The screens in my life

When I was young, I remember the fierce discussion about how much t.v. you should let children watch. Being a child myself, I was of course in favor of letting them watch as much as they want, but I also being at least half-convinced/frightened by the arguments that it would ruin your eyes and rot your brain (if not exactly curve your spine - that was something else). I think the general idea was that you should not sit in front of a screen more than 2-3 hours a day.  

Now, some forty years later, I find myself surrounded by more screens than I (or anyone else) could have ever imagined. At work, I sit in front of a computer screen for at least 5 hours a day. In the evenings, at home, I usually work on one or more of our four computers. I mostly only use the one I am using to write this blog, but there are days when I have three of them on simultaneously, for different things. Then, when I finish whatever it was I needed the computer for (making music, writing a blog, surfing the Internet, checking out friends on one of the various social networks), I go down to the living room to watch t.v., usually for an hour or so. In the weekend, I might also spend some time in the basement, doing simulated sports on - you guessed - yet another screen. All in all, I would say I spend about 7 hours or more in front of a screen each day. Of course, most of those screens are not cathode ray tubes, and as far as I know, no-one has gone blind yet watching t.v.. I am not too worried about the total amount of time spent, other than when it takes away time on other things that they should also be doing. 

But I am worried about the underlying issue, which is how your view of reality may change as a result (or, as some people have put it, how t.v. can rot the brain). I remember how, when I was a student, I once read seven books by the same writer (Jerzy Kozinski) in a single weekend. I was so engrossed I hardly slept. When I finally did leave the house to get something to eat, I was almost run down crossing the road, because the real world no longer seemed very real. 

Of course, this was an extreme case, but I think it is probably similar to what happens when children try to act out what they have seen in a movie, cartoon or computer game: the boundary between real and imaginary has somehow become unclear. For the most part, my children are a lot better in making that distinction than I first expected, but they do sometimes need confirmation ("people can't really fly, can they, daddy?"). And when they do, I am very happy to give it to them!