The Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (and a Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale by Susan Maushart answers the above question, at least for one family.
Maushart, a spunky New Yorker and journalist, had fallen in love with an Australian and twenty-odd years later found herself living on the serene but dull western edge of the continent down under. New technology, reconnecting her to friends around the world (and to NPR and the NYT) seemed to save her sanity; but it also, she came to realize, took over the life of her family. Instead of socializing, her adolescent children spent nearly all their time in a "wired" state, communicating only in grunts and snarls. Interests and hobbies like her son's sax playing (he used to talk of becoming a musician) went by the board. The ultimate effect of social media, e-mail, electronic games, iPods, cell phones, and laptops, etc., Maushart decided, had been much more bad than good.
So, with trepidation, she launched "the Experiment." For six months, at least while at home, (they still could use computers off-site) they stopped e-mailing, texting, playing videos, watching TV, Googling, or any other activity related to the Digital Age. (They could listen to the radio or CDs and use the land line phone; Maushart admits some of the distinctions might seem arbitrary.)
In any case, while the switch was excruciating, changes to the family in the end were, to say the least, encouraging. Halfway through the Experiment, Maushart's 16-year old son Bill had this to say: "I'm not a different person but some aspects of life have definitely changed." Noting that he was playing the sax and reading more, he added that "if everything went back on right now, I wouldn't change. Like, why would I? It's more fun than playing with the computer." (To understand just how incredible this statement is coming from Bill, you need to read the book's beginning.)
Inbetween quite humorous sections about the family's struggle, are sections with a lot of thought-provoking research and expert opinion, by the way.
This book is yet another I would highly recommend to anyone grappling with "how we should now live" in our ever-changing world.
