Goodnight iPad

As the Second Counselor in my Ward's Relief Society, I have the opportunity to teach a lesson about every three months in our Sunday meeting.  Yesterday was my turn again and I chose to discuss a talk given by Elder David A. Bednar from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles titled "Things as They Really Are".  He gave the talk about two years ago and talked about the importance of our physical bodies and how Satan tempts us to minimize the importance of our bodies by the influences of technology.  We all use technology on a daily basis and often for good and meaningful purposes, but there is a fine line which we often drift over and soon find that we have wasted two hours on Facebook or twitter or other social media sites or cyberspace realities.  

Elder Bednar warns against the dangers of becoming too consumed in these things and not taking advantage of our physical bodies which allow us to be involved in numberless activities.  Instead, we seem to live vicariously through others as we "follow" them online.  He said, "If the adversary cannot entice us to misuse our physical bodies, then one of his most potent tactics is to beguile you and me as embodied spirits to disconnect gradually and physically from things as they really are…Please be careful of becoming so immersed and engrossed in pixels, texting, ear buds, twittering, online social networking, and potentially addictive uses of media and the Internet that you fail to recognize the importance of your physical body and miss the richness of person-to person communication." 

I have also felt concerned about this for some time, especially when I think about my future children and how it might affect them.  I don't want our family to be consumed with TV, video games, social media, or anything else of that sort. My mom even sent me THE CUTEST BOOK that really shows how much life and technology have changed since even I was a child:

Please tell me you remember Goodnight Moon!

Well, the lesson yesterday went really well.  There were lots of comments and discussion and even though I was the one teaching, I learned a lot from the other women. This morning when I was running with Tilly, we talked about the lesson some more and other thoughts we had.  I came home feeling like it wasn't enough for me to just give a lesson, but that I need to change some of my own habits and really put into practice what I was teaching the other women.  

So, I have decided to challenge myself to make some changes. For the next two weeks I am going to limit myself to 30 minutes a day of non-school-related screen time and one movie a week.  Screen time includes TV, movies, internet of any kind, Phil's iPhone (I don't have my own iPhone, but I play games on his sometimes), etc. I threw in the one movie a week because Phil and I like to watch movies or TV shows together, but we probably watch more than we need to, so this will be a good limit for us. I am really excited to do this.  I think it will help me to balance my time a lot better and to use my screen time for the best or most important things (like checking email, paying bills, blogging) rather than the "I'll-look-at-this-website-because-I'm-bored" things.

I've also made a list of things I can do instead of screen time:

Read

Sew/Crafts

Cook

Study/Homework

Listen to or read General Conference talks

Relief Society projects

Call friends or family 

Go for a walk

Listen to music

Clean

I will blog (in 30 minutes or less) my progress over the next two weeks and see how I feel. I am excited to see what difference it makes in my life!