Sixty years ago, the only electronic stimulus we had involved a three channel television, a table radio, and a large black party line phone sitting in the hallway on a little table. The easiest access to news sat on the porch in the morning, delivered by a youngster riding a brand new Schwinn bike. If your car had a radio, it was usually on something new called Rock & Roll. The six o’clock news was in its infancy. The most important news would be in the paper anyway.
Times have indeed changed. Today, that phone is on our belt and in our purse, permanently fixed to outside stimulus. We tweet. We text. We post. We blog. We email. We YouTube. We are multi-device specialists.
We stare at white screens the majority of the day, bolted to an office chair with wheels like a prisoner in cuffs, being hit by thousands and thousands of stimuli across a number of social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google +.
Is this healthy for our minds and our mental health? Is there a natural, real, and interpersonal world out there like the 1950’s had? Can we pull the plugs, the battery, and the power source and stop the stimuli? Does the Internet interaction act as an enemy of healthy mental focus? Do we get temporary mental disorders from constant connectivity? The answers are still being developed and are ever evolving. This “connectivity” did not really affect us until the late 1990’s. Pagers and desk tops came at the same time.
Many of us take devices everywhere. We would never consider being truly unplugged for a few hours let alone a few days. Try this. After you read this article, turn off every device you are attached to for just two hours; 120 minutes. Many cannot.
Have we overdosed on digital? Have our smart devices outsmarted us? What role does constant stimulus and technology play in our mental health?
How much time do you spent doing e-mails and commenting on Facebook? Do e-activities create depression, anxiety, and attention deficit disorders?
Turn off that device; we want you to think about this.
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This article is brought to you by Orenstein Solutions, P.A. located in Cary and in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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