Story by Jeromy Verayo
Ever wonder where all that free time went? I'm referring to the time you looked forward to spending with your family and friends as soon as you finished the tasks on your long to-do list.
Remember when your supposed morning of mindful meditation, journaling, and exercise vanished out of thin air?
Do you constantly find yourself in a rabbit hole? One moment you're checking your inbox for messages from your boss or professor and the next thing you know, you're six videos in to "man's best friend attempting to say 'I love you' to its owner."
If you answered 'yes' to at least one of these questions, you are not alone. You also probably own a smartphone, tablet, or laptop (through which you are reading this article) and have an internet connection. At times, you even use these devices simultaneously.
In this age, these scenarios have become the norm, and resistance to this norm has produced little to no effect. The culprit? Our screens.
On average, Filipinos spend about 9.5 hours a day glued to a screen. Coincidentally, according to a study by Microsoft, since 2000 the human attention span has shortened from 12 to only eight seconds (which is shorter than that of a goldfish). Combine these and voila! we have a population that is more distracted now than ever. No wonder industries such as content-creation and advertising are on the rise.
The ads and apps on our devices are cleverly designed by companies to grab our attention and hook us into long hours of mindless content consumption. As a result, hardly any ‘deep work’ gets done, and we end up crippling our productivity by procrastinating. Guilt sets in and so we rationalize that there isn’t enough time.
As prophesied by Marshall McLuhan, we will have reached a point when our devices (or media) become extensions of ourselves. This is, perhaps, the reason we feel anxious when we forget to bring our phones with us or when our device’s battery runs out. We even find it hard to have a good time when the cafe or restaurant we’d gone to doesn’t have WiFi or a signal to keep us in the loop. Suddenly, the fear of missing out (FOMO) creeps in and we become desperate for stimuli.
Notice this: When you’re alone waiting in line or lost somewhere unfamiliar, what do you do? As if by instinct, you slide your hand into your pocket and reach for your phone.
The absurd thing is we’ve replaced our reality with the virtual and transformed the online into the social. Today, the majority of our interactions are computer-mediated. The ‘self’ we portray online is carefully curated and bears little resemblance to our offline self. This prompts a mismatch in our identity which leads to dissonance and self-contradiction.
Since most people only share the highlights of their life online, they create an illusion of perfection. Sadly, a lot of us fall into the trap of comparing our lives with these people and so we question our worth and harbor feelings of inadequacy. Every time we scroll through their ‘perfect’ posts which garner tons of reactions, we may not know it but our self-esteem takes a mild beating.
We certainly did not intend or imagine our screens to have such negative impacts on our well-being. Luckily, there are ways to avert this disaster. What then should we do?
First, we must acknowledge that will power alone is not enough. Our screens are rigged to distract us and so it is necessary that a system of habits which help reduce screen-time be in place. Tweaking our device settings and tracking our online activities are a good starting point.
Next, we have to be intentional in how we use our screens. Before you unlock your device, pause for a moment. Do you absolutely need to check your notifications on an hourly basis? If not, then leave it for a while. Prioritize. Learn to distinguish what is urgent from what it is not.
Finally, we need to sit down and reflect. A century ago, we didn’t have screen-based technology at our disposal. We haven’t had the time to fully process what this development means to us as a species. What are the long-term effects? Is it really worth spending so much time on? How much is too much? Until we find the answers, we ought to be critical on how we use it.
It is true that technology has done many good to humanity in terms of democratizing information, automating certain tasks, and building connections among humans from different backgrounds. Surely, this is what innovators had in mind when they made their inventions. However, it is essential to note that too much of a good thing could yield unfavorable consequences.
Our screens rob us of time (time which we can’t take back) to be in the real world and fully experience it. Sometimes, we even forget that we’re surrounded by nature and our fellow humans. We should strive, therefore, to achieve some kind of balance because looking down at a screen and ignoring what’s in front of us is simply not a good way to live.
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