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Are you making any new year’s resolutions?
The online version of Parade, which is available to Tribune subscribers, has all kinds of ideas about resolutions you can make for 2023. A numbing number of these concern doing less, doing more with less, or doing things that people used to do all the time, such as cooking or calling a friend instead of texting them.
Curtailing use of social media is a big hit this year on the resolutions lists, as are suggestions that we ought to forgo some of our habits in the virtual world in favor of the joys and splendors of the actual one.
There seems to be something in the air just now that feels like an awakening from what has become an unhealthy lifestyle, even an addiction, for many people. It’s been suggested that as addictive qualities go, cigarettes have nothing on smartphones.
“Go a whole day without checking your email,” one suggested Parade resolution encourages. A whole day? “Turn off your phone one night a week,” Parade also suggests. A whole night? What is this, 1979?
“Travel somewhere without posting about it on social media,” another resolution proposes. Is this even possible?
And another suggests a resolution that seemingly few have managed to master: “Be kind on social media.”
Of course, there are many more suggestions that have to do with non-wired ways to be better people, such as drinking more water, writing a letter to someone, taking the stairs or, just generally, being kinder. But as a snapshot in time, lists such as these highlight how much of our lives are devoted to devices, taken over by technology, and how that is changing us.
For those who can dreamily recall the aforementioned 1979, when the Atari 2600 game console hooked up to channel 3 on the solid-state TV was the zenith of technological marvels, we seem to have arrived at this state of constant connectedness virtually overnight.
Is it any wonder that multiple lists say meditation is something we should resolve to do more in 2023? To quote the misunderstood “Seinfeld” character George Costanza, “Serenity Now!”
We lead complex lives in which we crave simplicity, it seems. Can we make that happen? Is it realistic to even hope for that?
The New York Times recently reported about a group of Brooklyn high school students who have made a resolution. They are shunning smartphones.
These members of what they endearingly call The Luddite Club use flip phones or no phones at all. Several of them described this choice as one that relegates them somewhat as outcasts from their peers. These are children who never knew life without a smartphone, but they attest that when they swore them off, their lives opened up.
They’re well read. They have interests and interpersonal connections beyond their years. “We just see a problem with mental health and screen use,” one teen said.
Life is full of choices, from what you eat to what you wear to who you talk with to how you spend your free time. Increasingly, it seems, people are taking a good, hard look at the latter and opting more for the joys of the real world.
Whatever your resolutions, we hope that 2023 brings you real world joy, health, happiness and prosperity. Happy New Year!