Techsperiment days 3 & 4: going out without Twitter

Our effort at keeping devices off during family time — roughly three hours a night — continues. The biggest challenge of day 4 came when I realized it was 5 pm, and I’d yet to log day 3. Would I grant myself an exception, and blog for a few minutes...

Popplet brings mind mapping to the iPad

“It’s only for content consumers, not content creators.” That charge was leveled at the iPad even before it hit the stores. Now that it’s in all our grubby little hands, there seems to be some truth to the argument. My husband has gotten great...

Your social media friends are your real friends

Diana Adams is one of a growing number of social media junkies who have experimented with taking some time off from the web. She describes “hitting a wall” with her social media use and online relationships, and taking 8 days off from the net so that she...

Techsperiment day 1: the difficulty of unplugging with kids

24 hours into our vow to unplug — for just 3 hours a day! — and I am the weakest link. We’ve sworn to give up computers, iPhones and iPads between 6-9 every night (“family time”) but it’s day one and I’m already struggling....

Online activities reinforce offline social connections

How did I miss this one? In 2008, StatsCan published a very useful paper on How Canadians’ Use of the Internet Affects Social Life and Civic Participation. It speaks directly to the questions about the Internet’s impact on social capital that have been a...