Screen Time
Do you use technology, or does technology use you? Becca Caddy, a London-based journalist, grapples with this question daily in her work commentating on consumer technology, popular science, and the future. While technology may improve our lives through connection and convenience, it feels as though there’s more than meets they eye. If technology is meant to be a force for good, why does it feel impossible to set and maintain boundaries? Screen Time, Caddy’s first book, aims to help make peace with your devices and find your techquilibrium.
Screen Time doesn’t shy away from big topics, acknowledging that consumer technology is often designed to maximise attention. There is a truly massive commercial prerogative to design convenient, engaging, and attention-holding technology. In the face of such wicked problems, any solution of corresponding scale feels as overwhelming as the issue itself. Where else do we turn but inward, to the microcosmic and the personal, to control what we can? If I can just get my screen time down, then I will have at least done… Something. While making small, personal adjustments can feel like you’re solving the problem, it ultimately shifts the onus from big players who make the rules onto individuals forced to play by them. The same experts who created these sticky techniques often avoid their usage and regret having created them. Spruiking ‘tips and tricks’ to overcome sophisticated attention-holding techniques will feel like a condescending pat on the head. We can, then, develop a common understanding that it isn’t a personal failing to be caught in a phone scroll, feel gratified by likes, or experience anxiety when separated from our personal devices.
Caddy does an excellent job of subverting this exercise of futility. She presents research behind not only the issues themselves but the solutions too. Behavioural scientists, psychologists, and Caddy herself know more than just ‘how to combat addictive technology’, they know about building a healthy sense of self, cultivating fulfilling relationships, and building gratitude. Yes, it can feel like setting app limits and using Pomodoro timers is fighting fire with fire, but there is no one-size-fits-all approach. A well placed sticky note may not win out over a seemingly bottomless inbox, but surely exploring options, practising new habits, doing something is better than simply admiring the problem. The best approach to overriding the allure of sticky technology is building a meaningful alternative to dedicate one’s attention to. If the reader commits to self reflecting and building their own personal technological needs and goals, the strategies outlined in the book may stand the test of time.
For now, I’ll be downloading Forest and giving Becca a follow on Instagram.
