my stuff with that
game and started shortly after that. I
also checked my Facebook wall and Twitter feed.
Than once that was done it was noon and I shut my computer and started
reading for one of my classes.
The most
difficult part for me was the no streaming videos and no video games. I enjoy playing video games and it was a
little difficult not to start. Also, my
wife and I usually go to bed with Netflix playing but we weren't able to do
that. It was also difficult when my
phone would send me notifications of different things. I was able to clear them and not worry about
them but every time I got one from Facebook or Twitter I wanted to check it
out. Towards the end of the 24 hours I
really started to watch the clock. I was
anxious to get back to my social media sites.
I was able to stay strong though.
My wife on the other hand failed.
A few hours
after we started we took a trip to Hy-Vee to get groceries. My daughter (who will be two on July 31st)
was being fussy in the cart. We let her
down to walk with us but she likes to go her own way. She did ok over all but we eventually put her
back in the cart when we went to check out.
Well she was fussing and trying to stand-up so to distract her my wife
pulled out her phone and opened YouTube.
She found the video for the song “Let it Go” from the movie Frozen. I don’t really understand the obsession kids
have with this movie but even my daughter loves that song (let me remind you,
she’s not even 2 yet). Anyway she handed
the phone to my daughter and she was quite the rest of the time (as long as we
kept restarting the video).
Then Wednesday
morning my wife failed again. This time
was a little more acceptable. My wife’s
cousin (so I guess you’d say my cousin in-law) had some family issues and was
doing a mass family Facebook message and my wife thought she needed her
support. Even though I’m still not sure
how she knew what the issue was since she wasn't supposed to be on Facebook
anyway, but I’ll leave that one alone. I
won’t go into detail about what issues, that’s just not for me to tell.
One thing
that really saved my wife and me was that America’s Got Talent was on TV on
Tuesday night. That is a show that we
both really like to watch and we didn't have an issue paying attention to
that. Many times there is nothing we
both like to watch on TV so we watch Netflix or we’ll watch something that we
both only kind of care about and do other things while we watch. Many times I’ll be on my phone looking at
Twitter or The Chive or some other web sites, but since AGT was on it wasn't too difficult.
Overall this
experiment was kind of fun and interesting to see how much we use technology
every day.
