Dear Friends,
It’s not an easy business figuring out how to use (or not use) digital technologies in your family home.
Most adults use smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. as part of their professional work (yes, even full-time homemakers). Sometimes this reality—that we can’t get rid of all these things entirely, and maybe even wouldn’t want to—tempts parents to throw up their hands and just give into the eternal flow of tech for their household culture.
It does no one any good to pretend that willpower alone is going to effectively solve our individualized family and personal problems with tech. We need strategies to support our success!
In my début piece at Public Discourse today, today, I am sharing some thoughts on the ways that tech serves us and a couple of strategies for making sure that it doesn’t control us.
Read my essay here:
“Technology in the Family Home: Add Before You Subtract.”
And see if you can spot “the 3 R’s” of my friends
in the piece! Ruth and Peco are doing very good work on formulating practical pathways that individuals and families can take to reverse our capitulation to tech, part of the larger process of “unmachining.”Are you happy with your household tech culture and tech use? What would you change if you could?
Do you find conflict between a desire to minimize tech (if you have that desire) and the fact that tech meets or partially meets some important needs for you?
What are some ways that you might “add before [or while] you subtract?”
Have a wonderful week!
Excellent piece! Clear & inspirational.
Dixie, I found this so practical and helpful, especially the tips about how you’ve created an outdoor and hands-on culture of play/leisure for your children. I’m also inspired by your perspective that yes, technology is actually good and useful when used judiciously, and we don't need to totally anathematize it. It’s easy to become either polarized (full-on Luddite) or apathetic; more difficult to be realistic, wise and in control. Thanks for helping show us the way to do so.