Tuning out of our busy digital world
By MADISON SEEMAN— meseeman@ucdavis.edu
We live in an age where convenience is so abundant that we’re practically drowning in it. It’s an extra burden off our shoulders; the shifting goal post at the end of progress. It’s in the endless stream of instant gratification — so instant it’s instinct. It’s beautiful, addictive and largely responsible for the slow rot of society — but you’ve heard all that before.
To put a fine point on a dull subject: Screens are rotting your brain and we’re all getting progressively dumber. We’re doomed — we get it! It’s so everpresent that even an earnest reminder is a cliche.
We all know modern responsibilities demand that you give into the digital impulse: You need your phone and you’re not going to stop using it. Who could even think of asking you to?
But, for those of us even passively concerned about the way digital players compete for every inch of our lives, I propose that you introduce a little bit of playful inconvenience.
Okay yes, I can see how the idea of making things harder on yourself seems like bad advice — maybe it is. But maybe, regulating your emotions with a steady stream of high-resolution highs and lows (doom scrolling) is worse.
I’m talking about boring yourself on purpose. Not just in class (that’s too easy) but try a new location (maybe even touch grass) and immerse yourself in a whole bunch of nothing. True boredom is a skill, and in the use-it-or-lose-it environment of the brain, it’s becoming increasingly rare.
Think of movies or music videos where the main character spends a few dramatic moments gazing longingly out the rain-speckled window in the backseat of a taxi; the moment isn’t just made meaningful by clever composition and fancy lighting — it’s a moment full of space, something you can fill with a memory, an introspective look at your childhood friendships or a concept for a space-cowboy sitcom. Emotion, reflection, imagination.
At the risk of sounding like my grandpa, when you spend all that time on your phone, you’re filling up that space with chatter — an alarmingly rapid succession of joy and stress or an empty idle searching. Maybe you can learn about Kim Kardashian’s new line of Skim’s “Bush Thongs” the second they hit the market, but when a long train of tidbits designed to compete for your attention fill all of those little moments, we start to lose something subtly vital: little opportunities for development and growth that are hidden in the quiet spaces of your morning bus ride.
No, you don’t need to live your life according to what looks nice in a movie shot, but there’s something potentially dangerous in filling every waiting moment and giving in to the billions of sources competing for your attention from inside the handheld device you use constantly.
Get bored on the bus, in a waiting room or smack dab in the middle of the Memorial Union. If you’re always tuning out life’s liminal spaces with a little noise-cancelling and Sabrina Carpenter, how are you supposed to eavesdrop on the rich lives of all the little strange characters around you? Look up and tune in — you never know who you might meet; a potential lover, a lifelong friend or the stranger who tells you you’re not getting into heaven because you won’t send her money on Cash App: sometimes you have to do it for the plot.
Yesterday, I stood in a 10-minute line straight out of a cartoon in the New Yorker: about 30 college students with identical tech-neck posture, slowly shuffling forward, looking at — you guessed it — their phones. Don’t get me wrong, I checked my phone once or twice (or 10 times), but at this point we’re starting to look like parodies of our own generation.
What happened to filling that time with dreams of a domestic future with your Trader Joe’s cashier, awkward and slightly amusing small talk with a stranger or a game-changing revelation about your relationship with shame? At this point it takes an active effort not to distract yourself, but we’ve reached a point where that effort is necessary.
We’re all at least a little tired (if not bone-achingly exhausted) balancing commitments and trying to maximize the college experience in every way that we can. Maybe a little intentional inconvenience is a lot to ask, but it might just be exactly what we need.
Written by: Madison Seeman — meseeman@ucdavis.edu
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual columnists belong to the columnists alone and do not necessarily indicate the views and opinions held by The California Aggie.
