Revenge of the Screen Zombies
untether from your phone and live
We have become a society of screen zombies, feasting on content instead of brains.
Our devices bring the world to our fingertips. Never before have we had such free access to information. This connectivity is a wonder - our capacity to learn and grow via the knowledge available online is unparalleled throughout human history. Content comes at us via newsletters, apps, podcasts, YouTube, social media, audiobooks, e-books, and more. The stream of things to read, watch or listen to flows constantly.
Maybe we use content as a pacifier to distract ourselves from our own thoughts. Or in an attempt to appease our loneliness. Or to aid our procrastination habit.
Whatever the cause, we spend more time staring into our phones every day than doing just about anything. We struggle to recognize when to take a break, because we’ve been conditioned to believe that more is better.
It takes a conscious, and frankly, valiant effort for us to stop the influx and put the phone down to do something else. Anything else.
There is always more edutainment, newstainment, and whatever-tainment to passively consume. This inundation has thrown us out of balance. It’s up to us to have the self-discipline to draw a line and say enough. And it’s up to us to muster the motivation to do the things we actually want to do in this life.
How we spend our days is, after all, how we spend our life.
We will never stop consuming altogether - we just have to do so within our self-imposed limits, instead of gobbling up what we’re being force-fed. We still have autonomy, choice and free will. Let’s exercise it.
We can learn how to:
enforce a time limit
carefully curate what’s incoming
time-block so we interrupt the screen-based activities with something that grounds us back into our body, activates our spiritual side, or fires up our artistic soul
practice having a whole day where we don’t consume any content at all
Of the podcasts, videos, books, newsletters, etc., that you consumed this week, how many stand out? Did you take any concepts and apply them to your life? If it’s not adding value, is there something else you would rather do with your time?
It takes effort to effectively filter the noise and try to focus on the select few sources that are worthwhile. Time is our only non-renewable resource - we must endeavour to spend it wisely.
What in the world did we do before we were tethered to our phones? It seems like the distant past, so far back we can barely fathom that such a mythical time ever existed, but it was only 15 years ago.
At our core, we are creative beings. The desire to express our essence is embedded in all of us, but it has been stifled by everything coming at us in this digital society. Until we can stop (or at least slow) the onslaught, our creative tendencies will be smothered.
How do we strike a balance? If you are a millennial or older, think back to what you did before life revolved around your phone. You had hobbies, played sports or went to the gym, did things with your friends, worked on creative projects. Perhaps you are one of the lucky few who never lost your connection to these things. But if you’re like so many of us, we no longer do what used to light us up, in real life.
What if we put the phones down for an evening or a Saturday (okay, half a Saturday) and got back in touch with what our souls are pleading for?
There is no limit to the skills and talents we can choose to develop - expressing your creativity can take infinite forms. Here are just a few examples to whet your appetite:
perfect your backstroke
practice calligraphy
throw pots
master oil painting
build a Lego castle
bake bread
write poetry
play an instrument
converse in a new language
stack rocks
grow a veggie patch
Channel your creativity in multiple realms. Poke around and experiment. Find out what you love to make and do more of that. Slowly chip away at the time you spend consuming and replace it with creating. Even ten minutes a day is a wonderful beginning. Build on the small wins.
Whatever we give time and attention to will grow, so we must choose to water the right seeds.
We don’t want to live the virtual life of insatiable screen zombies. We want to live in the real world, make and share things, keep experimenting, and grow into who we’re meant to be: creators, not consumers.
What role does creativity play in your life?
Are you frustrated with the amount of time you spend on your device?
What is one thing you want to replace screen time with this week?
This has become a real issue for me as well. I’ve gotten rid of all social media except Notes, but still need to do better. My creativity is writing, so I need to power through to not flipping over to browser etc. when creative writing.
Thank you, Amy, for that great reminder. As I was born in the 70’s, I’ve lived most of my life without a smart phone and it is not a problem for me to shut mine off regularly, especially when I write my posts and books. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed that one of the things people don’t do anymore is get bored for, as soon as they have a minute to do « nothing » ahead of them, they pull out their screens, and it’s a catastrophe for creativity is linked to boredom, that « empty » moment when you ask yourself « OK, what’s next? » or when you mind wanders and hits a new idea.
As I wrote in one of my websites a few weeks ago, as absurd as this example is meant to sound, if Thomas Edison had spent his days scrolling on a screen rather than searching for an idea to create the electric bulb, we would all still be lighting our homes with candles! Lots of love.