What if the preferences for your favorite social network allowed you to pick one or more “blackout days” during which you could not log on? Could you get by for a full 24 hours, or more, with no access to Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed or any of your other favorite social media tools? (And you can’t cheat and use TweetDeck to access Twitter. The API would be shut down, too.)

Recently I’ve had a handful of big projects and some “real world” interruptions and have been spending very little time online. And I don’t miss it all that much.

I’ve always tried not to be overly consumed by anything electronic. In the acknowledgments to my book, I quote my eight-year-old daughter who told me, when I first started bringing my iPhone into the dining room, “Dad, no electronic devices at the dinner table.”

And seven years ago I got fed up with TV and canceled cable. I have never seen American Idol, Lost, CSI, 24, America’s Next Top Model, etc. and I feel no sense of loss.

I’ve been wondering, what would happen if I just quit social networking altogether? How adversely would it affect the quality of my life and relationships?

Maybe quitting completely is too extreme, so that gave me the idea for the social network blackout day(s) feature. If Twitter or Facebook had the ability to shut you out for one or more days, would you enable it? For how many days? Or is your social networking such an important part of your life that the very suggestion seems wrong?

Tags: Social networking, blackout days, Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed