The Digital Diet: The 4-step plan to break your tech addiction and regain balance in your life

“Chill out”—the next time your son or daughter comes to the dinner table with a smart phone or iPod or laptop, try putting it in the fridge during the entire meal. It won’t do any harm to the device. Then serve it as the final course, after the dessert.

increasing appetite for gadgets and the Web has made us lazy and less active.

The only difference was that I wouldn’t be broadcasting my every move to 1,664 friends, most of whom I didn’t even know.

“e-obesity” problem.

++ Fukinsei: asymmetry or imbalance (Don’t get caught up in checking every e-mail all the time.) ++ Kanso: simplicity or elimination of clutter (Keep your favorite sites to a minimum, close down old accounts, and avoid carrying too many devices.) ++ Koko: austerity or bare essentials (Streamline your devices, services, and even contact list.) ++ Sh

The study’s authors found this group easily distracted and incapable of ignoring irrelevant information.

“Ironically, with all this, ‘We’re now more connected than ever with technology,’ I don’t think we’ve ever been farther apart.” —Drew Barrymore

The study found that children who spent three

“With iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations—none of which I know how to work—information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. All of this is not only putting new pressures on you. It is putting new pressures on our country and on our democracy.” —Pr