Posted on 05/26/2013 3:16:47 PM PDT by upchuck
It [Memorial Day] would seem an ideal time to take a break, but our ability to unplug and relax is under assault. A three-day weekend? We can barely get through three waking hours without working, new research shows. The average smartphone user checks his or her device 150 times per day, or about once every six minutes. Meanwhile, government data from 2011 says 35 percent of us work on weekends, and those who do average five hours of labor, often without compensation—or even a thank you. The other 65 percent were probably too busy to answer surveyors' questions...
"It's like an arms race … everything is an emergency," said Tanya Schevitz, spokeswoman for Reboot, an organization trying help people unplug more often. "We have created an expectation in society that people will respond immediately to everything with no delay. It's unhealthy, and it's unproductive, and we can't keep going on like this."
There's a long list of horribles associated with our new, always-on-digital lives: You are dumber. You are more stressed. You are losing sleep, and more depressed...
"Many of us have an exaggerated sense of our own importance," she said, speaking on the eve Memorial Day weekend. "I can tell you that come Tuesday morning, the Earth will still be revolving, whether you have checked your email or not..."
"I think that a three-day weekend provides a unique opportunity for people to unplug and decompress because there is a tradition of people going away. So the expectation by the boss that you will be reachable at a moment's notice is likely to be less," she said. "I do think there's hope. When people are given achievable steps, they start seeing that there's a difference."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
I do, however, get frustrated with folks that check their email only once a week.
I’ve got a cheap tracfone that I take with me in the car but I’ve barely used it.
its basically a 4-day weekend here in my town since school was out on Friday too
I haven’t been able to figure out how to check email with my Obamaphone yet.
I had a job years I ago where we were paid to be onsite if something went wrong. On weekends and evenings we would need to be near a phone and could not leave town. Beepers let us leave the house for nearby trips. Pagers gave us a little for freedom. Pagers that you could send messages with were another step. Now many jobs like mine can be done anywhere in the world with an internet. My niece was able to spend a month in Asia because of this. They can might enslave some people but for me they meant more freedom.
Same here, but with the added bonus that I live in the middle of a 40 acre dead spot for reception. Go a half mile in about any direction and you have signal, but not here.
Suits me fine.
Same here.
I will turn it on if there is a family crises going on. But, thankfully those are few and far in between.
Even though I catch a lot of flack from friends and family..immediate availability is not always a good thing.
I was once told by someone at a company I worked with that if I didn’t answer email in five minutes I looked bad. I was developing a product and I can either spend time in the lab doing that or sit in front of the computer waiting for the next missive.
A week under normal conditions is long. Every five minutes is ridiculous.
Example: I recently had lunch with a friend. She laid her cell/smart/whatever phone on the table as she sat down. As we sat and chatted and ate she glanced at the phone frequently* and picked it and looked at it twice. It was as if the phone was a third person sitting at the table. That seems a little excessive to me. Not to mention rude.
* after a few minutes of this I decided to count the glances. I stopped at 15.
I see people wandering around the store clutching their phone in their hand as if, literally, their life depended on it. I see people at the checkout line fumbling with their phone and their wallet trying to pull out their credit card. And holding up the line. Geeze, would it really hurt to be polite to those waiting to put the phone in your pocket for 15 seconds to complete the transaction?
[Rant off :]
I have to go out on the ice or in the boat to get any real reception here.
:) Good one!
Nice isn’t it?
Gotta admit, I check the news much too frequently. Am reading this on my new Samsung Galaxy S4.
Another frequent annoyance: why do folks think they need to yell into their cell phone? I could really care less about your situation.
I ran myself out of gas last month due to a non working gas gauge. I was only about a half mile from home but called for a friend to bring me some gas before walking the rest of the way to the house.
That was the first time I had made a call on the thing in at least a year. I’ve got prepaid minutes that last till 2014.
I got totally decompressed last night after a couple of Moscow Mules! -;)
The last three weeks I’ve only used mine to order a pizza on the way out of town.
Want me 24/7 ? Pay me 24/7 !
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