When I split my time so that 9-5pm is work hours and outside that time is family time, whether doing chores, fixing up the house, running errands, or relaxing with the wife and kids, none of these seem to need the internet. But it sounds like that's not the situation you were in 10 years ago.
We live in a large suburb, and because of lack of constant electronic distractions, we're meeting our neighbors for the first time (albeit slowly, since nobody around here ever steps outside).
The kids have a great time at school, but they keep observing that all the other kids are surprisingly behind at pretty much every skill, and express surprise that they enjoy phone games where all you do is tap the screen to make a number go higher.
My wife stays at home raising our young children, and only really uses internet to communicate with the older kids' schools, which she can do with her iPhone anywhere that has wifi, including Walmart.
I'm the breadwinner of our family, doing software consulting work that often needs internet but often can be done offline. As long as I use the library's wifi for that aspect, I'm able to do my job just fine.
Honestly, if software wasn't my skill, I would be using the internet a lot less often, probably as much as I would check out a library book, and for the same reasons too. But software is what God made me good at, so it's how I need to support my family.
That said, I've installed a ton of things on our offline home computer that my kids find useful, such as PICO-8 and IntelliJ IDEA Community (so we can learn Java).
Thanks a lot for clarifying. What you've described is exactly a situation I thought going off-line wouldn't work in, so it's pretty educational for me that it works well for you.
We live in a large suburb, and because of lack of constant electronic distractions, we're meeting our neighbors for the first time (albeit slowly, since nobody around here ever steps outside).
The kids have a great time at school, but they keep observing that all the other kids are surprisingly behind at pretty much every skill, and express surprise that they enjoy phone games where all you do is tap the screen to make a number go higher.
My wife stays at home raising our young children, and only really uses internet to communicate with the older kids' schools, which she can do with her iPhone anywhere that has wifi, including Walmart.
I'm the breadwinner of our family, doing software consulting work that often needs internet but often can be done offline. As long as I use the library's wifi for that aspect, I'm able to do my job just fine.
Honestly, if software wasn't my skill, I would be using the internet a lot less often, probably as much as I would check out a library book, and for the same reasons too. But software is what God made me good at, so it's how I need to support my family.
That said, I've installed a ton of things on our offline home computer that my kids find useful, such as PICO-8 and IntelliJ IDEA Community (so we can learn Java).