The case for... Screen time

As a 40-year-old millennial, I’m part of the generation who grew up straddling the digital age. Many of my friends of the same age like to bemoan the changes that have happened across our lifetime – most especially the horrors of the smartphone revolution. They mostly project their neuroses onto others, especially children and teenagers, lamenting the vacant stares and gaping eyes of young relatives, and gnashing their teeth over time spent staring at screens.

I’m less convinced about the harms of screen time myself. Moderation is important, and there are obviously places where it’s inappropriate – while driving, sitting in class at school or, for God’s sake, in a cinema. The predation, cruelty and scamming of the online world should be thoughtfully considered, as should the motives and behaviour of the tech companies in charge of what gets put in front of us all day. But the unparallelled benefits our many screens have given us seem so priced-in I feel like we’ve forgotten to celebrate them. The endless, frictionless discovery of the people, places and art that change our lives. The ability to maintain close and meaningful relationships with friends and relatives 10,000 miles away. To have a resource in your pocket, unimaginable even two decades ago, of every fact, thought, poem, song or film ever recorded.

Very little longitudinal research into the phenomenon points toward real, lasting harm from smartphone usage, even among children and teens, though this hasn’t deterred a booming market of tech-scolds, assaulting us with the news that we’re becoming, and raising, a nation of braindead, tech-addicted morons. The sight of them pontificating on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube, hectoring me about my screen use, is just about the only thing that makes me want to put my phone down at all.