Screen Time

        Today we’re going to be talking about the idea and reality of the iTrainer. James Williams gave us the concept of the iTrainer in his book Bring Your Own Boundaries. They are small bricks that you can fit in your pocket so you can carry them with you anywhere you go and always have them easily accessible. It can do all these amazing things like search things on google, tell you what the weather's like so you don’t have to go outside and check for yourself, you can play games on it, it can even wake you up in the morning. Sounds pretty great right? A dream come true? But what about the catch? It sends you little notifications every few minutes maybe even few seconds and vibrates and rings for your attention constantly. It is designed to be an, “impulse training device.” It wants all your undivided attention all the time, all day and all night long. Would you still have one? Chances are that you already do. Technology in our day in age works in a way that is designed to be attention catching and distracting. We are supposed to want to be engaged with it constantly so that the companies that create the devices generate more and more money. Is there a way to still interact with technology in a society that is obsessed with it without being engulfed by it ourselves? I say there is.

        We miss so much while staring at our screens. We certainly miss out on human connection while we walk down the sidewalk engulfed in our phones instead of smiling at the people walking around us, maybe even using our screen as an excuse to avoid making eye contact. Our screens pull us away from our present surroundings. Think about it, even as you are right now, right this second reading this blog, what are you missing? Details of things happening around you, an opportunity to talk with a friend, or a chance to embrace your surroundings. But then again, what would we be missing if we didn’t have technology as it is today? The knowledge that it brings to our fingertips is endless, knowledge that can teach you how to better your chances of obtaining a job that makes you happy, knowledge that can better help you understand different cultures and societies, knowledge that could even potentially save someone's life… so what would we be missing without it? Is the loss greater than the reward of leaving our screens behind or would deciding to be screen free make our lives oh, so much better? More face to face conversations could lead to more confident and emotionally intelligent people. It might sound cliche and sunshiny, but I truly believe that the more real life and meaningful connections we make the better off we will be because of it.

        Right now children are growing up on screens and already being trained to have only a few seconds of attention span for any given thing. Our societies’ attention spans are steadily decreasing as it is and with further technological advancements I fear that our attention spans will further decrease. It is not that technology itself steals our attention and time, but the way we use it that greatly affects us. We often check our phones hundreds of times per day and spend countless hours scrolling, liking, posting and commenting. Our phones make it so easy for us to stay connected and constantly have everything at our fingertips so that it is hard to peel ourselves away once you have started. Millions of people are addicted to technology and cell phones and don’t even know it. Technology is so prevalent in our society that we don’t see the signs of addiction when they are present. It has become so normal to constantly be checking your phone and to freak out if you lose it or are parted from it for even a little while that people don’t think about the fact that their bodies are becoming reliant on having the constant stimulation that technology gives us. Our society needs to learn how to control the impulses we have to gain all the virtual reality stimulant we can obtain. We’ve become so overwhelmed with all the noise of the internet and social media that we don’t pay attention to the real world quite as much as we possibly should. I think if we could learn more self control and learn to recognize the unuseful time we spend on our screens, we could become a much more productive and successful culture. 

       YouTube and Netflix are good examples of screen time thieves. They have a big role in manipulating people to have even more screen time using their services. They both encourage you to continue watching and stay on your screens by playing videos and shows one after another without you having to do anything. This creates a continuing cycle of looping screen time. YouTube has even changed the way they pay their YouTubers. They now pay the YouTubers more money based on how long people stay watching their videos. In doing so people have started filming longer and longer videos in order to make more money. This creates even more screen time for the viewers.

        Another prime example of something that asks for all our attention to be drawn to the screen is social media itself. Social media apps, such as instagram, snapchat, facebook and others ask to send you alerts when something “important” happens on the app, but it’s not just alerts about things you care about or need to know about.. It’s alerts for everytime someone posts to their story or changes their status or if one of your friends liked someone else’s post. It’s a constant beratement of attention seeking buzzing, begging for more of our attention and more and more screen time. We have been conditioned by these simple buzzes on our phones to respond to our screen like a trained dog salivating to Pavlov’s bell. When we hear the notification buzz, we essentially “salivate” over our screens. The happy medium I think most of us can deal with (or at least learn to live with) is cutting back on screen time a little every day. Choose to switch off the alert options so you look at your screen when you choose to do so not when a notification buzz has trained you to look. Setting timers on social medias can really help with stripping away useless screen time. This would keep us from mindlessly getting caught in the numbness of the screen. I believe the benefits of this could be outstanding to our society and everyone in it.