Techno Free Zones
Health care executive Frances Hanckel doesn’t miss having a television set. Except perhaps when she invited her hospital management team over for a potluck dinner on election day and everyone wanted to watch the returns.
“One co-worker brought along a portable TV,” she says.
Hanckel is among a small but determined group of 21st century Thoreaus, trying to escape the modern-day world by creating Walden Ponds within their homes. Toward this end, they are making a conscious decision to draw the line on electronic and computing devices at their doorstep.
In choosing a personal life without sitcoms, Nintendo or e-mail, these low-tech types are swimming against the tide. According to industry groups, only 1.7% of U.S. households are without televisions. More than one-quarter of American households own pagers, double the number a year ago. More than one-third use cellular phones and 7 million people regularly check their e-mail from outside the office.
Despite these statistics, not everyone is singing the praises of the technology revolution. Some see irony, for example, in the increasing number of parents buying their teenagers pagers and cellular phones in an effort to connect. Many believe that technology has us plugged in, just not to one another.
“The most important thing in real life is having deep emotional connections with other human beings,” says psychotherapist Carole West. “All these electronic toys take that away. They give people--especially those who have trouble relating to others--a pseudo sense of connection.”
Yet, for many busy moms and dads, Super Mario and the Disney Channel are a godsend. Critics, however, caution that these seemingly benign baby sitters may put children at risk.
“Kids who are playing computer and video games are diverting themselves from physical and mental activities,” says Dr. Roderic Gorney, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and private practitioner. “More than that, certain vulnerable children may be stimulating an addictive response that further isolates them from parents and peers.”
Bonnie Mark, a Westwood psychotherapist who works with children and adolescents, is raising her 7-year-old son without television and with limited video and computer time.
“Studies show that the brain actually turns off when television is on,” Marks says. “And I believe that children’s frustration tolerance goes down with television because they are so used to getting things fast.”
For her own sense of space and control, Marks unplugs the telephone in the evenings. “When I get home, I refuse to answer the phone,” she says. “It’s frustrating for people around me, but I like that time to be family time without invasion or interruption.”
But ever-cheaper technology is making it harder to be off duty or out of reach.
“Being constantly surrounded by and in communication via all of these electronic gadgets deprives us of the periods of aloneness that are so necessary for a sense of one’s own individual existence,” Gorney says. “One needs to feel secure and competent by oneself.”
Karen Martin, a Santa Monica health care consultant, can attest to the importance of downtime. Martin had worn a beeper for six years, believing it was important for clients to be able to contact her day and night. After a while, Martin realized that being unreachable was sometimes necessary for her peace of mind. The intrusive device had become wrapped up in her sense of self-worth.
“For the first two months, I would reach for the beeper and it wasn’t there. I really missed the physical attachment and it felt like I was missing an appendage,” Martin says. “In reality, getting rid of it was very empowering. It made me feel like I was in control of my life.”
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Taking control by throwing out the controls isn’t widely understood. There are tremendous social pressures to conform.
Vernon Bush, 34, a keyboard player and singer in San Francisco, finds himself frequently explaining his decision to abandon television. “When I tell people I don’t have a TV, they react as if I have the flu, or they say they want to do the same, but are afraid they’ll feel lonely,” he says. “I tell them that’s not such a bad thing. You need to spend time with your own thoughts.”
Instead of reaching to turn on the TV, Bush enjoys mountain hiking, practicing his music and going out to hear live music. “Television pacifies you,” he says. “You don’t get to exercise your imagination and there’s no room for creativity.”
Many with technology-free havens say that living in a techno world led to a sense of loss and nostalgia for a time when we were more independent.
As executive vice president of Memorial Health Services, in charge of system integration, Hanckel works with computers all day long. But at her San Pedro home, there’s not a computer mouse in sight.
“The dynamic of these machines is that you become dependent on them and we have enough dependencies in our lives,” Hanckel says. “There’s so little sense of self left in our modern world. You lose the ability to create ideas for yourself.”
For Los Angeles artist Arturo Talarico, TV-free for seven years, the issue comes down to time.
“If you have goals and dreams, if you’re a person who values life, you know that time is a very precious commodity,” he says. “You haven’t got much of it and you better use what you’ve got.”
