Why screen overuse isn’t the actual problem, but a symptom.
On helpful new perspectives
It’s tempting to fall into self-judgement about our screen use. These glowing rectangles aren’t keeping us hostage; they can’t be that powerful!!!
Why am I doing this again at 3 a.m.? ……………………..
Why am I sitting here during precious family time, secretly negotiating an urge to (insert preferred screen activity)?
Why did I just skip the gym to spend 4 hours watching Youtube…...
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably got your variation on the story.
What if screen overuse isn’t just a problem in and of itself? Suppose we view it outside of being a personal failing or an unhelpful habit. What if this behaviour is protective, and what if that need to protect is symptomatic of something much deeper? What does that reveal and how can that help us set our course towards screen liberation?
It’s essential to take a systems view of the issues at hand. Our relationships with our devices sit within a much larger, ongoing multitude of stories that colour our existence. In the West, we are at the bleeding edge of the culture born of capitalism. We are socialised into individualism at a young age, and many of the social structures that family, community, and neighbours previously provided have become transactional networks. Our day-to-day lives are often devoid of relationships with the seasons and sensations of nature.
In the West, our price for material abundance and endless opportunity is low-grade stress as a baseline. Whether it’s poverty, loneliness, uncertainty on one side or competition, expectations, or overstimulation on the other, our nervous system is constantly seeking ways to regulate itself and soothe the body and mind.
When you see it through this lens, screen overuse stops looking like a personal failure and starts to make perfect sense as a natural response to a challenging environment.
This isn’t just theory for me. It played out in my own life, long before I had the language to understand it.
Screens’ ability to absorb my attention, turbo-charge my curiosity, and dull challenging emotions became central to my self-regulation. I didn’t have the personal or social resources to fully grasp the challenges I was dealing with at the time. I didn’t realise the extent of the problem nor the solution that I had inadvertently developed. So, the easiest vehicle at hand was the object that offered the most immediate relief.
This narrative of guilt-shaming and self-blame emerged when I attempted to change. When results didn’t come quickly and consistently, the inner critic would really kick off. My approaches and failures constantly exposed, in my mind, personal flaws rather than a design flaw in the system or my approach to it.
My journey towards screen liberation began when I fully realized that my screen soothing behaviours were responses to stress, loneliness, overstimulation, and disconnection, not just causes of them. Things became easier when I stopped judging myself and embraced mistakes and setbacks as discoveries within myself.
This recognition needed baking in. It’s frustrating how self-blame and shame often filter back into the mix if we don’t consistently remind ourselves. When you live in a world where the dominant story is hard work, discipline, and willpower, labelling yourself as having anything other than that is automatically shaming.
The story that helped me was recognizing that my screen use was a much wiser and kinder part of myself in its way of looking after me. Through mindfulness practices, large, mostly random nature walks, and journalling, I began to tune in to the lack of self-worth and anxiety that was subtly permeating my life and influencing my screen-based coping strategies.
Gradualy the internal story changed, gradually, from
Why do I keep on doing this! Why am I so undisciplined! I’ll never stop doing this, I’m doomed.
To ‘Ah this again,
What’s this behavior trying to protect me from?
What’s a better way of thinking about this?
What if I don’t judge myself for what I’m doing.
Once you open up space for self-compassion, rather than self-judgment a new game can emerge. That game started with experimenting with and baking in tiny habits and has grown into a much a wider set of lifestyle experiments and goals.
BJ Fogg, the grandfather of behaviour design, says that three things will create lasting change: having an epiphany, changing our environment, and changing our habits in a tiny way. This has been my experience and approach in parallel: a series of helpful and progressive epiphanies, making brave decisions about my environment, and changing my behaviours through self-compassionate experiments. This self-reinforcing trinity has led me to overhaul my relationship with screens radically.
When we frame screen overuse as a symptom rather than the core problem, we give ourselves the gift of curiosity and self-kindness, and the game can begin.
From that place, the question shifts from “How do I stop?” to a calm, knowing, prepared, ‘How do I begin?’
That question has no one-size-fits-all answer but in asking it, we step onto a path that leads towards screen liberation and back into real presence, connection to self and others, and a fantastic life.
If your looking to improve your digital wellness
I'm excited to announce my first offering through Screen Liberation. Here, I will condense many of the learnings and techniques that I have acquired and still use on the road to screen liberation.
So are you tired of feeling like your screens run your life?
I’ve been there, the endless scrolling, the fractured attention, the weird numbness that creeps into one’s life.
Starting May 22nd, I’m co-facilitating Disconnect to Reconnect: An Introduction to Screen Liberation — a 4-week journey for those ready to:
Regain control of their attention
Develop conscious digital practises at home & work
Reconnect with creativity and their soul path
Align technology with their values, presence, and purpose
Through soulful inquiry, sustainable habits, and a guided digital detox, we’ll help you start the journey to a new relationship with screens,
If you’ve felt the pull to reevaluate your relationship with screens and reconnect with yourself (and life), this is for you.
👉 https://lnkd.in/dP-_KwZa further information available