As the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to reveal themselves, screens have either completely swallowed our lives, engulfed our attention and damaged our already fragile mental health; or they have been the one thing keeping us sane and allowing us to maintain social contact. It depends whom you ask.
What is not in question is that, for almost everyone, screen time in 2020 was not just up, it was exponential. From scrolling endlessly for coronavirus news to watching more Netflix than any human should to take our minds off it, to the fact that Zoom has subsumed our working lives, screens swamp our waking hours.
And the fact is, they already did before the advent of the term ‘iso’. The average adult in the US was spending about 3.5 hours a day using the internet on their phones in 2019, according to a study by analytics company Zenith.
In 2020, people were posting their screen-time summaries on social media after being horrified to learn they’re averaging eight hours a day or more. And then there’s Zoom, which went from 10 million users a day in December 2019 to 300 million a day in 2020.
The World Health Organization has issued warnings about the “health risks of excessive screen time”, which can include negative impacts on relationships and an inability to control emotional outbursts. Screens can also “take priority in a person’s life over the basic functions, such as eating, sleeping, personal hygiene and exercise”.
MENTAL HEALTH AND BIAS
Author and behaviour specialist Mark Carter says there’s no doubt that our mental health is suffering from all this screen gorging.
This story is from the March 2021 edition of The CEO Magazine - ANZ.
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This story is from the March 2021 edition of The CEO Magazine - ANZ.
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