Opening tmatt's screen-culture guilt file
What trends are linked to screen culture? What trends are NOT linked to screen culture these days?
So many books to read. So many books that I need to read.
I am not complaining. I am constantly gathering books for the reading list that I want to use if and when my “Exegete the Culture” seminar returns during the year ahead. The plan is to work with Saint Constantine College, the University of St. Thomas and, hopefully, other partners in Houston. We hope the class offers some online options.
The “Exegete” class (ditto with the Rational Sheep project) will deal with all kinds of “signals” from news and entertainment. But the foundation for the syllabus will be the digital frame that surrounds all of these signals — the crisis of addiction and health care linked to screens culture.
Consider the TEDxReno talk that is embedded at the top of this post, a short, powerful message from Gaia Bernstein, a law professor who is co-director of the Institute for Privacy Protection at the Seton Hall University School of Law. She is also the author of “Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies.”
Bernstein has spent years attempting to raise awareness of screen-culture issues and, sadly, reached the conclusion that, “Awareness was not making a difference.”
Make sure that you make it to the dramatic story about the child who, when denied his iPad on a family road trip, climbed into the car’s front seat and began fighting his mother to reclaim his screen, knocking his father’s hands off the wheel and nearly causing a terrible wreck. When sharing this story, Bernstein said, the mother blamed herself and blamed her son. She never mentioned the Powers That Be in Big Tech.
Speaking as a law professor who focuses on technology, Bernstein stressed that the safety measures tech professionals build into hand-held devices are not designed to help parents — they are designed to legally “shift the responsibility from them to us. … We blame ourselves, we blame our partners, we blame our kids. … Instead of guilty, we should be angry.”
The bottom line: Big Tech czars have created an environment is which it is impossible for parents to be parents. As for children, she said: “Tech companies need them alive for as long as possible so they can collect their data and then they need them there so they can target ads at them. Their revenues depend on this.”
There’s more, of course. Please spend a little bit of time watching this — especially if you are a parent, pastor, teacher, counselor or someone else in a position to pass the information along to others.
Now, let’s see, what else is in my screen-culture “guilt” file at the moment? The question today is not, “What lifestyle issues are linked to digital screens?” The big question is this: What lifestyle issues are NOT linked, in some way, to digital screens?” Here are a few from the past week or two, some of which may inspire sad laughs.
* Some readers may find this a reach, but I really wonder the degree to which this headline is linked to young-ish women striving to present an aggressive, celebratory image on Instagram and other social media. Here’s that post by Kat Rosenfield:
This passage jumped out at me:
This is how we get the memoirs, the movies, the one-time wedding band melted down and made new, engraved with the word badass. Per the jeweler who created the ring, this was “how the client felt after the transformation,” which is the first time I’ve seen this word used as a synonym for divorce.
I also wonder: Did the divorcée feel this? Or is it how she wished she felt, a sort of “dress for the job you want” approach, except in place of career aspirations, emotional ones?
* Well, this SageOnTheStage thread on X is depressing. The subject is out-of-control discipline issues in schools. It starts with this:
What happens when you don't suspend a student. A case study. About 15/16 months ago. A student is chronically disruptive, and is intentionally miserable to his teacher. The teacher is at her wits end, and meetings are held to figure it all out. Here's what happened.
Readers need to know that — amazingly enough — this case study comes from a school that has already made efforts to attempt to control smartphones in its classrooms. What’s the issue? Way down in the thread there is this:
[The problem student] has no intention of behaving in the classroom either. While many students are content to play quietly on their phones all period, he doesn't use ear pods and plays music and tik toks for all to hear, he walks around the room and even out of the room as often as he wants.
Wait, students playing on their phones?
Oh, they are totally banned from the classroom. There just aren’t any consequences for not following the ban. [Teachers] aren't going to touch the phone or give a suspension for cell phone use. It becomes much easier to let the kid quietly be on his phone than to try and get it put away.
* This may be one of those “laugh to keep from crying” headlines, but I think not:
Report: Pedestrian deaths reached their highest level in 40 years
There was a 75% increase between 2010 and 2022; here's who's most at risk
There is no mention of the whole texting-while-walking (or driving) phenomenon. But click into the story and look at the picture. Once again, is this one of those situations in which the tech issues drift through the whole discussion like acidic fog?
* On X, the omnipresent Jonathan Haidt notes: “Humanity is getting more short-sighted. Literally. A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe, now that the phone-based childhood keeps kids indoors, looking at screens up close.”
Technology shapes culture? How about, technology literally shapes bodies bodies (include minds)? Uh, and speaking of guilt.
* Here is that word “awareness” again. I think I will let this double-decker Suzy Weiss headline speak for itself:
What If Raising Awareness Doesn’t Help?
The TikTokers with tics, influencers selling EpiPens, an 8-year-old trying new foods. Awareness has become a kind of currency, but no one knows how to spend it.
* Let’s end with this life-and-death case study. Again, I will admit that there is no mention of social media in this Dutch news story (which I have been following for several months).
What I am asking (over and over) is this: Is this lifestyle (maybe death-style) trend possible without the hovering cloud of influencers and supporters on social media? That headline:
Why has support for euthanasia, even in mental-health cases, soared in the past, oh, 15 years or so? Read this carefully:
The news has resonated with people who have experienced struggles similar to Zoraya’s. “This broke a part of me,” said one person on Reddit, who often posts about having suicidal thoughts. “What if getting better is not possible. What if I should just die today?”
Another poster wrote: “this has left me terrified cuz I’m autistic myself and I’m scared. . . my brain is thinking, ‘is it going to be a guaranteed ending for me and other autistic women? I don’t want that, though! I like my life. . . this is scary!’ ”
The fact is an increasing number of people suffering from mental illness in the Netherlands are choosing to end their lives. Zoraya is right that the assisted dying law has been around for years, but even as recently as 2010, there were only two recorded cases of medically assisted suicide that involved psychiatric suffering. Last year, there were 138.
Sigh. So the tmatt “guilt folder” is a little bit thinner after this post. I apologize if this Rational Sheep exercise is rather depressing. I will continue to point readers toward positive, helpful information on these trends, as well.
Nevertheless, the problem is that these headlines will just keep coming. The guilt file is going to fill up, once again.
Thus, I will keep asking: At some point, will the leaders of our seminaries, denominational agencies and other religious institutions attempt to help parents, pastors, teachers, counselors and others address these realities?
I will insist, again: Lives are at stake. Souls, too.