I wake up in the morning and reach for my phone. I scroll through social media as I eat breakfast, blast loud music on my commute to and from school or work. I consume YouTube while I eat dinner. I do homework with videos playing in the background and only turn them off when it’s time for my video game nightcap. At some point, I happen to glance at the time, realize I’ve stayed up too late and rush to bed, head still spinning with the images I’ve devoured all day.
This sort of schedule may seem familiar. You may substitute YouTube for Hulu or Netflix, or maybe you are blessed to not be addicted to social media and instead use your morning to catch up on emails. Regardless, you are likely constantly stimulated by screens from dawn till dusk, just as I am.
This seems to be the new normal. Whether you’re rich or poor, you can’t avoid being affected by the media environment that surrounds you, even if you own the very platform you post to. The richest man in the world spends eight hours a day glued to his screen, arguing with people on the social media platform he bought for the equivalent of Iceland’s gross domestic product. The most powerful individual on the planet falls asleep to the cable TV channel his political party owns, echoing praise in his ear. You cannot buy your way out of this.
Platforms like Instagram, Facebook and You-Tube have a history of conducting psychological research on their user base without their consent. The intent is to be maximally addictive and profitable with little care by those in charge as to the adverse health effects we may suffer as a result; a quick search for “overstimulation” and “digital/social media” will reveal dozens of studies on the matter.
Regardless, this constant barrage of noise drains our mental energy. Whether it’s late-night scrolling through a comment thread arguing with a theoretically real person or watching a two-hour documentary on a topic of little interest, it’s clear that media content is sucking up our time and energy.
A study from BMC Public Health links longer screen time to decreased academic performance (the ability to retain and apply learned information) and more sedentary lifestyles in elementary school students. A different study by the Archives of Medicine & Health Services focusing on college students shows a positive correlation between excessive screen time and diminished attention spans.
Furthermore, a study from the California Health Professional Student Alliance at UC Berkeley stated: “Contemporary technologies increasingly demand constant cognitive allocation,“ adding that given sufficient exposure, our “cognitive efficiency and resilience” slowly degrades over a lifetime.
The obvious individual solution to this assault on our senses is to simply “unplug,” meaning turn off your phone, computer and TV. However, much like telling an addict to “just say no,” appeals to willpower are effective for few. It also ignores the fact that we actually get quite a lot of value from the media we interact with. The music we listen to, the games we play, the films we watch, even the social media posts we read do, on occasion, give us unique insight into the world, widening our palette and inspiring us.
Thus, I propose not a solution, but perhaps a framework to view all your consumptions through; perhaps it will better your life in small ways, as it has mine. Your attention is the most valuable resource you possess as a human being. And it is a limited resource.
It’s a resource everyone wants. It’s why companies such as Meta and Alphabet have designed complex and sophisticated algorithms to hoard your attention for themselves. This has been dubbed the “Attention Economy,” in which companies compete and bid for your attention with every click worth a monetary amount. When you spend time on their platforms, the hourglass that is the remaining minutes of your life drains. Those are minutes you can never recover. Maybe you gained something from using those minutes, maybe you didn’t: they are gone just the same.
This may sound like I’m imploring you to go out and do something meaningful instead of binge-watching seven hours of Netflix or watching your favorite political commentator reaffirm your already existing world view. However, I understand the reason you are watching in the first place. Maybe you are spent after a long and stressful day of work or school and just want to sit back and relax. Maybe you want some solace after hearing disheartening news. The reasons are seemingly infinite.
This is where we come full circle to the aforementioned “unplug” advice — but I won’t ask you to throw away your cell phone and go live in the forest. Still, you can extrapolate a sliver of practical advice from this attitude.
Give yourself some quiet time, away from your electronic devices — no earbuds, no headphones, no screens. You don’t need much time, though more is better. A 30-minute walk will do, or even five minutes in a bathroom stall, if that’s all you can spare. You need some time and space to recalibrate, gather your thoughts and come to terms with how you’re feeling in the moment.
When you reach for a quick byte of entertainment during times of stress, anxiety or exhaustion, you are drowning out the natural mechanisms your brain uses to regulate said emotions. If you ignore these feelings long enough, they will eventually find a way to escape. Maybe you remember a time when you lost your cool and lashed out at someone who didn’t deserve it, or maybe you trauma-dumped on a random stranger. Most likely, it’s because you had pent-up, unresolved feelings that weren’t allowed to self-regulate. Will this advice realistically solve your problems? Of course not. But I do believe that safeguarding your attention against hostile forces, and treating it as carefully as you would your own child, will be at least a small benefit to your life.
