very curious what's an appropriate level of screen time to have
i dont want to spend my whole life watching tiktoks or something. i want to spend it reading rishi mahesh's writing on substack
i average around 6 hours a day. one of my good friends averages 10. we’re not sure if one of us is has cultivated a more enriched inner life as a result. probably neither of us has cultivated a very rich inner life. i think the 2-3 hour screen timers have probably cultivated the richest inner life. but even their inner lives could be a little more cultivated and more rich most likely.
those 30-45 minutes of screen time people have it going on— the ones who aren’t literally grandparents. not that there’s anything wrong with grandparents, but grandparents SHOULD have low screen time. when people older than me have a lot of screen time i think that’s fucked up. you guys are supposed to have cultivated a rich inner life ALREADY so that i can ask you how to do it, and then can write a movie about a member of gen-z who learns to cultivate a rich inner life. Then i can sell that movie to hallmark or peacock and wouldn’t need a job for a couple weeks, and then i could spend more time on my phone
my 6 hours a day don’t even count the laptop or TV. so even this current type-type-typing is going unregistered. i bet if those were included, my screen time would probably be at like, 15 hours a day. i basically switch from one screen to another every few minutes, taking breaks only to blink, until i go to sleep.
what’s really fucked up is when i watch TV or a movie i think im exercising the discipline of reading epic poems or victorian novels. whenever i see those political cartoons of a family glued to the TV screen with their eyes glazed over
E.G. this by Steve Cutts:
i’m like: what’s the problem? they’re consuming traditional media as a small community. It could be worse, they could each be watching separate instagram stories of people they went to high school with or something. when i watch TV i feel like a monk, which does not bode well. bodes pretty poorly in fact
every hobby i have feels like a performance in comparison to my lead hobby, which is searing my retina on some screen of some sort. i go on walks, paint, play music, journal, etc. as a desperate attempt to hold the dam that prevents my attention from flowing directly to the pixels. a desperate attempt to cultivate a rich inner life
if i were to be granted exactly 100 years to live, i would not spend it on my phone. i would get really good at making sushi, and would become a world renowned sushi master who changed the face of sushi in a way that still preserved the integrity of the form. and im not even the world’s biggest sushi fan
with 10 years to live, i would probably find someone to be extremely in love with and would live with them and write a novel and then a memoir about writing the novel, or something else that gets really good when you work on it for exactly 10 years. id also get a dog named chopsticks
with an hour to live, i would call my parents and say thank you for all the cool things they did, like raising me and introducing me to all the food i would like for the rest of my life. then id probably do two other things that i don’t want to admit to on a permanent digital record
with one night to live (death comes at dawn) i would listen to a non exhaustive list of all of humanity’s greatest music in the order that it was made. id light a candle and see how long it took to melt completely. id send weird voice memos to people i went to elementary school with
with a day to live (death comes at dusk) id play tennis because it’s the only sport i have ever had any skill with at all. then id go to the park and play soccer, one of the sports i haven’t had any skill with at all. id eat amazing food. id call my best friends at sunset.
with 10 weeks, id take a cool art class and write a bunch of letters
with 10 days id ** a lot of *****
with one year i’d travel
with a minute to live id watch a tiktok or something