Have you heard about the Screenless Sunday movement? Some families have been doing them for years, where on Sundays you don’t look at screens – whether your cellphone, your laptop, tablet or computer , and yes, even your conventional tv. You talk to each other and get out and do walks or if the weather is bad you stay in and read or play boardgames with the kids.
Those are all good things to do as a family, although I’m sure there would be extremely heavy resistance at the beginning. Especially from the younger generation(s)
I couldn’t do it. I am not even a light cellphone user. The things just never clicked with me, partly because in the old days I worked for a radio station that wanted some people to carry pagers and be on call through the weekend, and they were too cheap to pay anything for ruining the employee’s weekend. Pagers became cellphones and one coworker who was supposed to be on call one weekend got fired for having a few drinks at a party while on call. So I just avoided cellphones as much as I could. I now have an antique Iphone 4s that sits on my desk and never moves and an Iphone 6 in a box ready to take it’s place someday.
But I still couldn’t handle a Screenless Sunday. Why? My kids are grown, my wife Karen works Sundays and I’m home with the animals. I like to watch a little Sunday NFL, catch up on my reading on my tablet, and write blogs like this on my laptop on Sundays.
But blackspots… oh there’s an idea I could get behind. Over in Scotland one of the country’s most scenic and wild areas, Galloway Forest Park has a woman farmer who wants to keep cell towers away from the park and her farm so that people can de-stress and enjoy nature the way it’s meant to be. (A blackspot is an area with no cellphone coverage) Sarah Redman the owner of the remote farm and Bed and Breakfast says that most of her guests want to get away from the demands of their phones while staying and the extremely patchy cellphone signals help them get away from modern interruptions.
What say you about Screenless Sundays? Could you do it? Would you want to do it?
