Free Me From My "Fun"

The most recent study of “screen time” among Americans found that we spend an average of 53 hours per week in front of an electronic screen.  This  means that the average American is spending considerably more hours than a full-time job, staring at screens.  What’s the cost?

There's actually two processes going on when you are giving your time and attention to an electronic screen.  

One is, quite frankly, that you are just wasting time.  That time, which you will never get back, is without argument the most precious thing you have, and nobody knows how much we are each going to have, so to throw it away mindlessly staring at somebody else's "stuff" on a screen becomes at best unproductive and at worst truly horrifying, when you think about the capacity of any given human being to literally change the world with their actions.  I mean, if you didn't sit in front of a screen for two hours (or four, or five, or more than seven, which is what is required to reach that 53 hours per week!) every day, what might you do with that time?  Even if it's just two hours a day, that's 14 hours a week:  that's literally 30 extra DAYS a year.  That's a MONTH.  You could do a LOT with a whole month!

The other thing that is happening during your “screen time” is that it literally changes your brain.  A few years ago, researchers finally were able to do studies looking at real-time brain scans (PET scans) as people were watching TV or playing video games.  It turns out that TV (or looking at any kind of moving images on any screen) stimulates artificially (through visual pathways) the SAME brain pathways that are artificially stimulated chemically by cocaine and other uppers (the so-called "pursuit pathway"). 

Humans find stimulation of this pathway rewarding, so we are drawn to electronic screens.  We also sense that ending that stimulation will result in a let-down, so once we are watching, we don't want to stop, and the longer we watch, the worse the let-down will be, so the MORE reluctant we are to stop.  In other words, electronic screens are, in fact, addictive.  So, like the worst of brain-destroying drugs, the more TV you watch, the more TV you want to watch (or the more video games you play, the more you want to play, or the more facebook or whatever other internet stuff you "surf," the more you want to "surf").  Which results in more and more and more of that "time-wasting" we were talking about before.  It's a vicious circle.

Interestingly, when people take "electronic media fasts," they find that after the first few days, they feel better, sleep better, and get far more done, feeling like they "magically" have more time and energy than they ever felt they had before.  Well, of course, they do have more time, because they aren't throwing hours away in front of screens anymore.  The energy part is an unexpected bonus, though.  Then again, people generally do find freedom from bondage exhilarating.   

Go figure.