Photophilia: A New Love Story

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

It is no news that humans have become photophiliacs; we love light, and we love it even more when it moves. You don’t believe this? You must not have looked into the “ring light” market in recent times!

Many of us are sure that we can survive isolation if we have our phones on us the whole time. Many of us have attempted to survive isolation with our phones by our sides. Some of us believe that we are successful at this, and others believe that with continued attempts, we can become successful at it.

Photophilia has become a widely accepted coping mechanism. This is because light can elicit and sustain different mental states.

If we are to go back in time to address the onset of staying hooked on our screens, what I recall is that screen addiction started as a social self-soothing tool. If people felt bored, ignored or uninterested in what was happening around them, they would pull out their phones and start fiddling with them. No, there was only YouTube and a few other minimally exciting social media platforms then.

Eventually, humans learned that they could use their relationship with their phones to communicate all sorts of social cues including displeasure, spite and disinterest. We stopped betraying our anger or frustration faces by looking away from the person in front of us and started using the phone screens to light up our contorted facial expressions by looking down into them; once again, trying to self-soothe under a perceptibly stressful situation while simultaneously trying to be offensive.

Soon enough, we figured that we could use our screens to transmit aggression quite passively. Carefully and deliberately framed words backed up by light definitely hits the retina and causes the brain to subconsciously lend a voice to what the reader is seeing on their screen. Humans developed the ability to assign tones to texts or emails and determine if it was pleasure or displeasure being communicated and how to respond to it.

The ability to fight, even fiercely, using lit up screens and wordplay is satisfying to many. If the message draws an expected response from the target audience, the sender is pacified and soothed.

Then came technology with blue light filters and all sorts of screen filters including a blinder which makes it difficult for peeping toms to see what is happening on their neighbors’ screens. Added to being able to password protect our screens, we can also prevent screen leakages.

That’s called privacy, and for some people, especially teenagers and some married couples, their phones or screen times are their only remaining source of privacy. With added ability to create an anonymous online presence, screens create black holes through which humans can time travel to different “timelines” in broad screen lights (pun for broad daylight!) and be who they really are or wish they could be in real life. That, is very soothing!

Given all of these progressions to humans getting addicted to their devices, I have a principle which helps me to manage screen time. That principle is that humans seek to self-soothe when they are trying to avoid something or are seeking respite from something. Therefore, increased screen time is a pointer to either avoidance or stress; both of which cannot be solved by spending more time with the screen.

Whenever you find yourself reaching down for your phone, ask yourself what or who you are trying avoid, what or who is stressing you in that moment, and what or who is threatening your sense of sovereign self.

I hope this helps you to regulate your love affairs with the world of light and lit screens. Remember that we are now able to be everywhere in the world in real time through our screens and imagine how tasking it would have been if we had to actually do that in real life everyday. It would be preposterous, right? From time to money to human resources that would go into such endeavors…don’t put your mind through such stress.

Regulate. Regulate the light. Regulate yourself. Make the light work for you, not against you. How do you regulate your screen time? Wanna share? Do so in the comments. I would like to read all about it!