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.
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