Evaluating our Addiction

We've been without internet at our new house for a week and a half. It's been interesting. I remember thinking it wouldn't be that bad ... a few days without Netflix and such. We'd be so busy moving in and all ....
As it turns out, Adam doesn't miss it at all, and he was surprised. He'd get rid of the internet in a heartbeat and not mind.
I did better than I expected. I don't really miss the entertainment of it, the youtube and Netflix and movies. And although I love my friends, I didn't miss spending an hour on Facebook each morning, "catching up." I'd hate to give it up altogether, but I didn't really miss it for a couple of weeks.

What did I miss? I missed having access to information for school, the convenience of looking up things immediately, things I can't find in our handy dictionary or atlas. Julia needs to watch videos about cells. We need to do our Khan Academy math. I need access to my online copy of Herodotus. I didn't realize how much I used my internet for recipes and crochet patterns. It's a royal pain to drive to the coffee shop a few blocks away, to get a recipe. Bleh.

But I wasn't addicted, which was nice. I found myself crocheting more, reading much more, and playing the piano. Tidying the house. Soaking in the bath.

Unfortunately, Julia is definitely addicted to her internet. We found this out immediately when she could think of nothing else but Going To The Bean with her laptop and staying for four hours, headphones wrapped around her brown hair, gazing at some show. At home, she sat in her room, watching all the DVDs she could get her hands on (her computer is old and has a drive), as she said, "pretending I have internet." Sigh.

She's only had her own internet-accessible device for about 9 months, and for several of those it was broken. How could this happen so quickly?

Adam and I grew up without internet. We spent our entire childhoods, adolescences, and young adulthoods, without a single sliver of bandwidth. It was easy -- easier than I expected -- for us to revert to that life, and I'll tell you, it was nice. Julia is a child still, and something about all that screen time and instant entertainment is utterly appealing to the young brain.

Just thought you'd like to know. If you're old like me, you could probably drop your internet easily and not look back. But watch those kids and grandkids!