A Master in the Making

Have you ever taken the time to sit down and think about what we can do to help ourselves better take control of our screen time? Whether your answer to the question I just asked was yes or no, I think we can all agree that any solution to this growing issue isn’t one that is exactly clear. While there may be smaller steps that we can take to help limit our screen time, there are still so many obstacles working against us, and we can’t come up with solutions if we aren’t able to notice why this is all so challenging in the first place.

I personally have come to recognize that this is a topic that cannot only be looked at from one perspective. It’s easy to quickly point fingers and blame ourselves for the excessive amounts of time we spend on the internet, and a lot of research has even shown that this can be seen as part of the problem. While reading Stolen Focus, Johann Hari speaks with Israeli tech designer Nir Eyal, who believes the solution for too much screen time revolves around the need to develop individual skills. In other words, it is up to ourselves to take control of our own addiction.

In some ways, I understand why Eyal has this stance on the subject, but I also feel a sense of hopelessness within this thought process. Eyal works closely with large tech companies that look to strengthen the connection people have with their phones. He sees in his job how these companies are finding techniques to add to our own addictions and understands that this is how these companies make their money. In the way that I see it, Eyal is stuck in between the two sides of the problem and has given up on finding changes if they aren’t the ones coming from ourselves. Later on in the book, Hari states that “you can try having self-control, but there are thousands of engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.” I think this directly explains Eyal’s perspective on what he believes is the answer, but if large tech companies are actively fighting against us, how can we possibly reduce screen time on our own?

Beyond the need to develop our own skills, another option provided within the book discusses the concept of banning surveillance capitalism. If you don’t know what this means, it essentially would mean that there would be no way that the internet could track us and sell our behaviors to companies. The idea is that once this ban is set into place, tech companies could then shift their focus to finding other ways to make income. This does seem like another good option, especially since we would have more control of how we choose to use our phones, but I’m not exactly sure how realistic this option is. We have always have had controversy over how much the Government should intervene when it comes to these types of things and the way things are currently ran often ends up allowing the larger companies to have the power. Maybe this is a direction we could consider further down the line, but I think people will need to really understand first just how much control technology holds over us.