The Death of Idle Time - Technology is Running Our Lives

This is a great article that was posted on Obit-Mag.com. The article is about how our idle or down time is dying due to our addiction to technology and hand held devices. I found this article as I was preparing my upcoming presentation for the Independent Funeral Directors of Florida Convention.

I will be talking about “Social Media in Funeral Service“.

The Death of Idle Time

The other day I was watching HBO?s The Pacific while scrolling through entries from 18 different blogs listed on my Google Reader RSS feed when I started to watch a YouTube video … and I thought to myself: What the hell are you doing?
Idle time is dead. We no longer have any reason to just be, to let our minds wander and our bodies still. Technology has begot a constant state of distraction, with distractions from distractions, ad infinitum. In the new world order, we never again have to do nothing.

It?s the end of waiting in line for 20 minutes at the grocery store, or sitting by oneself for an hour during an oil change. It?s the end of taxiing to the gate at the airport, driving for hours with just two FM radio stations, walking without intaking data via earbuds and blueteeth.
The change extends even into the bathroom. At the urinal wall in any American bar, men multitask, spare hands occupied with a rectangular device pumping out fantasy football scores.
Back at the bar, even at the finest of establishments, a series of flat-screen TVs are playing SportsCenter. We can?t even enjoy a quiet, contemplative adult beverage anymore.
I have three phones I use every day. I operate five different computers on a regular basis. I haven?t been off the grid completely since my honeymoon nearly two years ago, and the next time I?m off the grid I?ll probably be dead.
When I make a conscious effort to tune out every once in a while, that just means I?m watching TV while trolling Facebook.
?We?ve never seen anything like this in human history,? said Ned Hallowell, a psychiatrist who co-wrote with his wife Married to Multitasking. The book warns of how ?busy living? can harm relationship intimacy.
Why this need to busy ourselves — particularly with technology, which is the very opposite of intimacy? Doesn?t all of this indicate some growing societal desire to escape inner thought and repose?
Hallowell says it?s much simpler than that. We multitask because we can, and ?because it?s fun,? he says.
Hallowell asks patients where they do their best thinking. Invariably, it?s the shower, where Apple thankfully hasn?t yet perfected the shower radio. The shower is our mind?s Last Stand.
I can?t afford idle time beyond the shower. There?s too much available information to consume at all times (All the books ever written! All the music ever made! All the photographs ever taken! All with a click of a button!). I have a place to go. How can I sit on my stoop for a few hours watching life go by when I have 128 items on my Netflix queue? Sometimes, I daydream about having a prolonged illness that would let me finally watch those movies someone at some point told me I just had to see.
If an opportunity for idle time presents itself, I get anxious and grab for my pocket in search of something with buttons. Ever so expectantly, I hit the home button on my iPhone, slide my finger across the bottom of the screen to unlock it and hit the e-mail inbox, begging for another correspondence.
I need this.
In reality, e-mail is the last thing I need. Conservatively speaking, I spend 30 minutes a day just deleting correspondence irrelevant to my life. But e-mail, that whore, is a powerful seductress, and so I return to the refresh button, again and again, like a lottoholic scratching tickets in a 7-Eleven parking lot.
This need to consume technology, like everything else that?s awesome, is addictive, and so it has even been given a name ? ?online compulsive disorder.? In South Korea, there are Internet reform camps for kids addicted to online gaming. Interestingly, much of our addiction to technology manifests itself in correspondence with other people, either via Xbox headsets, IM, Facebook, or e-mail — to be social, in other words, which is generally thought to be a good thing.
But not always. The New York Times reported last month that some adolescents have grown so accustomed to texting their parents immediately after a scholastic disappointment or achievement that they no longer have to wait until school gets out at 3:00, killing ?the much-needed space to revel in independence or struggle with rejection ? space in which, presumably, that 12-year-old could start to figure out who she was, or how he wanted to navigate the world.?
In other words, time to think.
But it?s more than that. The end of our collective ability to idle ourselves can also kill us. At least 6,000 people were killed by distracted drivers in 2008, according to Distraction.gov, a new federal web site dedicated to the issue. The website calls texting the ?most alarming? kind of distraction. In an indication of the urgency of the matter, the president recently issued an executive order banning texting while driving on federal business.
Even talking on the phone while walking ? something some people believe to be the same activity ? is fraught with peril. An Ohio State University study said the number of pedestrians visiting emergency rooms after injuring themselves due to distractions is doubling each year.
When was the last time you took a drive or a walk, alone, to nowhere in particular, without an electronic device in your ear, with no purpose whatsoever? It sounds wonderful, doesn?t it? It?s something I should probably do, too. Hold on one second while I get my iPhone and type ?walk? into my to-do list?. Ooh! A new e-mail!