Right now I'm sitting in bed and I can hear my dad watching "Peaky Blinders" on his smart TV in his room, my sister re-watching "Gossip Girl" on her laptop, and my "old school" mom watching "Chopped" on regular -old cable TV and I'm trying to remember what TV was like before Netflix. How would things be different if we didn't have Netflix? I know, you didn't sign up to read a horror Sci- Fi story of a world with no Netflix, so I won't go too in-depth. But I do wonder: are computers disrupting the family unit?
While the benefits of computers are undeniable- efficiency, connectivity, speed, productivity- the drawback that I see most often in my life is disengagement from the real world while being immersed in cyberspace.
Before smart TV's and Netflix, we would all be downstairs, and maybe it would be mom's night to pick what we watch or we would agree as a family on a movie, but either way, we would all watch together. We would talk during the commercials- yes, commercials, which is quickly becoming an antiquated term- about the plot of the show and make predictions about who was going to win "Chopped" or be killed on "Peaky Blinders". We wouldn't really be talking about anything important, but we would be talking! We'd even have more to talk about later and something to look forward to doing together that isn't running an errand with mom.
This isn't to say that there is anything wrong with retreating to your room to lay in bed and watch Serena kiss Dan, I mean Nate, I mean Dan... but I feel like we should only be doing this on our time, not on family time. In other words, we should make time to watch that cooking contest with mom that we're not really invested in or pick out a movie for the whole family to enjoy, and then when we get tired, we could carve time out of sleeping to watch one or two episodes of Tommy Shelby being a bada$$.
This way, family time is maximized. Because Netflix shows will still be around tomorrow and when you go back to school, it's the happy time spent with your family that you'll appreciate the most- not the 84 episodes of Gossip Girl.
