Tuesday, October 22, 2013

What if you CAN'T use technological devices?

Every industry is based upon particular assumptions - assumptions that will not hold in all circumstances. For example, my industry - the automated fingerprint identification system industry - is based upon the assumption that a person has readable fingerprints. For some people, such as bricklayers or people who work with a lot of paper, this is not true.

Many of the industries based upon social media - and, for that matter, many other industries - are based upon the assumption that everyone is online. However, this is not true for a variety of reasons - economic reasons, religious reasons, philosophical reasons...and the danger of addiction:

Isaac Veisburg was born in Venezuela and raised between there and Miami. He's all done with the reSTART program and is now working as a personal trainer. But it was a long road. He went through the six-week, in-patient part of the program twice....

He bailed on the program after a few weeks and went back to college in Washington, D.C. At first he tried to stay away from gaming, but he was depressed, fighting with his parents and had car problems.

The stress started to mount, and the Saturday before classes even began, Veisburg was back in front of the computer. He says he downloaded a game and didn't leave his computer for 42 hours.

"And then I slept. I slept through my first class Monday, and I didn't go to class the rest of that day, and the day after, or for five weeks after that," he says.


So what does a technology addict do in a world filled with technology? Not much, as it turns out.

After a year in rehab, [Will is] finally done and planning to move back home to Oklahoma to try to find a job. But that's tough to do without using a computer and an Internet connection.

"It's a constant struggle," he says. "It's just that I have to structure my life to a point where I don't feel tempted to waste time on it."

He says he has to hold himself accountable, by having a job, a social life and exercising — and by setting time limits on his Internet usage. He's not planning to get a smartphone any time soon, either.
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