TV, Internet, or Cell Phone?

I recently read an article in Reader's Digest about this world-wide poll somebody conducted. It asked the citizens of a bunch of different countries which they'd sooner give up- television, internet, or their cell phones.

The results were really interesting. If I remember correctly, only one country voted to give up the internet, Brazil. Apparently, only 44% or so of the people even use it in the first place. I also saw a study somewhere that said Brazil has one of the fitter, more attractive populations in the world. Correlation, maybe?

I can't even remember which one the U.S. gave up, but I'm thinking cell phones. What would all those texting drivers do instead to avoid looking at the road??

All of this got me thinking about which one I'd give up. It seemed pretty simple at first. The cell. It's definitely the one I use the least. I could easily live without the handful of text messages I send a month, and you'd still have the home phone for any necessary calls.

But then I remembered that the cell phone is how I notify my parents to come get me. What if I were in trouble and needed to contact somebody? The cell phone is pretty good safety measure. Maybe it wouldn't be the smartest to give up.

The thing I use next least, but not exactly sparingly, is television. If I gave that up, I could still watch several of my regular tv shows on the Internet, no problem. But then again, watching tv sort of brings my family together. We've watched the Thursday night comedy block on NBC together for as long as I can remember. I wouldn't want to give up that family tradition. TV also plays a big part in our pop culture, which brings pretty much everybody together. It's like a universal language. That seems pretty important as well.

And so we have the internet. I spend way too much time on it. But it helps me keep in touch with people, and it's basically where I get my news. And I just like it. There's so many useful things on the internet, stuff that's not possible anywhere else. I really wouldn't want to give that up either, but it's the most plausible. The least consequential, anyway.

That was a much harder decision than I ever thought it would be. It amazes me how interwoven these technologies are in our lives, when they didn't even exist not an incredibly long time ago.

I don't really know what the point of all that was, but there it is! Food for thought, I hope.