Time to Unplug Your Technology for One Day? - Howard Baldwin, PCWorld

Do you think of your smartphone as an electronic leash or as electronic liberation? As someone who’s trundled both cell phone and laptop to baseball stadiums during spring training, I’m in the latter group. We’re the kind of people who think our mobile devices give us carte blanche to time-shift, stay productive, and be responsive to clients, customers, and colleagues no matter where our adventures take us. During an experiment last year when scientists asked college students to avoid technology for 24 hours, the subjects reported similar effects to trying to quit smoking, “including feeling fidgety, anxious and isolated, and even reaching out for their mobile phone, while knowing it was no longer there.”