I Can Stop Anytime

I Can Stop Anytime
A fellow Facebooker, pointed me to this article about an experiment with University of Maryland students who were asked to give up social media for twenty four hours (they were allowed to choose the period, although apprently coincidentally there were major news events during the time frame). Now, first, I would like to clarify that they were not only restricted from cell hpnoes and Facebook, twitter etc, but TV and Ipod usage.  So, yes they missed texting and talking to their friends, but they also missed listening to music or most every form of entertainent.  Now, could I do this?  Yes - I would knit and read like crazy (I did not see any preventions against these) but yes, I have grown accustomed to taking daytime walks with the headphones, in part for the beat and in part for the ability to pretend I did not hear the crazy people talking to me.  (Not that there are really that many, and crazy people don't really think that well about if I can hear them, but I feel less rude.)
Now, buried a few paragraphs down was the result that college students get a lot of their news from social media - both about friends and TV and the world in general. So, while I imagine they still had access to paper newspapers, they were missing things because their normal routes to news were cut off. I also think, that the part that was only briefly developed is it's one thing to go camping in the mountains, or out to some island where the pghone service is gone - because then the people you are traveling with are in the same boat.  But, the students were not only cut off from their typical methods of communication and entertainment planning, they were less informed than their classmates and roommates and that was what made it a little maddening.  Imagine if it rained only on you for twenty four hours it would be much more annoying than if it was raining on everyone.