Sabbath Keeping & Digital Life. Our digital lives are our lives – so much part of who and how many of us are, we feel real loss and disconnection when separated from the technologies that support our communities of connection and how we practice our faith. Addiction is an issue, but I want to notice the differences between internet addiction and the grief that comes from being separated from where we have meaningful relationships. When folks who’ve been largely defined by work find themselves unemployed or retired, there’s a similar sense of grief and loss.
They weren’t necessarily addicted to work. Liberal religious spiritual life is so much about balance. We want to notice when we’re being defined or only have meaning in discrete sections of our lives and turn there instead of addressing more difficult or absent relationships and meaning. Like many people I connect with in my social media ministry, I’m often housebound, due to my chronic illness.
21 Things for the 21st Century Educator - Home. Post by Scott Wells. Create stories using social media - storify.com.
A smartphones proliferate, some users are cutting the computer cord. It’s been four years since the introduction of the iPhone and rival devices that run Google’s Android software. In that time, the devices have turned much of America into an always-on, Internet-on-the-go society. A quarter of Americans with smartphones use the devices as their main way to get onto the Internet, the Pew study found. About nine in 10 owners of such devices access the Web and check their e-mail each day through their device.
Smartphone users are diverse. Most are well-off and educated. And, adoption by blacks and Hispanics is particularly high at 44 percent. “For businesses, government agencies and nonprofits who want to engage with certain communities, they will find them in front of a four-inch screen, not in front of a big computer in their den,” said Aaron Smith, a researcher at Pew and author of the report. The size of the screen is just about the only thing that keeps Miguel Reyes, 20, on his laptop. Yet smartphones have limitations.