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Creaturely Wisdom's avatar

As a Gen-Zer who spent most of my high school and college years using technology as an escape from familial dysfunction and undiagnosed chronic health issues (as a means of dissociation, essentially), when I began living alone for the first time two things became immediately apparent to me:

1. I had no basic skills at all. I did not know how to budget, how to grocery shop, how to cook, how to clean, how insurance worked, how to care for my car, how to plan my time - etc. I had not yet had a full time job or serious financial responsibility.

2. I was a very narrow sliver of a human. All of my knowledge and experience was either from a liberal arts education which I barely made it through (but which benefitted me greatly!) and the internet.

When I began dating a wonderful, well-rounded man my senior year of college, I realized the interior and technical (in the sense of "techne" or "skill") poverty that I possessed. He had played sports, was very fit, knew how to cook, knew how to entertain, knew how to pour drinks, had been paying his way through college, had had at least five different jobs which taught him different people skills, money skills, etc. He had a wealth of experience to talk about, and his athleticism and knowledge of the world and people rendered him comfortable in just about any situation.

Meanwhile, I felt like I was just waking up, and to a world which I was woefully unprepared to live in. Everything was new, difficult, and alienating: putting together outfits, cooking meals, making meaningful conversation, dealing with my health issues - and even thinking about exercising, trying to entertain people, trying to navigate social dynamics -- nearly every basic human thing outside of reading, praying, and scrolling online felt herculean. Being with him, I felt ashamed - I saw myself as a shell of a human being, underdeveloped in almost every way. My time spent online had stunted me. We had spent the past eight years of our lives very, very differently, and it showed.

I've known for ages that screens are my way of coping with familial pressure and dysfunction (my family, ironically enough, attempted to be very strict with screens, but largely failed), and for nearly 10 years I have tried to reduce their presence in my life.

Only after achieving some degree of peace in my "analog life" (slowly learning how to do the basic human things such that I no longer need to escape from ordinary life) have I been able to make meaningful reductions in my screentime.

And now, I am exactly where you describe - ready to fill my life with good and beautiful things (books, audiobooks, walks, working out, musical instruments, writing, time with friends), but I am also working a full time job with an 1+ hour commute each way. My time is so limited, and I am still just beginning to be able to budget, cook - take care of those necessary things.

I just came from mass where the homilist wisely advised us all to remember that God comes not to an alternate, imagined version of us or of our lives, but to us in our brokenness and messiness, really and truly - he comes to us as we really are. So while wishful thinking can be damaging, I can honestly say: I wish my most formative years as a young person had been filled not by the internet and all those other means of escape I found and clung to, but by real, actual, meaningful things that would have gradually prepared me to live a full and beautiful life during a stage of life when I actually had the time and the leisure to discover and enjoy them more fully.

I am so thankful for where I am now, but unlike you, I do not remember a time before the internet or before my life was nearly consumed by it.

I am only just now really getting free, and it is in the way you describe - I am falling in love with the real, and permanence and presence is gradually displacing the ephemeral and dissociative illusion in which I feel I lost myself for so long.

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Tran Hung Dao's avatar

One thing I've noticed in my own screen use, and in conversations with other dads about their screen use, is that screens are an easy choice because they are so flexible about time usage making them very amendable to constant interruptions. Which, at least with small kids in the mix, are just part of life.

Whenever I've tried reading a book or practicing a hobby around my 4 year old twins I just end up extremely frustrated because I'm generally not allowed to focus for more than 2-3 minutes. (And they usually play independently pretty well but there's always "daddy look look" or "where are my scissors?" or "can you cut this tricky part?") You never reach that "flow state". Meanwhile, the kids don't ACTUALLY take my full attention anymore.

I've tried audiobooks -- and fumbling for the pause constantly when kids run up and suddenly start talking. I've tried screen free mindfulness and being in the moment -- but I don't need 4+ hours of that every single day.

I think this is the biggest challenge for going screen free, figuring out how to fill our shattered attention with something that ISN'T screens.

Yes, things are better when I organise an outing and I've taken the kids to the beach or a (short) hike or a museum. But that's not exactly scalable -- most people aren't going to have the time/money/energy to do things like that 5+ days a week.

Maybe things change once kids are in school full time? And parents just need to suck it up for those five years? Maybe helping break screen addiction is another small reason for universal preschool?

Just some rambling thoughts from a stay at home dad who thinks about this stuff a lot and struggles with it

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