Do Screens Get in the Way of our Lives?
Have you ever spent hours at a time scrolling through your phone, pulled in by a senseless urge, or even looked at your screen time and questioned what all that time was spent doing. Hours pass by like minutes on screens and by the time the dopamine rush has vanished and you leave the virtual world, everything seems to have blown past you and regret fills your mind. While this might not be the most common experience, it has been mine. In that precious time, I could've finished half of my Consumer Education course, read a book from start to finish, taken my dog on a walk, or taken time to appreciate my surroundings. Instead, the meaningless expression of entertainment through screens occupies that time. Are the things we see on our screens beneficiary to us? Not particularly, in fact one could argue the opposite. This is why screens are an interruption in our life.
According to the CDC, kids aged between 11-14 spend nearly 9 hours a day on screen entertainment! This obviously ranges from watching TV to scrolling through social media on a phone. Though this number might seemed skewed, several other sources (ranging in trustworthiness) shared similar data. Assuming this number is true, then kids aged 11-14 use over 130 days in a year looking at a screen. If the habit continues that's 1/3 of a full life occupied on looking at a screen. By some interpretations of this information, screens could be the most downplayed issue, even addiction of our generation.
To put in perspective and really ingrain the sheer amount of time spent on screens, these are somethings you could do in the 4 year period between 11-14 that the average kid spends on a screen. The ten thousand hour rule states that true expertise in something requires practicing for ten thousand hours. So, if you dedicate the same number of hours from screens to refining a skill you could master it and still have over 3,000 hours remaining (125 days). Also, assuming high school is 175 days a year and 7 hours long, you could graduate high school nearly 3 times.
The point of this blog isn't to trash on the use of screen entertainment, but rather bring awareness to the necessity of moderation of it. I chose not to cover the mental and social consequences of screen use, rather only the sheer number of hours lost. It would be hypocritical to give advice on this, because I too spend much time on social media, but hopefully we can all make more efforts to find entertainment outside of screens.
https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/multimedia/infographics/getmoving.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4662388/#:~:text=Throughout%20his%20book%2C%20Gladwell%20repeatedly,at%20least%2010%20000%20hours.
I really like some of the points you make in this blog especially the statistics. I have also lost many hours of the day to my phone that I regret later on. I really wish that we were encouraged to use our devices less and find enjoyment in the things that we can physically touch and interact with instead of just seeing it on a screen.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it sucks. For me, I tend to go on my phone when I'm drained or bored (or both), allowing me an easy-access distraction from the issue at hand. I feel as though screens tend to postpone issues rather than solve them, and it's kind of depressing how often we're on our screens (and how stressed teens must be to need a way out so often). Nice post :)
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