Man is not an island. Socializing is good for a person even if through the internet. To realize that you have a problem you want to share here for instance likely will show you that there are others that feel the same and others different. Being alone too much I understand is not good for you mentally or physically.

Having said that there are times like holidays it is good to get away from the internet. The cell phone is necessary for safety and staying in touch with friends and relatives. Nothing wrong as mentioned above with reading a real book....:)

I still have a flip phone. My wife has a smart phone, but she still works and uses it as well as participating on different social sites. If my flip phone dies, I have another as a back up. We don't have a cell signal where we live, and the only time I use mine is when I go running errands and maybe check in with the wife about something. I use the internet a decent amount but sometimes just forget about it for a day or two. I do love the internet. It's like having almost any tidbit of info at your fingertips. I could probably skip it for a week or longer with little effort.

No disrespect but...

Somehow I made it well into my 30's without the 'safety' of a cell phone.
Sure they are handy and convenient, in my 40's I got a job where I had to travel all over the united states and it helped a lot to connect with co-workers and family while on the road.

As far as social media, sure I have a facebook and linkedin account... but as I heard on the radio the other day "social media isn't social", I am somewhat concert we are raising a generation that will be socially handicap.

Just my two cents

Well I'm in software development and the app we're developing is SaaS/cloud based, so the internet is sorta my bread and butter. I could give up surfing other sites (only allowed to use the internet to work on my software) but I would have a hard time not checking Pelican or Amazon. Pelican is really the only "social media" outlet I have. I gave up on Facebook many many years ago. And I haven't warmed up to Twitter or Instagram. Yeah, it would be tough.

As for what to do, I'd spend more time in the garage and out riding my BMX bike.

I might actually save some money, as I'm an avid online shopper.

no internet..
easy once home..
Lady,dogs,books & guitar..
cell phone..
I misplace all the time..
still can't recite my#..
& I will only answer if your 1 of very few....

Rika

Where would I get photos of nekkid women?

sure, be tough to do my charting though

About 30 yrs. ago (don't remember the time exactly) I had a client who would call me frequently and cancel our scheduled meeting - a walk through of a commercial property (property management was my business at the time).
One day I asked her what she did that compelled her to leave the state (CA) so frequently and on such short notice. She said that she was working with a group of politicians and dignitudes in Washington on a project.
When I asked further, she said, "I'm working on a high-speed global communications network. At this present time some are calling it the Information Super Highway.
You'll hear about it one day."

If I were on vacation, yes. Backpack in the mountains with a couple of Hienlein novels and I'd be fine .

No way I can give up the computers for work.

Back in the days when we were running DOS 3.3 or 4 I was in a little computer group of top engineers and scientists. They met at my office.Guys like engineers at Segate Technology (It might have been MPI still back then.) The man that was Engineer of the year twice at AT&T in the 80s was in the group as well. He took us on a tour of the local AT&T plant where they manufactured the components that AT&T used to connect long distance calls.

We were all using dial up of course and waiting for the days of a fast connection like 38.8 baud and 56.6 baud was a far off dream. He showed us a system they were designing then that would allow people to live stream a movie. Basically Netflix like features only we were all on dial up. We asked a lot of questions and he admitted it was years away and we would need much faster connection methods and blew us away when he said someday people at home will have connections that could download a full MB per second. ;)

I am still amazed when I see a update to software and the update is several hundred MB and it download in seconds. I was on my third or fourth computer before I had a 200 MB hard drive.

My iPhone has 128 Gig of RAM. It is just hard to believe.

In 1986 I bought a Macintosh and a dot matrix printer to do my invoices. To me, it was amazing (prior to that I was using an IBM Selectric and tons of Liquid White).
Years later a client asked me if I was on the "Internet."
I barely knew what the word meant. I said, "Not yet."
She said, "You ought to, it will change your life."
Months later I called a computer store and told them what I had and asked what I needed to upgrade my Mac to get on to the "Internet."
Obviously technology had left me behind...the person would pause frequently as he tried to educate me (I didn't know a byte from a bite), and I could hear him chuckle now/then.
When it became clear to me that I was still back in 1986 (could have easily been 1947) - light years away from where technology was at the time - I asked him what I ought to do with the Mac.
He said, "You could use it as a door stop."
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