Amherst College did a brief "unplug" earlier this month, urging their students to take a least a little time away from their constant immersion in media:
https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/news_releases/2011/03/node/305293
Similary, there was a "World Unplugged" study involving 1,000 students in ten countries on five continents:
http://theworldunplugged.wordpress.com/
Some interesting results from their study:
- A clear majority in every country admitted outright failure in their efforts to go unplugged for just 24 hours.
- Media "addiction" may not be a clinically diagnosed afflication, but students reported cravings, anxiety and depression duirng this period.
- Being tethered to digital technology 24/7 is not just a habit, it is essential to the way they construct and manage their friendships and social lives. For many of them, going without media for 24 hours "ripped back the curtain on their hidden loneliness."
- Mobile phones function both as this generation’s Swiss Army knife AND its security blanket. Students wrote that mobile phones are at the literal center of their lives: going without made it seem like they had "lost part of themselves."
- Across the world, students depend on personally programmed music to actively regulate their moods.
- Students chose from a variety of communications mediums based on their audiance: Facebook and texting to communicate with friends, email for their professors and jobs.
Perhaps most imprtantly, many students admitted that they were not really aware of how much time they actually spent on to social networking, and how poorly they actually were able to multi-task. If nothing else, such self-awareness is probably the most important gain from an experiment such as this.
