On Screens

Why Don’t You Put Down The Phone?

The only time I’m not looking at a screen is when I’m biking or sleeping. I don’t do either of these things nearly enough. My screen addiction has been going my entire life, but over the past month or so it’s felt even more insurmountable. These days I am all the way down the rabbit hole before I even know I’ve fallen. I leave my phone in the other room so I won’t be tempted to stare at it. Then I get a text. Then I go to the other room to check the text. Then it is 30 minutes later, and I have been scrolling Instagram Reels the entire time and I do not remember making the decision to do it. It is like the most advanced and inescapable form of ADHD I’ve ever experienced.

To be fair when I was a child in the 80’s I also had this problem. But it wasn’t with screens. I would be in my bedroom with the intention of completing a simple task like putting on my shoes, or getting my sweater, and the next thing I knew there would be yelling from downstairs, an adult angrily asking me what’s taking so long. I’d look down and notice three action figures in my hand, a matchbox car, a Michael Jackson cassette. I’d be laying on the scratchy carpet. I’d have one sock on and no memory of how I got here. Just feelings of tremendous shame and confusion. A feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Like my brain has a hole in the bottom of it and things can just fall through, a feeling that people are angry with me about that. A feeling that I am broken and not whole.