My average daily screen-time is creeping up, week on week. There’s me nagging the boys in a post-Adolescence panic, and all the while my own screen addiction has oh-so-quietly unfurled its wicked tendrils and wrapped them around me.
I’ve just checked again and my daily average for last week, I am embarrassed to say, was three hours and fifty minutes. What am I even doing for that time?! I have set fifteen minute limits – which I actually keep to – on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook (yes, Facebook), my main time-wasters. That’s forty-five minutes – what am doing for the other three hours? Lets say I sleep for eight hours (wishful thinking, but we’ll stick to it for argument’s sake), that means I am awake for sixteen hours (Maths A’Level everyone). I am on my phone for 25% of my waking time? That can’t be right!
I do my online banking on my laptop, and my grocery shopping . I do some shopping on my phone, but anything admin-y is on my laptop, including all my writing. How am I filling the rest of that time? I don’t think my total even includes the podcasts I listen to (I think the screen has to be awake for it to count). Or my sixty minute bedtime meditation. I say sixty minutes, I only hear the first five minutes and then I’m asleep. For the rest of it she could be reading the back of a cereal box for all I know.
And the bit I can’t get my head round is this: it’s just a waste of time. I’m sure I’m looking things up, there’s some useful stuff in there. But all the things I could be doing if I wasn’t scrolling on my phone! All the things I say I haven’t got time to do: finishing my novel, doing regular strength training, drawing.
The reason I started to think about this is that Dylan came up with an idea for us as a family (including my sister and nephew) to do an art challenge. For us all to draw a version of the same picture, using whatever medium we want. Rules were: same picture, any medium, one hour. And I just spent the most glorious hour doing a drawing of my sister’s cat. I loved it and felt amazing afterwards. I felt content, calm and happy. Why do I not want to do more art? Why does screen-time pull me in so easily? It doesn’t make me feel as good! I don’t know the science behind it, dopamine hits blah blah blah, but why can’t I remember the feeling I get after I’ve been creative?
I need to do something, something has to change. After J’s death I was determined I would live life to its full. I was finally going to do all the things I hadn’t got round to doing yet – too busy being a mum, working, being in a relationship.
Some good must come of this. I can’t make big decisions right now, but I need to decide what is important in my life and make sure I don’t forget that life is short. I wrote that in the first week after he died. And now I’m on my own, it’s the perfect time to do it all, be the version of me I’ve always wanted to be (that sounds cheesy, but you know what I mean). And what am I doing? I’m wasting it on my stupid phone, while telling my kids to get off their stupid phones.
Enough, phone. I will beat you. I don’t know how, but I will. This is my accountability to say – do more writing, do more art, do less scrolling. Not for anyone else, but for me. I beat the habit/addiction of alcohol, surely I can do this? More art, less screen-time! Watch this space.
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