On the Internet

The internet is a fantastic tool. It's allowing me to share my life and thoughts with you and all the people that I love this very second. What makes it so brilliant is that it allows us to connect with each other, to share knowledge, wisdom, stories and jokes across the entire planet.

But there's always a down side isn't there? For me, the amount of time I spend on the internet does actually disrupt my everyday life. I read somewhere recently that spending over 6 hours in a day online doing nothing that is essentially productive is classified as an internet addiction. My first thought was "6 hours! That's absurd, who could spend that much time online?"

Then I thought about it. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is no longer to acknowledge God and ask for His blessing over my day. It is to check my facebook notifications, tumblr notes and emails. The evenings I started the semester sharing with my flatmates have become filled with pointless internet activity. And if I have no plans for the afternoon, guess what I'll be doing? Watching online re-runs of my favourite shows. Now, whether or not getting up to date with this series of Supernatural is productive is up for debate. The issue at point here is our priorities- what matters most to me?

I would never consider deleting my facebook, for example, and my reasons are simple- I use it daily to contact people I love who live very far away. But what about when I use it to tell my flatmate something instead of getting up and going to her room? It may save time, but it also means we miss out on all the extra  conversation that goes on face to face- just doing life together, sharing our day. 

I'm not saying for a second that I, or anyone else, should give up the wonderful resource that is the internet- nor should we give up our down time, and if you happen to enjoy using that time to connect with people and information online, so be it. What I'm suggesting is that we re-evaluate exactly what we do online, and why we do it. I switched my PC off, rather than putting it on standby, for the first time since I moved back to Stirling last night, and read a book instead. And I slept like a baby. I used my extra time to pray and meditate on where I'm going, and it made it much easier to focus on study today.

I think, for me at least, it's time to focus more on what God would have me do with my time, and less on Tumblr fandoms.