Timesuck Engaged

Nick Carr looks at the downside of our digital existence:

There's been much written about how the Web provides new opportunities for people to express themselves. That's true, and welcome. But the Web is also an enormous global timesink, sucking up massive amounts of time that might have gone into more productive, thoughtful, and fulfilling activities. It's difficult to measure the cost of this wasted time, because it's impossible to know what people might have done if they weren't surfing and tweeting and youtubing and huluing and foursquaring and emailing and IMing and googling and etc. The Web often gives us the illusion of having an incredibly diverse set of pursuits when it's really narrowing the scope of our thoughts and activities. There is still a whole lot more that people can do offline than online - something that's easy to forget as we peer into our screens all day.

Carr also responds to a commenter who wonders if we are replacing TV time with internet time:

In some cases, yes, but not in most. The average time that people spend watching TV, in both US and Europe, has been going up steadily throughout the Web era. The idea that the time people spend online comes out of time they would have otherwise devoted to TV viewing is largely a fallacy, if a pleasant one.

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