I'm toying with getting rid of the Internet at home. I have it at work anyway (unfortunately), and coffee shops and libraries are a thing if I have to get online. I'm increasingly convinced that having it's not worth the time I lose to it, and the cost of it. ~$110-120+/month for the Internet portion of my phone plan, plus our home connection, plus Netflix and such... that'd pay for a fair amount of physical media a month. Between purchasing, the library, and borrowing from friends, I could save both time and money and still have plenty of entertainment. Maybe download one of those curated local copies of Wikipedia. Update it once a year at a friend's house, haha.
Benefits: Tons, tons of time saved thanks to more friction to access low-value entertainment (HN, news generally, endless reading about how to do stuff or what to read instead of doing the stuff or the reading), and even too-easy access to practically stress-inducingly large amount of actually good entertainment. So, so much time. And some money saved.
Concerns: my wife needs it for work (teacher, and so much of that's online now, and you can't really be a teacher and not work evenings a fair amount)—that's the trickiest part. All our photos of the kids and such are digital now, and no Internet means no (convenient) offsite backup. I don't love the idea of having a bunch of physical media again, but then again I can just resell a bunch of it any time the clutter starts to annoy me, and be no worse off than when that money was going purely to services (slightly better actually, since even lazily Craigslisting a ton of it in a lot for $20 is at least some money). WhatsApp/Riot/et c. are a hell of a lot better than non-MMS text (mainly because group messaging is broken without MMS, and sometimes even with it) and offer really high value-to-waste ratio since I consider chatting with close friends valuable, even when it's not productive—I'd pay $10/m for a connection that just let me do email and use a decent messaging client like that. If I wanted to keep Steam games working I'd have to connect it from time to time, somehow, but that's probably another distraction I could do without.
Heh, I guess I could go back to dial up, if that's still a thing, so I'd have inconvenient access if I really had to have it, or to pop on to do messaging/email once an evening or so, though then I'd need a phone line and service, so a good chunk of the money-savings would be gone. Might be good enough to let the Google school stuff work for my wife without driving her nuts? And I'd need to buy a modem.
If you're interested in it, you should try it! I did it for about a year, and thoroughly enjoyed it.. though it's not without its negatives as you say. For me, the positives outweighed the negatives. Consider getting a mobile hotspot and set yourself a house rule of only using it in emergencies, or on the road.
How do the Amish use the internet? I imagine they're facing a similar dilemma, having to have access for certain purposes, but not wanting to let the unrestricted flood pour in.
Benefits: Tons, tons of time saved thanks to more friction to access low-value entertainment (HN, news generally, endless reading about how to do stuff or what to read instead of doing the stuff or the reading), and even too-easy access to practically stress-inducingly large amount of actually good entertainment. So, so much time. And some money saved.
Concerns: my wife needs it for work (teacher, and so much of that's online now, and you can't really be a teacher and not work evenings a fair amount)—that's the trickiest part. All our photos of the kids and such are digital now, and no Internet means no (convenient) offsite backup. I don't love the idea of having a bunch of physical media again, but then again I can just resell a bunch of it any time the clutter starts to annoy me, and be no worse off than when that money was going purely to services (slightly better actually, since even lazily Craigslisting a ton of it in a lot for $20 is at least some money). WhatsApp/Riot/et c. are a hell of a lot better than non-MMS text (mainly because group messaging is broken without MMS, and sometimes even with it) and offer really high value-to-waste ratio since I consider chatting with close friends valuable, even when it's not productive—I'd pay $10/m for a connection that just let me do email and use a decent messaging client like that. If I wanted to keep Steam games working I'd have to connect it from time to time, somehow, but that's probably another distraction I could do without.
Heh, I guess I could go back to dial up, if that's still a thing, so I'd have inconvenient access if I really had to have it, or to pop on to do messaging/email once an evening or so, though then I'd need a phone line and service, so a good chunk of the money-savings would be gone. Might be good enough to let the Google school stuff work for my wife without driving her nuts? And I'd need to buy a modem.