Send An Intervention to Help Unplug Your Friends

Scott Blitstein — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:00:49 +0000

We’ve talked a lot about managing a social network strategy, maintaining a work-life balance, and living in a blur of social media. The fact is though, that with the sheer number of services available to us, and our ability to be connected to them virtually everywhere, we may be relying on them a bit too much.

So I had to laugh when I saw Unplug Your Friends, a site which lets you send an intervention email to those you know who may be suffering from what they call Screen Addiction.

A fill in the blanks template lets you pick out the appropriate intervention terms and zips off an email alerting them about your concern, along with a link to an amusing “see the light” video.

Unplug Your Friends is brought to you by the folks over at Meetup, and it’s a clever bit of marketing. I love Meetup’s slogan of Use the Internet to get off the Internet!

As tongue in cheek as this all is, it is also a reminder that there are others around us that we can communicate with outside of Twitter. I know for certain that people say witty and interesting things in person as well.

Whether it is for convenience or a matter of comfort – we flock to our online communities, and we do connect there. But personal meetings and group interactions are important as well. Plan a Meetup, or a Tweetup, or join a bowling league. Take some time time to unplug, step away from your computer, and turn off messaging on your phone.

And invite your friends – even if you have to drag them away from their laptops kicking and screaming.

How do you unplug? Do you or your friends need an intervention?

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Send An Intervention to Help Unplug Your Friends