"We’re a wired culture," blogs environment writer Derek Markham. "Tech-addicted."
For many, the solution to this mental health crisis starts today at sundown and lasts until tomorrow evening. Tagged the National Day of Unplugging, it visits us in 2013 for the fourth year.
Markham echoes the sentiments of Romantic poet William Wordsworth, voiced over two hundred years ago in a legendary sonnet about the Industrial Revolution distancing humans from the natural world.
The world is too much with us.... Late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away.
Wordsworth's point rings even truer today. Twenty-first century electronic devices like smartphones, tablets, lap readers, gaming consoles, and desktop computers engage our social and business time 24/7, focusing our attention inward, away from the natural world.
The Unplugging Day celebration started with the creation of the Sabbath Manifesto, "a provisional guide for observing a weekly day of rest" designed to slow the pace of our increasingly hectic world. Its ten core principles include avoiding technology and commerce, connecting with loved ones, ane nurturing health.
The Reboot network, a third-millenium collective dedicated to engaging and inspiring young cultural creatives, innovators, and thought leaders to generate worthwhile projects, has taken up the cause in promoting this international day of unplugging.
Take advice from Reboot today by signing a pledge to honor the concept of unplugging. You're in good company with Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post. Upload a photo of yourself or your group with a customized sign saying "I unplug to... (you fill in the blank)." Connect with the people in your street, neighborhood, and city, have an uninterrupted meal, or read a book to your child.
"Friday could be your chance to begin a new relationship with technology," says Markham. "Unplug."
Based in Chicago, Sandy Dechert has been covering women's health for Examiner.com since the zine's official startup. She has reported on health issues with Olympic athletes, Sheryl Crow, Robin Roberts, Mary Tyler Moore, and other newsmaking celebs. Sandy also covered the 2012-2013 influenza epidemic, top women's health news of 2012 (including prevention), and the fungal meningitis outbreak.
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