We were challenged to go a week without broadband by Moneysupermarket and we just couldn’t do it. I rely on our internet for my business and as a home, our broadband is out a lifeline to lots of things in our home. I know this as we were offline for a week at Easter.
Believe it or not, we control our heating and hot water system and schedule with broadband. it is linked to our phones and tablets. Without broadband, I would be lost when it comes to work and I have most of our go to recipes saved online too. Our family calendar is online, we keep in touch with the boys sports teams online and we bank online, so I was going to have to say no to the challenge, as we discovered that having broadband makes our family run smoother.
But then Moneysupermarket came back and said they would be happy for us to just try removing one part of our online life, so we decided we would try a week without internet TV, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Life, Youtube, Sky Kids and Sky Go.
A week without Internet TV
As we have been reducing our reliance on screens as a family, I thought this would be really easy. It would just mean that we would have to watch terrestrial TV.
Ha! The internet gods were laughing at me. I never realised just how much as a family we have come to rely on catch-up TV and on demand. It turns out the only time we actually watch live TV is when we are watching a live sporting match!
It has been a really interesting week and one that I am not keen on repeating. As a family, we have a smart TV and have embraced the on-demand lifestyle much more than I thought we had. So how did it go? Well, it was horrible. We had to watch TV with adverts and our schedule revolved around the TV rather than slotting into it, so rather than reducing the focus on the TV it actually increased it.
The boys HATED that they couldn’t watch their favourites on youtube. That they couldn’t watch it on the tablet or on the TV. They got frustrated that they might miss the beginning of something or that if they were enjoying a program that they couldn’t just watch another episode.
I missed catching up on TV whilst I was working. I often put something on the tablet whilst I was at my desk. I would catch up on things that MadDad isn’t interesting in such as one born every minute.
MadDad suffered more than the rest of us, as he watches very little TV, but he pretty much only watches on demand.
As a family, it was a complete failure and we only managed 5 days before we put on a family movie and put in on when we wanted to watch it!
The fact of the matter is that technology is here to help us and as a family we embrace that. We use technology to make our life easier, we use it to our advantage. On Demand TV is all about that. We can watch what we want and having that ability means that we fit TV into our life, rather than our life revolving around TV.
This post is in collaboration with MoneySuperMarket but all thoughts are my own. Thank you for supporting the Mad House and the brands that support us.
I think it’s utterly unrealistic to expect a family in term time with a mum working form home to give up broadband. It may be possible when on holiday but not otherwise. My kids even do their homework online fairly often. But funnily enough France is way behind with TV on demand and catch up so we still rely on terrestrial TV which probably seems prehistoric to you! I long to be able to watch what I want when I want.
Interesting viewpoint and so true. The internet isn’t a lazy form of entertainment like TV was always considered to be. And whilst tv was pure entertainment (with an educational element if you watched the news, documentaries, and historical dramas, granted), the internet is more akin to giving up the car or electricity, or phones for a week. My job involves online English courses for the college where I teach. If I gave up intenet for a week it would basically be taking a week off work.
It’s amazing what we have all gotten used to over the years, but TV now fits into our busy lives as you identified, rather than us carving out the time to watch it when something is on. I couldn’t go without broadband at all for a week now. I think the only way would be if I was on an exotic holiday – I could probably manage then, I’d just save all my photos and Instagram them when I’m home!
That would be a hard enough challenge in our house and my two aren’t even on the internet for most of the week. I need it for work though, as does Mr R, and the English TV we do watch is online..
I couldn’t go a week without internet either. It’s a huge part of so many aspects of family life. I watch TV on demand too so this would be really hard for me! x
Most of what I watch is what I have recorded but even years ago I used to video stacks of stuff to watch later.
Oh my…If I am at home most definitely not. If I am away yeh! LOL
I think I’d struggle without catch up TV and the loss of YouTube would a blow for H.
We only have internet TV and don’t have any terrestrial channels anymore so we’d be stuck without it, although we have recently got into playing UNO but I am not sure how long that would last all night. For work both husband and I need the internet especially when we are working from home so it seems hard to live life with it. A few years when we have been in France we haven’t had access to the internet and you know what it is hard, not being able to check where things are and prices or the weather it is really quite hard so not sure I could live like that permanently! How sad is that!
I would not be able to live without TV or broadband as like you I need it for my work, however I do think we have a good balance
I don’t think I could go a week without the internet , but I could go a week without internet tv. I need the internet to do my job, but I don’t watch a lot of tv. xx
Sounds like a sad week to me.. lol
We couldn’t do without internet as it’s such a vital part of our life these days but we could easily do without TV in any form.
We rarely watch TV and cancelled SKY last year as it was so unnecessary (to us anyway) – we now have cable but only the channels that came with the package we needed to get the best broadband speeds. The only thing we’d miss without TV would be Sky Sports News 😉
Five days is a great effort Jen, I’m not sure we’d be able to do that long as we have Sky. Definitely couldn’t be without the internet!