Day 52/365: Screen Time

The War On Screen Time is perpetual. I’m constantly trying to reduce wasted hours spent on my phone needlessly and mindlessly scrolling, often for scrolling sake. Watching Geowizard’s recent video on YouTube reminded me of this once again, as did the last “influencer” who made a similar video before that and before that again.

In a world where smart phones and living generally are so interconnected, it’s becoming ever more difficult to create and enforce that separation. While I would be the first one to throw away my iPhone (and I have tried… I haven’t bought ever in my life but it seems whenever mine eventually dies or gets lost or whatever, my family buys a new one for my birthday or Layla gives me her old one), it’s becoming ever more difficult to function without it. 

That’s because iPhones are more than just a telephone nowadays. They’re a GPS, a camera, a gaming device, a personal computer, and more, all rolled into one. Beyond that, however, in some restaurants you can’t easily access a menu without scanning a QR code (phone with camera required) or getting on a plane (some airlines operate only with digital boarding passes now, not something a Nokia 3310 is able to process). They, quite simply, are needed if you want to have a semblance of an efficient life. 

But that is quite ironic really, here I am complaining that I waste so much time on my phone yet at the same time the phone actually saves me money. If I was to get rid of my iPhone, I’d need to get a Satnav for my car, I’d need to ask for a physical menu in restaurants (or only go to restaurants that offer a physical menu), or buy an alarm clock to wake me up. 

Despite how useful and efficient the phone can be, I miss the days when not everything was digital. Take digital boarding passes, while it’s not the norm on every airline, it will be soon. It’s easier, faster, more efficient and in turn makes the airline more money - they save on paper, ink, staffing, and printing. But for me, printed boarding passes were great physical mementos of trips gone past. Not just a flight but a moment in time. Now, that moment is digitalised and deleted when the flight is up. 

So I do hope to go without my phone at some point very soon, perhaps relying on a brick phone for emergencies. Getting out a map when I'm driving somewhere I don't know or going to restaurants that still use physical paper.. and with that making sure to actively seek them out. Because places that haven't automated their menu likely haven't automated their cooking.

Despite the forward progress our phones have brung, I hope as humans, we can take time to go back a little too, when phones weren't the priority and people were.