"What do you do as a busy person to not get trapped in our Technological Prison"?

“The average person spends more than eight solid years watching electronically how other people supposedly live” (Professional Speaker Jeff Davidson in Witcher’s “Technological Prison”).

University of Utah freshman Taylor Witcher wrote a fascinating paper called, “Technological Prison.” Her thesis: “Our habit of using high-speed gadgets to obtain all kinds of information is deteriorating our physical, day-to-day lives.” How hooked are our young people? Witcher reports that Professor Robert Doede of Trinity Western University offered extra credit to his ethic students who could abstain from video games, text, television and social network sites for a three-month semester. Only ten out of thirty-five agreed to try; five made it. A UCLA study shows that only 7% of communications is done through words alone; 93% of communications between humans is non-verbal. Witcher asks, “Would a text-message-sent ‘I love you’ have the same effect as a gaze-deep-in-your-eyes ‘I love you’?” I am all too familiar with someone who was “dumped” via text message!

Witcher does not totally bash technology. She is correct when she talks about how technology has allowed people to reconnect after many years, keep in touch quickly with friends, and let people know about wonderful things happening in our friends’ lives. I have a dear friend who regularly posts pictures of the kids on her Facebook page. I look forward to the email that tells me picture updates are there, and I go and see them. “I have been able to reconnect and keep up with many people who, if I had to use letters and phone calls to keep “in touch,” would never hear from me.

It is unrealistic to think in our Society the up-and-coming business professional can succeed without electronic tools. I need them. You use them. You must…you are reading this. But what do you do as business professionals to make sure you “Stop and smell the roses”? What do you do as a busy person to NOT use the technological prison when we need to have those conversations which require more than words?