"However little television you watch, watch less."
- David McCullough
Those words from historian and author David McCullough (I’m re-reading his brilliant “1776” during this America250 year), while aimed at television, also certainly apply to all the entertainments and distractions on the little screens we carry around with us.
We quaintly still call them phones, but we rarely make calls on them. What we do is stare into them, like an endlessly alluring abyss.
So last weekend, inspired by the good folks of the Lewis County Thriving Generation and their Device-Free Weekend, I decided to look away.
It was hard at first. The habits run deep. Like old-fashioned covered wagons leaving deep ruts in the soil, the urge to fill up empty moments with our devices is strong.
I left my phone in its kitchen charging station, still using it occasionally as an actual communications device and camera. But social media, podcasts and that kind of thing were out.
What filled its place?
People, paper and peacefulness.
Flowers and dirty hands as we planted them.
I read more books and magazines. I dug out an old journal (a pre-iPad tablet, you might say) and wrote in it.
I was a little more tuned in to the people around me.
Speaking of tunes, I got down my guitar and taught myself some new chords, experimenting with moving open chord shapes further up the guitar neck. On a normal weekend I would have looked them up online, tried a few, and forgotten them. But the act of forcing myself to figure them out made them much more real to me. I discovered them for myself. As modest as my musical skills remain, they are stronger than they were. I claimed new mental landscape by climbing it, rock by rock.
I’ve heard it said that our smartphones have cost us our boredom. At first, that sounds great. Who wants to be bored? But being bored is when thoughts come. That’s the time for reflection, for consideration, for noticing what’s around us, for saying hello to people in the line at the supermarket, for forcing our brains to discover what’s interesting, rather than passively accepting whatever the screen and its algorithms show us.
Screens and the internet have great value, of course. I’m typing this on a computer rather than a typewriter or longhand (although I am looking at paper notes from the last week and loving them.)
A former Centralian now living in New York emailed me about a recent column and teased me about the irony of lauding screen-free life when these columns are put online. There’s truth there, of course.
The bigger context is whether we can master the use of these devices and the Internet as tools, rather than being mastered by them.
One way I’ve been trying to do that this week has been to set a strict 15-minute time limit on my use of social media.
A smart way to use my smartphone is to keep open the countdown timer app, which I’ve been setting each day at 15:00. (Right now it’s at 13:18, down a few ticks from momentary forays to briefly check on social media). If something is important there, I’ll see it.
The last few days, I haven’t come close to using up those 15 minutes.
There is some value in keeping up with what’s out there in the virtual world, as long as it’s brief. That’s been the difficult part for me, and maybe for most of us. Setting a hard time limit has helped. And the benefit isn’t just a lot more time for real life — I’ve cut out a lot less stress. I’m surprised at how quickly I started feeling worry, anger and unhappiness as I scrolled. Each fresh item, most picked by the algorithm, seemed designed to force me to form an opinion on some new tempest in a teapost, to feel strongly about something transitory.
But hey, I’d say after a couple of scrolls, time’s a ticking. I only have a few minutes left for the day, so I’d better turn it off. That countdown timer has been a blessing.
So long, social media. Your time has come for today. Maybe I’ll visit you again a little more tomorrow ... if I can fit you in around my ongoing appointment with real life.
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Brian Mittge is a community enthusiast who has written for The Chronicle since 2000 as a reporter, editor and columnist. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
