Screen Time
Cause the technology is just gonna get better and better and it's gonna get easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable to sit alone with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us but want our money and that's fine in low doses but if it's the basic main staple of your diet you're gonna die. - David Foster Wallace
I don't stress over my screen time. About television, I don't stress at all. I watch TV to have something to do with my wife. When she isn't here, I don't turn the thing on. Our routine involves an hour a day watching a show together with longer viewing times occasionally if we opt for a movie or if a real gem of a show prompts us to double up on episodes. We never, ever, ever have a television on if we aren't watching it, something I have been unable to tolerate my entire life. I'm not placing a value judgment on people who use their TVs for background noise. I'm just saying that it would put me in the insane asylum to have that kind of distraction on around me.
When it comes to computers, I don't stress either. I have a daily checklist of personal things to accomplish online that involve consuming information from various blogs and news sources and creating entries for my various indy web endeavors. None of it really stresses me and I try to accomplish my goals without being too rigid. I like to get to inbox zero on my email accounts, but it doesn't always happen. I never reach the bottom of my RSS pile because you people write too damn much (just kidding). Of all the social media sites I monitor, only two reach a level of importance, my family feed on Facebook, which I monitor for news and fresh pictures of my grandchildren. The other feed that I try to stay 100% caught up on is a small list of my favorite Mastodon accounts. Other than that, I just scroll when I have some time and I don't stress over what I miss.
I happen to consider the people that I correspond with online as just that, people, real tangible human beings to whom obligations I make are important and whose feelings I care about. I've been really touched when folks have reached out to me over issues with my aging dad and stepmother and over my own health. I don't spend much time discussing problematic political stuff with people who hold different viewpoints like I once did online, pretty much because these days there is just not-crazy and crazy when it comes to politics. Having worked around the incarcerated mentally ill for a time, I don't have any interest in talking to crazy people anymore. It's not for me.
I'm also not a believer in making up some arbitrary time limit for myself so that it becomes "time to get off the computer." I'm almost 60 and I am pretty much inclined to do whatever in the hell it is I want to do and if that involves being behind a keyboard, so be it. Yes, I could stand to get some more exercise but I'm not blaming my sloth on my computer usage or watching TV or sleeping or anything else. It's just a matter of making it a priority and finding balance, something I understand to be part of the general human condition since time began and not a result of the information age.
In closing, I love the quote from David Foster Wallace that I used as a lead on this post. I have shared it many times. I still believe in its inner truth as it applies to algorithmically driven social media and meaningless doom scrolling. I don't subscribe to it as a blanket condemnation of the entire medium, however.