I have been surprised by seeing how electronic gadgets control and waste our lives stealthily without our noticing it. I have observed people pouring a huge chunk of time surfing or texting or emailing, so much so that sometimes I had to stand waiting or repeating myself when the other person was busy emailing or texting while talking to me.

I have seen a sad case of poor time management in which a person used unproportionately large amount of time for a small task with unsatisfactory result. I learned of some addictive college students have to quit school. All because of having the bad company of a computer and internet.

Every time I see or hear about how people are consumed by these modern gadgets and how their drive, dream and hope are rendered hopeless and irrelevant in the midst of this internet/computer addiction, I feel greatly challenged by the presence of this great time-killer, hope-crusher and energy-drainer in the form of technologies. I want to write about it, attempting to warn myself and my children. There are a few very simple mechanisms to avoid being a slave of these gadgets.

(1) Check and answer non-urgent emails once a day only and turn off any IM or Skype. Do not allow these non-urgent communications interrupt your work. Keeping in mind you are not going to get anything done if you allow yourself to be interrupted by constantly dipping in and out of mailbox or IM.

(2) Stick to your plan religiously, granting no exception to yourself, absolutely. This is very important, as we know very well that too many exceptions create a rule. Of course, you must have a plan first. Remember no plan means plan to fail.

(3) Set a fix amount of time for internet fun time. Take away this indulgence when time is up.

(4) Do a reality check after you are on the internet for some times.

Once you are away from home either in college or at work, you have nobody but yourself watching over you. Be a good time manager.

On 3/8, my daughter was on the computer doing her homework and did not get off till after 1 AM. The next day I took away the computer and asked her to work on her homework using her textbook.

The result is she got a lot more work done by 9 PM, without computer. I said to her, “This is like an experiment. You can see how much time you can save when you are not on the computer.”

She agreed that once she was on the internet, she found it hard not to surf around. Then one click after another, and time passed very fast this way and she had to cut back her sleep for having spent too much time on the internet.

Imagine what will that lead you to when you spend more and get less done, wasting a large chunk of time surfing! Nowhere. I hope both of my children will remember this experiment.

This is written for all the young people that I care of, especially for my children.
Computer technologies are wonderful things when they can take us surfing globally without ever leaving our bedrooms or even bathrooms. Yet, I have posted some entries on the negative sides of this and I am doing it again as I observed nothing less than this psychological addiction to the internet among young people that I know of, including my own children. They find no life nor meaning outside computer, so much as that the touch of the topic triggers a sure fight between parents and their children.

As with all culture artifacts, there are producers and consumers, with the formers being the creators of these artifacts, the makers and movers in human history. The consumers are those who passively view and receive whatever channeled to them through the internet. There is nothing wrong with being consumers, only if you don’t care about consuming away everything you value in your life.

It is rather foolish to assume the consumers pay nothing for whatever channeled to them via the internet. As far as I can see, when people pour large chunks of time day and night, month rolling into years, they pay with the most expensive price for internet consumption — that is, their time and their dear life.

Yet, it is a terrible realization when you have consumed away your daily hours and then your youthful years, with the ultimate casualty of this addiction being your dream and ideal, your future and your life. This is not a false alarm. It is a real heartfelt wakeup call. The sooner you wean yourself off this addiction, the brighter is your future. Otherwise, doom to that future of yours and whatever dreams you may have. With that, you will remain a lifelong mediocre internet consumer.

On 6/9/2009 and 7/31/2009, I touched the topic of social networking. Yesterday, while at work, one of my colleagues and I talked about cell phone usage. It is almost unbelievable that my high-school child does not have a cell phone. She said she wished her daughter did not have it because she was almost addicted to it now. Once she left home forgetting her cell phone. She cried and had to have her parent send the phone to her. I have learned kids are a lot quiet in class now, yes quietly texting each other, new pattern of classroom behavior. I also learned that parents often told school to contact their children via their cell phones. I have seen with my own eyes how people spend large chunks of time on contacting and connecting, as if their whole lives were dependent upon it. I have also known some teenagers addicted to Japanese comics.

Starting from elememtary school, children are taught against substance abuse and nicotine addiction. I am wondering when our school will be aware of an equally damaging addiction and a threat to quality education — the psychological and even emotional dependence upon social networking and other forms of technologies– computer game, Internet surfing, texting, IMing, emailing, and even cell phone.

I once promised my daughter that I would give her a cell phone once she was in high school. Now I changed my mind. No cell phone until she drives on her own. I don’t care what others are doing or saying, I am firm on my decision.

She knows that money is not the issue as the monthly phone fee is only a fraction of the cost for her weekly lessons in art, piano, and figure-skating. She also understands many people spend tons of time on chatting, texting and other means of social networking, and she should not be like this.

Therefore, even if nearly all of her friends have cell phones, I am glad that she accepts without complaints the fact the she still does not have one. Modern technologies make communications so much like a heaven. I am not against social networking. Sometimes, they makes good connections and help out those who need to connect to others, like emotional support. Yet I repeatedly remind both of my children to never waste precious time on senseless emailing, texting, IM, Facebook, or anything that might crop up replacing Facebook. Never network simply for the sake of networking. We got to have something more important in life than this unless your life depends on this.

At first we have email to connect or send message to friends and families, far and near, then IM shortens the time between the two parties, then facebook, youTube, myspace, blogging, twittering helped by cell phone texting, etc – all help broaden and enrich the quality and dimension of our social network.

On Saturday on the way to her art class, I talked to my daughter about this. What does it mean to us? It means many things. On the plus side, it vastly facilities communications and social network. On the minus side, any unnecessary activities, such as texting or emailing or IM-ing just for the fun of it, mean TIME consuming. Yes, we need to be connected, informed and need to participate in this wonderful social networking. But what for? Do we have to have a purpose in all our activities? Yes, if you value your time and your life. After all, without exception, all activities consume our time. Everytime I watch others engaging in non-stop social-networking and I see too many of this (e.g. texting), the first thing that hit me heavily is – ouch! you are wasting so much time. I am sure we can live comfortably without it.

I care how I spend my time and also wish my children would care. Finally, if you really care how you spend your time, never participate for the sake of participation; never connect for the sake of connection. Never do something simply because everybody else is doing. Always tap the new technology and maximize its benefit for your own advantage.

By the way, one of the reasons for my insisting on short posting is this – I don’t want to waste too much of my readers’ precious time.

“Get a life,” the child said to the parent, as if the child had a life of his/her own. I heard this at least three times before, including one from my child. A friend of mine told me that her daughter told her “Get a hobby, get a life” right before she left for college. In other word, “I am off on my own and you stop living a life through mine.”

When I was on my children’s back about their failed commitments and responsibilities, I was often told to “get a life” and leave them alone. Good thing never comes singly. Last weekend, a friend of mine told me that her son told her to “get a life.”

That is an interesting expression. Lately I have observed the behavior of some teenagers that I know of. I found out that it was high time that we should tell these youngsters to “get a life,” a life away from Internet. Frankly, they throw too much of their lives on the Internet, without the time to experience the life of their own.

These people are such excellent consumers of Internet culture that they seem to be without life other than living a life through those of the Internet producers, in much the same manner as babies being hooked on TV.

To be sure, Internet provides rich supply of nearly everything and we are all Internet consumers to certain extent. Of the top sites globally, the first two are search engines, Google, Yahoo!, followed by YouTube, Facebook, Windows Live, Microsoft Network, Wikipedia, Blogger, Baidu, MySpace, … ebay, Amazon, Twitter, etc. Internet addicts are those who find life away from the Internet boring, meaningless, not as exciting as virtual life on the Internet. How real can that be!

I shared this with my children — unless we can wean ourselves off this Internet addiction and stop this mad waste of time on the Internet, we will forever be the onlookers, consumers, viewers, observers, living our lives through others, instead of being producers, active players or even key players in this game of life, and living to the fullest a life of our own.