An Out-of-the-Box Idea

By David Chorney

Turn on (the TV), tune in (the show), drop out (of sight). Talk on the cell phone, text-message, surf the Internet. The New Age mantra “Be here now” has been replaced with “Don’t be here now”. We Americans are using technology to stay at home, escape reality and neglect our relationships. Our homes are no longer our castles; they are our fortresses. We are trapped in the box.

Faith Popcorn is a consultant who tracks trends for businesses. According to the Popcorn Report, we are in our third decade of “cocooning”. We are ordering food to eat in, turning our homes into entertainment centers, communicating and buying through the Internet instead of in person, text-messaging instead of talking to people and in public, we tune out the world by listening to our iPods. We cocoon when we travel, taking our cars instead of public transportation. We pacify our children while driving by letting them watch the built-in DVD players in the backs of our minivans, creating cocoons within cocoons.

A recent 60 Minutes segment showed how all this technology has reached baroque proportions. For example, a cell phone is no longer just a phone. It is also a camera, an Internet connection, a text messenger, a computer, a TV and a music system, coming with a complicated owner’s manual that nobody can understand. We need to hire specialists to set up our 5.1-channel HDTV home theatre systems. FireDog and Geek Squad are doing a brisk business. There are now refrigerators with Internet connections.

The trouble with our preoccupation with all this technology is we are becoming a nation of loners and homebodies. In 2004, Americans had fewer friends to confide in than they did in 1985, falling by 30 percent from 2.94 to 2.06. 25 percent of Americans now have nobody at all with whom to discuss personal matters (Smith-Lovin, Duke University, 2006). At the same time television viewing increased dramatically. By the age of six, an average child will have spent more time watching television than talking with his parents over his entire lifetime.

We are becoming obese and isolated, missing out on life’s rich possibilities. There are so many other things that we could be doing instead of watching television. There are beautiful parks to walk in, with biking trails. There are free concerts. There are clubs that you can join. You can learn to dance or cook exotic cuisine. Go to the zoo, or visit Ano Nuevo and see the elephant seals. Best of all, you can bring a friend or your family with you. At the end of the day, you will find these activities far more rewarding than TV.

We do not need to give up our modern conveniences. We need to stop letting them run our lives and get out more often. Being here now will be a memorable experience that can be achieved only outside the box.