line+of+inquiry+3

=Line of inquiry 3:= Posted by Lorenzo Loaiza =What strategies do the family use to avoid the communication technology during the together time.=

Living with technology doesn't mean we have to live with an addiction? It isn't news that studies are finding that video games trigger dopamine releases in the brain. While dopamine has a few uses, the one that matters here is how it acts as a reward system for certain things we do such as eating. Certain types of video games have managed to pull the dopamine trigger as well. What else can do it? Pretty much anything we find stimulating. Nicotine causes dipamine release. So does dopamine(in a somewhat indirect way).

Like video games, we can develop a dopamine release from many kinds of addictive behavior. Checking email is one in particular. You may not like spending long amounts of time in your inbox, but you probably think about checking it pretty often. When you hear that ding (or vibrate), you know there's something waiting for you. To make things worse, because you do not receive email at set intervals and you don't know if that email is going to be something you want, your curiosity is piqued the moment the ding occurs just so you can find out if you've received something you want or if it's a waste of your time.

We consume three times the information now as we did 50 years ago, but the problem of information overload isn't new but there are solutions.

It might seem great to have a device that can do just about anything, but becoming reliant on a single device has its own set of problems. Consider this scenario: you take out your phone to check what time it is. You figure since your phone is already out of your pocket, you should check your email. You end up spending a few minutes debating whether or not to reply to an email now or save it for later

t can go on and on from there, making what should be a pretty quick operation (checking the time) into a series of tasks you don't necessarily need to do. It's cases like these where it's not always best to rely on a single device. It's convenient, however, and so the ideal situation would be if you could train yourself to stay on task when pulling the phone from your pocket. More realistically, however, is training yourself to just keep the phone in your pocket more often. Find other ways to check the time. Decide to check your email a little less. If it gets problematic, don't take the phone with you or turn it off when you go out at night. Technology exists to make things easier, but if you're making your life more difficult by interacting with your devices too, often it ends up being more of a problem. Figure out ways you can avoid using your technology for everything and you'll become accustomed to using it less.