The Longest Day
Could a class of college students survive without iPods, cellphones, computers and TV from one sunrise to the next?

By Danna L. Walker
Sunday, August 5, 2007; W20

I WAS WONDERING IF I COULD REALLY PULL IT OFF, making undergraduates do without any kind of electronic media for 24 hours. I hesitated as I wrote the assignment painstakingly into my 14-page syllabus for the spring semester. The syllabus is considered a contract with the students. If the assignment is there, they can't get around it.

If it's there, it's gospel. So, I put it in.

This would be a good way, I thought, to get students in my "Understanding Mass Media" class at American University to think about the media-saturated world they live in and what its effects on them might be. I wondered if they would balk, or even refuse to do it.

Their faces looked skeptical when we finally got to the e-media fast about halfway through the semester. No television, computers, iPods or other MP3 devices, radio, video games, CD players, records or cellphones (or land lines) for 24 hours. If they slipped up or cheated -- and I said with faked confidence that I'd be able to tell from their papers if they did -- they'd have to start the 24 hours over. I gave them the option of doing the fast during spring break, to make it easier and to see how their family and friends would interact with the assignment. They were to write a short report about their experience and include a reflection on the assigned reading, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, by the late New York University communications professor Neil Postman.

I stepped down from the podium in the dimly lit and cavernous Wechsler Theater, where my class is held, to stand in the center aisle among my students -- the better to look them in the eye if they challenged me.

"No cellphones?" they asked in pleading voices, looking around at one another with wide eyes and open mouths.

"How are cellphones media?" another student protested, but she could sense that resistance was futile. We had talked ad nauseam in class about how individuals' use of digital devices, including cellphone photos, video and texting, has created an army of unconventional citizen journalists who have borne witness to the 9/11 attacks, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and more, changing the face of journalism through their media watchdogging blogs and online social networks.

"I'll be doing it, too," I offered reassuringly. A few seconds of silence ensued as they appeared to consider whether that made a difference. A crescendo of audible desperation followed.

"When we're driving around, we can't listen to the radio?" a student asked.

"No," I said as steadfastly as I could.

"It's only for, like, 24 hours, right?" asked a student near the back.

"Yes," I said quickly. Then came the moment when my growing experience with college students paid off.

"And, what can you do for a lot of that time?" I asked loudly with a big smile, bending at the knees and opening my arms like an overly optimistic cheerleader when the junior varsity is down by 13 points in the fourth quarter.

"Sleep!" came the chorus of voices after barely a beat.

"Yes!" I responded. "You can sleep; you can read; you can have conversations. In person!"

"Can we eat?" someone asked, to laughter.

IN RETROSPECT, PERHAPS THAT LAST QUESTION WASN'T AS RIDICULOUS AS IT SOUNDED. Eighteen- to 20-year-olds know in their hearts that electronic media are nearly as dear to their lives as physical nourishment. They have vague memories of a time before iTunes, personalized ring tones, Facebook, Google, Rocketboom, "MySpace: The Movie" and www.i-am-bored.com. But like their contemporaries, the Olsen twins, whom they watched grow up in the media, they are no longer innocent. They have tasted the pleasures brought by binary code, and, like most of us, they're not into deprivation.

Could my students, in fact, survive "the grueling pain that was the 24-hour, e-media fast," as one self-described iPod and computer addict would later write in her paper?

The 50 young women and men in my class at AU are what are called digital natives or "millennials," those born between 1980 and 2000, many of whom graduated from high school as the 21st century dawned. Researchers say they will constitute the largest generation in American history, outnumbering baby boomers by as much as 33 percent.

Millennials grew up thinking that computers were as much a part of the family room furniture as my generation thought televisions were. While we boomers have had to change our thinking entirely from its static analog map of reality, their generation has always been comfortable with the malleable, non-physical terrain of electronic networks. They started life with VCRs and CDs and led the charge to digital video and MP3s. They were the first generation to link up through cellphones and instant messages. Personal computers came of age as they were born, and they grew up with the World Wide Web and e-mail, not to mention Nintendo, Game Boy, Sony PlayStation, GameCube and Xbox. They are the demographic that marketers love to court, but they can be elusive to advertisers tied to old media.

And yet, even though they are savvy, articulate, emotionally attached and educated consumers of electronic media, millennials don't actually think much about it. At the beginning of the semester, my students seemed surprised to learn they are trail-

blazers in a time of great upheaval in the media world. But they became painfully aware once forced to unplug.

"I was in shock," wrote one student. "I honestly did not think I could accomplish this task. The 24 hours I spent in what seemed like complete isolation became known as one of the toughest days I have had to endure."

Another student apparently did not see the irony in this statement: "I felt like I would be wasting my time doing the project. I did not want to give up my daily schedule, which mainly includes lying on my couch, watching television and playing The Sims2 -- a [life simulator] computer game."

BACK IN WECHSLER THEATER AFTER SPRING BREAK, with my students' ordeal over and their papers written, I asked them to tell me what had occurred in their lives for 24 media-free hours.

"What was good about it?" I asked, somewhat hopefully.

"Your cellphone, like, it always rings at the most inopportune times, so it was nice for a day to not have it constantly ringing," someone piped up.

Said another: "The peace and quiet. I realized how I depended on e-media because I don't pick up a newspaper. The way I get my news is either talk to people or watch TV."

"Every single one of these people in here," one student said, looking around the classroom, "we can't deal with silence anymore. We always have to have at least two things going on, whether it's the TV or the computer or iPod or cellphone."

On they went, as I scribbled down their comments.

"I really felt productive. I thought that I would just be, ah, no stress. But I was nonstop all day, cleaning, cooking, weed-whacking, yardwork."

Two students spent extra time with their mothers. They wouldn't elaborate in front of their peers, but one wrote later in his paper: "My mother is thrilled that I'm doing this fast. To her it means I get to spend the day with her. I bite, and we walk into town for some brunch. I draw out the brunch as long as possible."

Many students said they got out more than usual. If they heard someone leaving from across the dormitory hall, they jumped at the chance to join in. A lot of them said they got more sleep, some luxuriating in a rare afternoon nap, and enjoyed reading a book.

They had to be creative about everyday activities. "I actually had to go out and get a newspaper, which I don't normally do," one student said. "It wasn't that bad, but I almost felt like I wasn't getting all the news" without Internet updates.

"I realized I couldn't be around any of my friends because they weren't willing to do this with me. They would blast the radio if I was in the car or try to make me play video games," said another.

Some had their friends hide their cellphones, and one put Post-it notes around saying, "NO TECHNOLOGY," to avoid reflexive TV and Internet use.

Some were completely adrift.

"There was a moment in my day when I felt homeless," one student said. "I couldn't go home because I knew that would be too tempting. I couldn't be with my friends because that would be too tempting. I had just eaten, so I couldn't just sit in a restaurant all day. I was walking down the street literally with nowhere to go, and I just didn't know what I was going to do."

Several students realized their circle of daily friends included many who were nowhere near them geographically. "I found it hard because a lot of the people I talk to aren't in my immediate area, so they didn't relate to it," said one student.

Others realized the Internet helps them negotiate relationships.

"I started thinking about the idea that we've given up responsibility by relying on technology because it's a lot easier to send a text message to say I'm sorry," said one student.

A student's cellphone interrupted the class, evoking laughter. Then I asked them all to turn their cellphones on, and they eagerly complied.

POSTMAN, THE AUTHOR OF OUR ASSIGNED BOOK, became alarmed by the growing influence of media in 1985. It was during the second term of the first Hollywood actor to become president, as the first television generation came of age, and as live news, MTV, cable TV and videocassette recorders were soon to become ubiquitous. The world had passed by one year the benchmark of George Orwell's 1984, the futuristic novel published in 1949 that foretold of Big Brother, the thought police and totalitarianism. But Postman believed that Aldous Huxley's 1932 scenario in Brave New World was more compelling -- one in which society is destroyed by its worship of mass consumption and escapism. Postman believed television, in particular, was constraining higher thought and "transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business" without our realizing it. He thought that, because we are engineered to avoid our own imprisonment, we just needed to be aware of what our growing addiction to media was doing to us.

But were an intellectual's 20-year-old musings about the future of our media world still relevant?

In their papers, a surprising number of students said Postman had convinced them of his argument or at least made them feel guilty about their e-media indulgences. "A day without electronic media showed me how dependent society and I were upon it," one student wrote. "Without that distraction, I can discover new things in the real world, or at least be more productive. Neil Postman was right when he said that American society has become obsessed with the trivial and the minute."

One student related the lessons of the book to her own upbringing.

"The fact that the media trivialize information and turn public discourse into pure entertainment are both things my father tried to explain to me as a young child that I'm only now starting to understand," she wrote.

But some of my students jumped to defend their media habits.

"Blogs, online newspapers and Web sites all use more typed language than images when distributing news media. This puts a hole in Postman's argument," wrote one.

A student put it thoughtfully.

"I think we have over-media medicated ourselves," she said. But "I don't feel ashamed at all. It's part of our culture. And, I am completely addicted to it. I mean, the media fast was pretty much impossible for me. As long as our generation maintains a level of personable skills and we remain responsible, I think that we're okay. It's fine. It's not an epidemic. It's okay. It's okay."

PARTWAY THROUGH THE SEMESTER THE STUDENTS seemed to be getting defensive about their media habits. A little earlier, some of them took my lecture on David Mindich's book Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don't Follow the News to mean I thought less of them for not reading the newspaper or even knowing that traditional network news still exists. I don't, necessarily.

There are a number of reasons why the age of the average newspaper reader and network news viewer is over 50, not the least of which include trends that began when I was my students' age. Many of the reasons lie with the failures of the media themselves. But I sense my students want to shout: We're not frivolous just because we like to IM and go on Facebook! Or, even if we are frivolous, we don't care because we're college students!

I'm not from the we're-all-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket school of media thought. I use most of the electronic gadgets my students do. E-media keep us up to the minute on information, facilitate relationships without geographic constraint, make logistics easier and sometimes help us relax and fight boredom.

But I do know of a world my students haven't inhabited -- a world in which we may have had less ready access to information but had more power to turn it off and reflect. I hold on to the hope that we're not too far gone in our media stupor to recapture the idealistic vision of the era of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, meaningful discourse and human-to-human interaction in the public sphere.

Perhaps my students don't totally disagree with me. They would say there is a town square of the 21st century. It's just that it's a rectangle -- a glowing LCD screen in their pockets, on their desks or dominating an entire room. And while they may have enjoyed some parts of their journey to a bygone era during the e-media fast, they couldn't wait to press the power button and get back to the present.

Danna L. Walker is the James B. Simpson Fellow in the School of Communication at American University. She can be reached at walker@american.edu.