Check this out….it is possible for a teenager (and the rest of us) to unplug….living proof!
“I knew I was addicted, but I didn’t want to seem like it,’’ Deisha says. But in the show’s opening segment, she acknowledges, “I text more than I talk.’’
….Deisha’s choice to unplug helped her define what she thinks is appropriate: no phone at all. At the end of the week, she got her phone back, and immediately handed it over to her mother.
“I noticed how much fun I was having without it,’’ she says.
Without it, she has poured her energy into her passion for writing. She just finished her first book, “Don’t Forget to Tuck Me In,’’ which she says is about “a modern girl with working parents who waits to be tucked in at night.’’ Her mother has promised to help her publish it.
Her decision has influenced her family, too. On a recent afternoon, there were four wireless land-line phones visible in their kitchen alone, and a TV screen dominated the living room. But Brown Campbell insists that they are downgrading. The old television, which broke, took up an entire wall, she says.
Both mother and daughter say the most important lesson of Deisha’s experience is the value of time spent together.
“I learned to separate family time from the cellphone,’’ says Brown Campbell. Now, when her BlackBerry buzzes while she’s out at lunch with her children, she waits until later to respond.
Deisha approves of the change in her formerly “textaholic’’ mother. “You don’t need technology,’’ says Deisha. “You want it, but it’s not that important, and once you get rid of it you’ll have a great time.’’