【美国电台节目】一些年轻人，开始退网

PAUL: And so I sort of stopevery time I think about adding a technology or using a technology, and I askmyself, like, is this going to enhance my life in some way? Do I need this? Isit filling some unmet need?

GHARIB: That's Pamela Paul.She's the author of the book "100 Things We've Lost To The Internet."It documents all those quirky little things that people used to do beforeeverything went online. I know a thing or two about those things because I'm36. Facebook was introduced the second semester of my freshman year of college,and the iPhone arrived when I was a junior, which meant for most of my earlylife, I was doing things like making calls with a landline telephone, lookingup movie times in my local newspaper, politely making conversation at dinnerinstead of looking at my phone. What can I say? I'm old-fashioned.

GHARIB: I want to ask youabout your hundred items. How did you actually come up with the list? 

PAUL: There's lots of booksout there and articles every day about, like, this is this new thing, and youneed to pay attention to it. And I wanted to kind of scroll back and get to,yeah, but wait; what was there before there was this? Like, what did we used todo?

GHARIB: Can you give me anexample of that?

PAUL: Well, I'm going toactually - I'm going to use a non-internet example. Last year, I was going tothe car with my daughter. And you know how you have, like, a key that's, like,from the dealer that doesn't have the remote, you know, thing that locks andunlocks your car? It's just a key. And I went. I opened up the car door withthe key, and my daughter's jaw dropped. She was 16 at the time. She said, youcan open up a car with a key?

GHARIB: And I wanted toknow from you, out of the hundred things that you listed, is there a particularone that you really, really miss the most?

PAUL: The things I miss tendto be the bigger emotional things. One of them is closure. I feel like there isno end to the internet, and everything is on there forever. It's really hard tolose touch with someone. You know, it - that can be a very dark thing for a lotof people. It can mean, for example, that if someone has stalked you orharassed you, that person is always there online, and it's really hard to blockthat person out. It's hard, for example, if you're on Facebook not to have thatperson suggested to you because you might have links in common. You know, youdon't have the sort of - the right to be forgotten.

And so it means that you cannever really move on. That's going to be extremely difficult for this currentdigital generation whose entire life is recorded online. And that is just ahuge change from the way childhood operated in the past, where, you know, onlythe people who really knew you had access to any of that, and they likelyforgot about it.

GHARIB: Yeah, absolutely. Ihave to ask you; what inspired you to write a book like this now? I mean, wasyour aim to sort of preserve a way of living or just sort of take note howthings are changing? Would love to know your line of thought.

PAUL: You know, in part, Iwanted to document this and remind us about this pre-internet world, those ofus who remember it or who lived through it, but again, also about embracing thefact that - the idea that we could still go back there in - you know, in manyways. You can leave your phone at home when you go on vacation. One could dothat. It sounds crazy, but it's possible. And I mean, even just try leavingyour phone - leaving it home when you know you're going out for the entire day.It feels like living so crazy out there on the edge, which is, again, kind ofcrazy in and of itself because we used to do that all the time. We would justleave our house, and nobody would be able to reach us, and that was normal.

GHARIB: I think that probablythe most comfortable that I've felt leaving my phone at home is if I told mywork, I'm not reachable today; I'm in the mountains - or even posting onTwitter, like, I'm on vacation today - like, not checking Twitter, not checkingFacebook, not checking social. And then kind of, like, it's weird. Like, I feellike I need permission from the people who might reach me to then stop reachingout to me so that I can enjoy a social media-free, phone-free day. 

PAUL: And I like social media just as much asanyone else, but in the last two months, I quit both Facebook and Twitter, andI have to say, it feels pretty good. It felt kind of weird at first. But one ofthe questions to ask yourself is, like, who in my life really matters? And arethose the people that I am in touch with on social media? For the most part,you're not in touch with the people that you don't stay in touch with for areason. And if they become part of your lives through social media, it's almostlike uninvited guests at a party. Like, do I really want these people here? 

GHARIB: I'm a little hung up still on the factthat you're not on Twitter, which, you know - you're a journalist. I mean, partof your job is to be, like, you know - to know what people are talking about,right? And even people who are not journalists, like, One of the things that'sscary about getting off - you know, trying to lessen our time on social mediais - or just the internet in general - is, like, oh, no, like, I might not beas in the know as other people.

PAUL: But if my phone is there when I'm reading a book, it doesn'teven - my notifications can be off. It doesn't even need to buzz. Every once ina while, I would just be, like, yeah, but what's going on on there? You know?It's like we constantly have 20, 40, a hundred people hovering outside the doorof our house, being like, hey, there's this thing that you need to know that Iwant to tell you that you have to react to that I'm waiting to hear from youon.

I have no doubt that I haveplenty of information at my fingertips to work with, far more than I have theability to absorb. I mean, I just think about all of the podcasts, radio shows,TV shows that I want to read, magazines, articles. It's, like - it's alreadyway too much. if you create limits for your children if youhave children, to impose the same limits on yourself is really useful. So ifyou have a rule that your children should be off their devices by 8 p.m., whichI think - by the way, again, depends on the family - not a terrible idea - andto have them all plugged in in a central place, like in the hallway or in afamily office, not in anyone's bedroom - that if you do it yourself, I thinkthat's probably a good exercise, too.

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