525,600 minutes (of screen time)

Every week on Sunday morning, when my parents wish I were at church, my phone sends me a weekly report of how many hours (hourS?) per day (hours per day??) that I have spent gazing upon its soft glow. I can hear my dad: “Too bad you didn’t have time to go to church this week. Looks like you were very busy, though, staring at your phone. Maybe you’ll have some free time in the coming week for the Lord.” (My dad's not born again, but in retrospect he would likely have preferred a sports car than pay for my Catholic school tuition.)
The all-in screen time per day, I will argue, is misleading. Sure, a hefty chunk of that is life-wasting boredom scrolling. But an hour is helping my mom launch Zoom! Some of it is double-checking math that I should be able to do in my head. At least 18 minutes is spent asking google where I can find tacos near me and another two taking photos of them 🌮🌮.
No other bad habit has the gall to send me a read out of the time I’ve wasted on it. But the phones have won, have they not? They’ve rather easily taken control of our lives, and here they are to rub our faces in their dominance. No doubt the weekly screen time report is tech's way of washing its hands. "I tried to warn you!" Something only a drug dealer as twisted as Purdue Pharma or Big Tobacco might weakly argue, after pumping out decades of addictive chemicals. The plot twist of phones and socials being that we are making the content we are addicted to. Farming our own deadly drug. On my deathbed, a lifetime report will scroll across my failing monitors: "5 years, 4 months, 6 days, 22 minutes total time on Instagram." Gross!
If we’re old enough (elder millennial+), we have first hand memories of what life was like when “phone” was a stationary object of communication. As communal as the family pet. We made plans for when a call would happen. "Ryan Barbour is calling me tonight at 9:00!" We read the newspaper once in the morning and perhaps watched updates unfold on television at night. Do I wish we were back there in face-melting 24/7 presence with one another? Sure! It was all we knew! Escape meant putting on weak Sony headphones or hiding out in the bathroom while ignoring urgent knocks on the door. It wasn’t staring at your screen while your mother/friend/lover was talking directly at your face. The lack of eye contact in today’s young society is alarming.
What I really want is to kick the habit now, in present time, with the temptation of perpetually spacing out right at my fingertips. I want the phone of today to tell me on Sunday mornings: “Your life was actually so busy and engaging this week. I was wondering where you were!” Oh, I hadn't noticed.
On this hallowed day of Freedom From TikTok, undoubtedly unbanned by the time you read this, "I want to break free." (-Freddy Mercury) Perhaps my disgust from watching tech giants cow-tow at the inauguration will be motivation to log off for a couple of days. Perhaps I can grey scale and Do Not Disturb and add timers to limit screen time, like my own babysitter. Maybe I will buy it a little baby lite phone that only does calls and slow, painstaking texts. Perhaps though what I really need, and we all do, is to simply get back involved with real life.
Sorry I missed your call. I was busy living.
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