Unplugged: Do you have it in you?

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What concerns Mattleman and others is the way that technology — and specifically the Internet — has infiltrated our lives. And recent studies by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society indicate that there is reason to worry.

The Stanford research showed that people who didn’t use the Internet during a random six-hour window on a given day were likely to spend, on average, almost twice as much time with family during those hours than those who spent an hour or more online.

Kristen Backor, the institute’s head research assistant, said this shows that while people may be connecting with others on the internet they are disconnecting with loved ones to do so. That, Backor said, is changing how people relate within the home.

And this is not a trivial change, said Dr Edward Hallowell, a Sudbury, Massachusetts psychiatrist, former Harvard Medical School faculty member and the author of the book CrazyBusy.

“What we’re seeing, we’ve never seen in human history before,” Hallowell said. “It’s just the extraordinary availability and magnetism of electronic communication devices, whether it’s cellphones or Blackberries or the Internet. People tend to — without knowing it or meaning to — spend a lot of time doing what I call screen sucking.”

Feeling the need to start reconnecting on a personal level, Mattleman, 51, launched the first “Needham Unplugged” month in March 2002. The no-homework night was added a year later, and other towns soon began to follow Needham’s lead, hoping to give families a reason to slow down for at least one night.

“Every day you come home and the kids are scheduled to the max: the soccer, baseball, basketball, CCD,” said Terry Giannetto, a mother of three who organised "Northborough UNscheduled” this year. “And it really is a chance for families to take a breather, reconnect. For that one day, we have nothing to do except hang out with each other.”

In Needham, where there will be no homework and no town meetings on the designated day, many people are looking forward to a break. Jerry Wasserman, the chairman of the town’s Board of Selectmen, said he will spend the night with his wife of 27 years. Susan and Roger Patkin will spend the evening with their three children. And Laurie Spitz said her kids, especially 7-year-old Kayla, have been talking about that night for days.