#35 - The Prolonged Effects of Screen Time: How the Internet Follows You Offline

In this episode, I’m sharing a small update while I’m deep in the final stretch of finishing my record. There are so many loose ends, and I’m feeling the pressure of trying to hold focus while the wider internet feels increasingly overwhelming and destabilising. I talk about brain fog, rumination, the aftershocks of online information, and the discipline it takes to protect my creative space.What the hell, Internet?Lately I’ve been realising jst how heavily my mental clarity and ability to concentrate are being compromised at the moment by what I am seeing on the internet. I use the internet every single day. It is part of our everyday life. Those who listen here regularly with know that I have been putting huge effort into refining my presence online and how I engage with it, but right now, with everything that’s going on, it’s very hard to avoid seeing things unfolding across the world that are just incomprehensible — an endless conveyor belt of obscene carry-on by human beings which I’m finding very difficult to metabolise mentally.There’s constant talk about the attention economy and how apps are designed to keep us on there as long as possible and to keep coming back. Of course that’s all true and screen time is one of the biggest disrupters to living connected, socially engaged lives. But what I’m noticing lately, especially while I’m under pressure to stay focused on finishing this record, is that what’s being compromised most is not the time absorbed while being on my phone, it’s the overall ability to take my thought space back afterwards.It’s not just about the distraction or dopamine hits facilitated by screen time. It’s that the nature of what I’m seeing day to day is so distressing that it’s haunting me for days after in the form of rumination. Rumination over all these horrendous things and the state of play in the world. I’m a sensitive person and when I’m emotionally affected or overwhelmed by something, it can take me a good bit of time to process it. If I don’t, it accumulates and the unresolved emotion starts to come out sideways. I become dysregulated and then I’m also more reactive.Of course the whole internet is structured towards reactivity, it’s the fuel that keeps the fire lit. But that reactivity is precisely the opposite of how I want to live. I don’t want to exist in a constant state of shock but it’s hard to avoid when we’re bombarded with an endless supply of horrifying headlines that rattle you to your core. I can’t swim very long in that water without becoming destabilised in my own mental health. Most of us are trying to contribute something positive to the world. For me, one of the ways I feel I can contribute positively while I’m around in the world is through the music I make. I know I keep rabbiting on about this but creativity is the opposite of destruction and we should all be creating as much as we can. But right now, I’m noticing that I’m being limited in my ability to fulfill those positive contributions towards life because of the negative impact the internet is having on my cognitive space. We understand how the algorithm rewards reaction, but the reaction doesn’t stay in the moment. There are aftershocks that recapture our minds long after we have scrolled on or left our devices. Hours or sometimes days later you’re thinking, did I really read that? Is that real? It takes up far more time than the minutes you actually spend on the screen.For this reason, I’ve started thinking about my screen time as a foundation number, and then quadrupling it. That’s probably closer to the actual cognitive time I’m giving the information which is being transferred from the internet into my brain. It’s true when a person has access to the internet you are also giving the internet complete access to that person, and where I used to see the internet is a two way street with it extracting from me to a similar degree to what I was extracting from it, I no longer see it that way. I am now seeing what I perceive as a kind of ‘internet hangover’ period in which our brain has to process the toxic substance we have consumed in order to return to a healthy/stable mind state. Maybe I’m way off here but this is how it feels to me at the moment.Discipline and focus are what allow me to move forward with my creative work and they are the most difficult things for me to harness at the best of times, let alone with big tech using the chaos of the world to continuously try and suck me in to feed the flames with my reactivity data. I’m not useful to society or to my family or friends when they need me, if I can’t preserve my own mental wellness. Creativity stabilises my mind and that is something I need to protect right now.If you enjoyed this podcast please share it with a friend or consider leaving a review, it really helps me out. You can also support me by becoming a paid member on this channel to unlock exclusive episodes for €5 per month on Substack and Patreon. And lastly, if you want to engage with the visual side of my work you can follow me @laurasheeran_ie on YouTube and Instagram where I post often. That’s all for now. Thanks for being here, and remember: Put humans first. Don’t feed the machine. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurasheeran.substack.com/subscribe