Five Tips to Manage Technology For a More Relaxing (Spring Break) Vacation

It's the time of year when many people take a week off for a spring break. Perhaps to a warmer location, a ski trip to the mountains, or just a staycation. Minnetonka students will be on break at the end of the month. Regardless of what you may do, consider disconnecting and possibly going off the grid completely to make your time off even more relaxing. If you have kids, help them to do so as well. Consider the following:

1. Decrease or fast completely from social media for the week. Rather than spending time monitoring what others are doing on their vacation or posting about what you are doing, just enjoy your own time. If this is too hard for you (or your kids), try smaller amounts of time away from social media- perhaps limit time to a couple check-ins per day. While you're at it, talk about FOMO.
   
   
2. Take a break from--or at least not continually monitor--work email. Most likely less than 20% of the email you receive needs your attention anyway. Personal email can wait, too, if not a week at least not more than a couple glances/week. Consider breaks from texting and Snapchat, too, perhaps using Do Not Disturb to create free times and help your kids experience this, too.
   
   
3. Turn off notifications and interruptions on your phone. Remember that each buzz or beep distracts you from relaxing and being present with those around you. Turn off the badge app icons displaying missed messages and alerts (the red circle with the white number in the top right corner of each app). These are designed to get your attention and cause you to open the app to see what you're missing--FOMO again.
   
   
4. Don't check the news. Lately on vacations I've eliminated my reading of the news and avoided apps/sites with headlines. Rather than being discouraged by what's happening, I've found it freeing to not be in the know. Try it. Encourage kids to do this, too, whether it is news, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat.
   
   
5. Spend time with friends and family in conversation without technology in use. Set aside time to play games. Show your kids ways to have fun without needing micro entertainment, apps and video games filling their downtime. If you don't normally keep tech away from meal times, a vacation in a new location is a great place to introduce this practice.

Hopefully these tips will help you better enjoy an upcoming vacation or time off. If you can't get completely off the grid, hopefully you can at least decrease the time you spend on it so you can enjoy a vacation more. Of course, you can do all of these at other times, too, such as an evening or a weekend. It's often easier to implement changes in small increments, but getting a vacation away from devices can be a great catalyst for change. Let me know if you try any of these tips or have your own, too.

Read more about this topic through these related posts: 

• Tech Free Family Dinners Focused on Gratitude
• Family Fun Day- Making Quality Time for Relationships
• Easy New Year's Resolution: Add 40 Vacation Days to 2019 by Cutting Back on Social Media
• Update: Seven Month (220 Day) Facebook Fast = 18 Hours of Additional Time
• 86+ Day Facebook Fast: You're either busy living or busy dying
• Five Ways to Raise Digitally Balanced JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) Kids ina FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) World
• Family Fun Day- Making Quality Time for Relationships
• New Year's Resolution: 3 Ways to Cut Back on Digital Distractions
• Apple Screen Time a Huge Win for Everyone, Including Parents!
• Technology & Relationships- 15 minute interview
• Crazy Busy: You Are Letting the Screen Strangle Your Soul
• My First Apple Watch: Solution to Distraction?
• 10 Days Without Email
• Be Where Your Feet Are: #RealTime with Those Around You
• One to Watch: Center for Humane Technology- Realign Technology with Humanity's Best Interest
• K-12 School Years: The Opportune Time to Learn Digital Balance
• The Difference Between Educational & Entertainment Screen Time
• The Digital Media Diet: Differing Types of Entertainment Screen Time
• Twitch 101 for Parents & Educators: Watching A Stream of Gamers & More IRL
• What Story Are Your Kids Living Out in Fortnite? The Importance of Avoiding Violent Video Games
• Over 1/2 of Parents Keep Digital Devices Out of Kids' Bedrooms Overnight
• Apple iPad/iPhone Guided Access & Restrictions Available for Teachers & Parents
• #DeviceFreeDinner: Will Ferrell PSAs on Common Sense Media
• Curbi: Great Option for Filtering and Monitoring an iPhone/iPad/iPod
• What's in a Name? Digital Health & Wellness vs. Digital Citizenship 
• The Teenage Brain +Dementia of the Preoccupied
• Raising Digitally Balanced Kids: Cybersafety Resources
• Just 3 Taps to See Your Total Time of Phone/iPad App Use per Day/Week
• 3 Ways to Cut Back on Digital Distractions
• Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance Part 1
• Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance, Part 2
• If My Parents Only Knew: My NBC KARE 11 Interview About Kids, Tech & Parenting
• 10 Parenting Tips For a Tech Healthy Summer with Kids
• Best Age for a Kid to Get a Cellphone with Internet Access 
• Techcognition in an Attention Economy
• Tip #7 for a Tech Healthy Summer: Spend Time Off the Grid
• Over 1/2 of Parents Keep Digital Devices Out of Kids' Bedrooms Overnight
• Happy Sweet 16! Now You Can Snapchat. (34% of Parents Don't Allow It Until High School.)
• Quick & Easy Cell Phone Web Filtering for Kids (*and limitations)
• Parenting with Purpose in the Digital Age... It's Complicated
• Parenting in the Digital Age Part 2: How Much Should Parents Snoop?
• District Digital Citizenship Committee: Tonka Schools Campaign to Raise Awareness of Cyber Safety at Home
• What's in a Name? Digital Health & Wellness vs. Digital Citizenship 
• Top Tips for Tech Healthy Kids: Raising Digitally Balanced Kids
• Digital Mentors Needed: Distracted Parents Disengaged With Children
• Single Tasking to Combat Self-Induced Distraction and Infomania

The Golden Rule in Cyberspace: My Christmas/Hanukkah Moonshot Wish 2016

"Is God in cyberspace?" is a question that was posed to Thomas Friedman which he addresses in his latest book, Thank You For Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations. He recently returned to his home state of Minnesota and spoke at the Westminster Town Hall Forum. I wish I could have heard him in person, but thankfully a recording of the talk is online. I've cued it to the part describing his answer to this question here. After listening to this talk while on a run recently, I bought his book.  

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century was the first book by Thomas Friedman that I read back in 2005. I love his storytelling/news reporting writing style and remember being amazed of the new technologies predicted that he wrote about based on his travels and research. This latest book is similar and provides an update on the rapidly changing world in which we live. Friedman outlines three simultaneous changes that are taking place all at an exponential pace: Moore's law, the market, and climate change.

Regarding technology, our interconnectedness, and the cloud (or as Friedman calls it, the Supernova) he explains that a lot of things in cyberspace like pornography, hate sites, gambling, and now even fake news make it seem like God is absent. However, he also points out that God manifests himself in us. If we want God to be in cyberspace, we have to bring him there by how we behave “with the moral choices and mouse clicks” we make. 

"Everything is now in cyberspace... We are all connected, but nobody is in charge... In this age of acceleration, we are standing at a moral intersection... One person can kill all of us and all of us can fix everything... What is naive is if we I think we are going to be just fine if we don’t scale the Golden Rule."

For almost the past decade as I have been speaking around Minnesota to students and parents about using technology appropriately, I have shown the image pictured above of the Golden Rule. As I do, I ask audiences if any of them see an asterisk at the end with any sort of note stating "*except when using technology." Of course there isn't one, and I point out that that we all need to follow the Golden Rule even when we are using technology.  As I've written before, I  explain to the audience the importance of using technology with empathy, compassion, and integrity. I was pleased to see that Friedman calls for this same thing to happen: as more of us than ever before are connected, the Golden Rule is what will ensure that we interact positively with one another. 

Friedman explains that future “leadership is going to require the ability to come to grips with values and ethics. We need to think more seriously and urgently about how we can inspire sustainable values like honesty, humility, integrity, and mutual respect.” His solution is that we do this through strong families and healthy communities. These communities aren’t just our local neighbors living nearby. Now our community is the entire planet. Mother nature treats us as one, says Friedman, and our interconnected technologies and machines all work as one, so we too must start to realize our communities are all one.” We have to work together globally in order to get everyone following the Golden Rule. My short summary here doesn't really do justice to how well he says it, so please read the book!

Two years ago I posted that my Christmas moonshot wish was for a marriage between Apple and Google. Although that hasn't happened yet, when I look back on that wish now it seems so shortsighted. Truly what the world needs is so much more than just a merging of two tech companies. We need a universal agreement for everyone to follow the Golden Rule as we interact with one another. Teach your children, your grandchildren, your students, and your community the Golden Rule. On this Christmas, let this be our hope and prayer for the future.