24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week

The right to two days off each week has been around for only a hundred years or so, and a lot of people campaigned tirelessly to establish it. We need it. We earned it. So why are we giving it up so easily?

Angela Duckworth, renowned for many things including introducing the character strength “grit” into the public discourse.

As a culture we are divided about this. Some of us seem to believe that technology is going to solve every problem; others believe that it will destroy civilization. I fall somewhere in the middle. Technology is wonderful! And also terrible. And both and neither, just like the people who use it.

Because it won’t be long before everyone will be online, with the potential to access all human knowledge, to facilitate cross-disciplinary thinking on a scale we’ve never seen. But along with the potential that comes with this leap for our species, we need to ask some extremely important and urgent questions. How do we ensure that when the rest of

The human brain is constantly developing. Everything you do and experience is reshaping connections in your brain,

Which brings us back to the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that plans for a better future. The depictions of the future we’re used to seeing—the movie trailers promising Armageddon or politicians manipulating us with scare tactics—drive us by fear. They provoke our amygdala, the part of the reptilian brain that responds to fear, the anxio

I’m not calling for draconian limits for kids and adults alike. But I do think we need to think seriously about what sensible screen use would look like, and we need public discussion of pros and cons, especially where kids are involved. We should expect pushback from tech companies. And we should push forward nonetheless.

loved the way that films are called “movies”: they “move” people, letting us experience things together, reminding us of our common humanity, as we laugh,

Begin by admitting you’re on screens too much, your family is on screens too much, your coworkers are on screens too much, and it’s time to take a step back. Knowing how we respond to stimuli is a good place to start.