Screen Your Life
Posted on Jun 25, 2022 by SOUL Sagacity (SOUL Sagacity)
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Man's future is sealed. Now there is no turning back. The screens are here to stay until we learn to do it in the air. A mobile screen, a TV screen, a tablet screen, a laptop screen, all screaming for your attention. Today's gadgets are thousands of times more advanced than the technology that launched Lunar missions to the moon. The interface and the content for humans on the screens is so gratifying that it has lured most of our attention to itself. However busy you are, the busiest people still find time to look at screens. Whenever people are remonstrated with and pointed out their addiction to screens, they often justify it with the possible usefulness of it but, the stark truth is that a bulk of it's use is needless.
Screens are our new normal. If you cannot wish them away, the best thing to do is restrict and ration their use. Steve Jobs didn't let his children use phones and iPads for very long. Bill Gates didn't allow his children to use gadgets until they were 14 years old. We often complain that children don't listen but we forget that they are watching us. They mirror what they see. Adults and children are both equal addicts of screen time. People go for their daily dose of addiction despite their lack of time.
Watching your favorite series on TV or OTT platforms releases the happy and addictive hormones of dopamine and oxytocin. The studies found that people who reported watching moderate to large amounts of TV in their 40s, 50s and early 60s experienced greater cognitive declines, and had lower volumes of gray matter in their brains, in their 70s and 80s, compared with people who reported watching very little TV in their midlife.
”Never trust anyone whose TV is bigger than their bookshelf” said Emilia Clarke in lighter vein. Let us discuss the following outcomes of excess screen time:
Lack of social/family bonding:
Gone are the days when children would get together outdoors and play in the grass, mud or trees. Cycling, running, hide and seek, fun & frolic are all sacrificed at the altar of Playstations and XBOX's. Even adults have found it easier to interact with someone thousands of kilometres away rather than their next door neighbour. Families are sitting in the same house in different locations logged onto wifi interacting with people far away. People having 5000 friends on Facebook are sitting lonely at home, in broken families faking jovial selfies through newest filters.
The couples need privacy on their cell phones and marital discords are rising. The ease of access to anyone anywhere has led to placing the emotional anchor outside the home. First joint families led to nuclear families and now nuclear families are becoming solo individuals. People finding it hard not to fidget with their phone in waiting periods. A dinner table has four people sitting with their eyes on their cell phones. Parents have lost moral rights to guide their children into reducing screen time. The family fabric is breaking apart, unable to handle the onslaught of options fed to a finite brain.
Mind Programming:
Although it equally applies to internet browsing and OTT also. My not having a TV for 12 years now, (yes you heard that right..no TV for the last 12 years) is my testimony to it. The amount of time one can spare for more productive work has a direct influence on your life success. The screens create a hypnotic state. Screen watching puts the viewer into a highly suggestible passive sleep-like hypnotic state. This provides easy access to the subconscious mind wherein subtle ideas, thoughts and expectations can be programmed in your mind. This is a very common fact known to marketeers. You consciously give them access to your mind and thus you become a puppet to the programming of the society. The society is fed with the primal urges of money, sex and fame and our mind's lower faculties are gratified and so become our motivations. The higher functions are more than often ignored. It is called conditioning of the mind/ society/ nation.
Addictive in nature:
Screen watching is not just a case of time wastage but it is addictive in nature as it releases endorphins in your blood stream. It is a natural sedative that has effects similar to morphine and heroin. Watching your favourite series gets you addicted season by season. It has the same withdrawal symptoms as drugs and causes anxiety, lack of patience and reduces attention spans. It is particularly bad for minors in their formative years. It can tangentially affect their future course of life.
Lack of critical analysis:
Screen watching dampens the left brain, which is the seat of logic and analysis. We become mute spectators of what emerges through the screen, giving it acceptance and access to our belief system without scrutinising the ifs and buts. Rather we engage our right brain and give an emotional response to incoming information. This is how we absorb the prejudices, conditioning and develop the mob mentality.
What to do??
Although there's more to say but for want of space, lets think of possible solutions. One obvious mantra is ‘Reduce your screen time'. More things that need to be done are' go outdoors more often, have a hobby, create something new in physical form, travel to exotic places or else be knowledgeable enough to be a guide in your own city, serve less able people, earn some Karma rather than being a plain consumer, invest in your soul, have an inner life, meditate twice a day, learn a new skill, learn a new language, exercise to full fitness, read a book every 45 days, improve your culinary arts, teach the less privileged, do sewa at your religious place quietly, and the list goes on.
Even now you need a screen? Watch good documentaries. Make yourself enrichment oriented rather than entertainment oriented. After your screen time if you have learnt a new knowledge then probably you have utilised your time well. Live the example you want your children to be. Screen your life and introspect and reduce screens from your life.