Digital Diet

All this talk of a media fast has got me thinking.

About the thoughts and ideas I've been developing in this class in conjunction with "The Things They Carried;" about my focus on having purpose on the internet and being an active, creative contributor rather than a passive consumer; about the discussions I've had with Audrey Blake, Curtis Jenkins, and others about identity and the internet.

And I've especially thought a lot about a general theme that seems to reoccur in lots of my comments and posts: that there needs to be balance and moderation in all things; that the internet isn't inherently evil, nor perfectly utopian, but rather that the best option is not to go to one extreme or the other, but rather to find a balance.

After reading about the proposed "media fast" last night, I interviewed my cousin who had done her own media fast just a week or so previously.I asked her what she thought of it, what she learned from it, and if she would recommend it. Here's what I got from this media fast interview:

When I asked her how it went, she said that she felt "isolated" and kind of lonely. She said it was harder to do research for her homework, because her natural reaction now is to go to the internet, which she says has become our main source for problem-solving or finding answers. When trying to find a friend's house, she realized she didn't have their address, and then didn't have a phone to try to call them to find out where she needed to go. So she just ended up not going. "Nowadays we don't think of bringing a quarter for a pay phone, or memorizing addresses and phone numbers," she said. She hadn't realized how "debilitating" the media fast would be. Computer abstinence wasn't required because of  homework (just social media, etc., which I personally think would be a good rule to have for our media fast), but she chose not to use it anyway because she knew she would inevitably find herself on gmail or Facebook, because her fingers are so programmed to automatically type in those URLs when she gets online.

But would she recommend it? Her answer was, "Yes. Yes, for a learning experience. It's a good thing to analyze how much you're using, and how much is really necessary."

This answer of hers got me thinking even more. About the purpose of media fasts. If the purpose is to analyze how much we're using and how much is really necessary, I think there is a more effective way of doing this:

Rather than a Media Fast, what about a Media Diet? Just like we need a balanced diet for food, I assert that we also need a balanced media diet--not to an extreme, one way or another. Just as somethings are better for us to eat than others, some media things are better for us than others. But just as it's okay to eat a brownie every once in awhile, it's also okay to indulge in a few minutes of mindless games or Facebook-stalking every once in awhile. Balance in all things, my friends, balance in all things.

Rather than completely abstaining from media, this project would entail keeping track of the media that you do consume and how much time you devote to the various forms of digital media: how much time you spend on Facebook, playing games, using internet for school, texting, watching TV or videos, etc., etc. More than a mere media fast, focusing on our media diets would help us see where we're using digital media wisely, productively, how much time we spend on perhaps more passive, purposeless digital media activities, as well as how this compares to our time spent on non-digital activities. This will help us analyze our media consumption/contribution, how we can find balance in it, and make changes to make our digital use more purposeful and productive. It also helps us find balance between our digital and non-digital identities.

This is a project that I would like to further pursue and advocate. What are your thoughts?