Pop 89: Sane Time or Screen Time?
By Madonna Hamel
Over the years I’ve written and performed literally 100s of performances. But one, called “Sacred Agents,” keeps coming back to haunt me. It focused on the ways a new technology, called the “World Wide Web,” would change our lives by hooking us to our computer screens.
I was just beginning to use a computer at the time. Up until then, I wrote everything by hand. Suffice it to say—I had no idea how a screen would alter our world, and our perceptions of it. Let alone our understanding of our relationships with the world and others. Above all, I could not grasp how thoroughly and rapidly the notion of “reality as relative” would turn our computers into silos, hiving us off from each other.
In my research I learned about a new illness attributed to the “internet.” “Cyber sickness,” manifested in the body as nausea, dizziness, vertigo, and insomnia. (Obesity and ADD came later.) The mental and psychic troubles included: extreme anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and dissociation. I came to understand that the internet, contrary to its promises, gave us hyper-connectivity without agency.
“Here is the body, made of flesh and bone, blood and guts, sweat and tears. Not buttons, not wires. But where is the dignity to which this animal aspires?”
Flash forward a few decades and Western culture is experiencing rampant use of a drug called: the screen. Psychologists, parents, cultural critics, spiritual advisors, and spouses spend hours discussing concerns around healthy amounts of “screen time.”
“Screen time” starts early. I read that “experts suggest limiting non-educational screen time to under one hour a day for ages 2–5.” Two- to five-year-olds are hooked on their screens? I didn’t start using my opposable thumbs until I was ten! Those two-year-olds will not be self-policing. Who is going to watch the ponies now that they’ve already left the yard?
And so I give you: Top Ten Reasons For Walking Away From the Screen.
1. For most of us, movies were our gateway drug. The screen models behaviour. As a teen, I remember reading the words at the bottom of movie ads—“Warning: contains sex and violence.” I thought: “They should say, Promise: contains sex and violence.” Hollywood made sex violent and violence sexy; Mr. and Mrs. America became Mr. Violence and Mrs. Sexy.
I have an Oscar night fantasy. It involves actors, one after another, stepping up to the podium and announcing they will no longer portray gun-toting hotties in propaganda films. No more pumped-up, scowling, chest-baring, rationalizing loose cannons brandishing the kind of firearms accessorizing every ICE agent in Minnesota. And no more frightened citizens packing pistols as a solution to “taking on the system,” either.
Imagine an actor who can see beyond the myopic vision of a culture they participated in creating? A culture that shoots first and asks questions never.
2. The screen robs us of our own imaginations. We can turn off the screen and tell our own stories, and be a character in our own story. As Harold Johnson writes: “A victim is a character in someone else’s story.” Don’t be a victim.
3. The ubiquitous screen has dulled us, lulled us, made us feel helpless and hopeless. When the newscaster is about to show us a video of a citizen being shot 8–9–10 times, do we look away when she says: “These images may be disturbing to some?” There is no “safe word” when masochistically exposing ourselves to the sadism emitting from the screen. Nor is there a magic word for bringing back the capacity to still feel disturbed, concerned, tender. Many screens produce much numbness. If you want to preserve your remaining shred of human dignity, turn off the screen. Go outside.
4. Screens make reality seem relative. Once separated from reality, our experience is mediated by the screen. In the comfort and safety of our buildings, we become entertained by the darkest behaviours. Along with Trump, we watch Venezuela burn. “I watched it literally, like I was watching a TV show. And if you would have seen the speed, the violence. It was amazing.” If only we had his kind of access to the “amazing” violence. Oh well—pass the popcorn.
5. Then there’s the phone screen. How many natural vistas have we missed, sitting in the back seat, playing video games? How creepy is the energy a man gives off while looking at porn on his phone, held under the restaurant table, while mom tries to keep a conversation going with the children, pretending she doesn’t know what he’s looking at—knowing she’s lost him to the biggest addiction the screen ever enabled. As a new CBC reporter, I was chilled by a trade magazine columnist proclaiming the new opportunities that came with the invention of the cell phone: “Now you can watch your favourite porn at the family picnic,” he wrote.
6. Screen time is what people like Trump live for. They scrounge around at the bottom of the barrel for attention-grabbing trash talk. Like we would for a toddler or a teen, we need to take away his screen time. To reporters: quit scurrying after him for a quote that won’t make sense, or give clarity, or show any semblance of connection to the truth. Yes, I know: the longer the rant, the easier it is to get a jaw-droppingly cruel or bombastic clip. Why, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel—there are so many choices! Until: who cares if it’s true? Lies sell even better.
7. Your screen decides for you. It lines up your “choices,” so you don’t have to.
8. The screen ignores the wild world just outside your door. Encountering the Great Outdoors is still the best response to the damage done by the screen. Reject the algorithms and get back your own—and the earth’s—bodily rhythm.
9. The screen ignores your soul because it isn’t aware souls exist.
10. The screen ignores other souls, as well. We get our souls back by greeting and meeting others, soul-to-soul—through genuine and gentle encounters with ourselves and with each other. We start by shaking hands (or paws), or holding hands. And, in my case, writing everything by hand, again.