Ways to avoid screens:
- Monopoly
- Stay sober (to ward off drunken YouTube-athons)
- Watch your cat try to hunt birds from the other side of the windowpane
- Write down Facebook status updates in your journal
- Go to bed at 9 o’clock
- Avoid Sundays altogether
- Quit caring what’s on the screens
I tried all of these tactics and failed at a few (ahem, staying sober). But, save for a few slips, I went screen free for the entire month of January. No texts, no Internet, no TV.
The results:
For the most part, I still feel as if I have an endless to-do list. The difference is, during my screen free month, I never felt like I was wasting time so I never felt guilty about it. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t always working on the list. I read five or six books, spent lots of time chatting about nothing with friends, and writing gobbelty-gook that will never turn into any finished product. But I never looked up from any of that and thought, “Oh, @#&$, it’s been two hours. What was I doing?” That felt really nice.
I sent out handwritten notes to friends and received some back in return. Though I backslid on my texting, I did manage to get some personal phone calls in, in cases where I normally would have texted. And though I’m not a terribly secretive or shy soul, I very much enjoyed sharing private moments with those people that weren’t broadcast on their wall or commented on by other friends. Another nice feeling.
There were small relapses, but also small epiphanies. I found two things out, which are maybe just one thing, realized at two different times. First, when faced with social networks, I will say things more often than I have something to say. Second, I was looking a lot more than I was doing. Not in the “I’ve decided to ban technology and I’m going to take a road trip by foot across the country” kind of way (which was, for a moment, a plan) but in the “Often, I would rather just do something to do it and be thinking about taking pictures or writing about it” way, or the “I’ve created an entire world of ideas (and ideals) on Pinterest and never even made one of the recipes I’ve pinned” kind of way. Throughout the month, I was overcome with a strong desire to stop summarizing and planning my life online and start living it more. And I think this experiment has helped me walk away with a more healthy ratio of screen time to life time.
One more epiphany: I discovered that, for me, it would be way harder to live without TV than without the Internet. I know exactly how lame that sounds, but it’s true. I didn’t miss social networks or my favorite blogs a bit. I got my news from the radio, my music from my record player, my communication through personal contact, letters, phone calls. I’m perfectly fine living in the significantly smaller world that no Internet provides. But around day 19, I found myself planning a schedule of what TV and movies I would binge on in February. It was Gilmore Girls, mostly. It’s sort of pitiful that I would choose episodes of Roseanne or Painting with Bob Ross over the entire World Wide Web if I was stranded on a desert island, but I’ve come to accept it.
I’m back on screens now, but my month off helped me get a balance back to my daily life. If I’ve come to any conclusion, it’s that the screens around us should give more than they get. For me, that means walking away when I’ve got what I need and not sticking around and falling down the Internet/television rabbit hole.
What’s the right screen balance for you?
Other techie TML articles:
Screen Free for January (the precursor to this article)
