(Un)plugging away

By now, we’re all very familiar with the idea that screens are the enemy.

Screen time can lower kids’ performance in reading and maths. It affects our sleep. It’s destroying the tradition of eating at the dinner table. It may even be contributing to a lowering of IQ scores after a century of steady improvement.

Screens are also, of course, absolutely fundamental to how we live. Many of us would be fired, bored, and completely disconnected from our loved ones without the myriad of technological marvels accessed through black rectangles of various sizes.

Which is why being unplugged from it all has become the ultimate form of luxury.

Sofar Sounds connects people IRL through concerts in secret locations. 222 and Timeleft pair strangers up for dinners, while Pie connects people with shared interests in things like books and healthy living. Ironically but obviously, all of these services are accessed via a website or app, but we guess you have to start somewhere.

Earlier this year, content creator Catherine Goetze shared a TikTok showing her using retro landline telephones to reduce her screentime. Her fans, perhaps missing the message behind the visual, rewarded it with 5.6 million views.

Looking away from screens is a worthwhile goal. But efforts to encourage it appear largely performative. 

After all, if you’re rewarded for using an app by meeting someone at dinner, you’re hardly incentivised to put the phone down.

The simple fact is that we are all plugged in, no matter how much we may want to extricate ourselves from our screens. The luxury of less feels a long way away.