A New Approach to Thinking About Screen Time

We all agree. Screen time is terrible. We’re completely addicted to our devices. We probably all have ADD or ADHD at this point. We’ve created a society hovering near the lowest common denominator and we’re hurtling even lower at record speed. But other than name checking Jonathan Haidt and lamenting the problem, we do nothing about it other than shaking our heads and then promptly returning our attention to our screens. 

That’s never going to change. When it comes to technology, I’ve learned that once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. Certain platforms or search engines or operating systems may go in and out of style, but we’re never, ever, abandoning our devices. 

But rather than just accepting and living with the worst possible outcome, what if we re-thought our approach to screen time? 

Rather than good vs bad, all vs nothing, what if there’s a concept of a healthy online diet vs an unhealthy one? Instagram is the margarine of the internet. Tik Tok is Doritos. But reading a book on kindle might be more like eating an avocado. Texting your friends and staying in touch with people you care about? Blueberries. Pornhub and 8Chan? Hot dogs. Just like diet, what matters here is establishing the right habits and finding the right balance, rather than pretending to spend less time on your screen and then doing what you always do. 

If we set better rules and parameters for what does and doesn’t lead to a healthy online diet, maybe we can actually help people start using their devices in ways that make their lives better. I don’t think we can or should dictate what people can look at (other than kids), but we can provide them with information and incentives, just like we do in public health (that’s how public health advocates reduced cigarette smoking in the US by 50% over the past 25 years and by 70% over the past 50 years). Developing new habits and norms will take time, it will take campaigns and deliberate effort and it will take new regulation, including:

(1). Protecting Kids. Most adults have the ability and agency to make somewhat responsible choices. Kids do not. Australia just banned social media for kids under 16. That should be the law everywhere. The epidemics of teen suicide, self harm, eating disorders, cyberbullying and so much else is more than enough proof to immediately dismiss the nonsense arguments by Meta and the others about unintended consequences and just do the right thing. We all know the right path here. We need the courage to take it. 

(2). Giving platforms better incentives. Right now, federal law protects any social media platform from being sued for the content posted by its users. As a result, the platforms have a perverse incentive to feed you the most toxic content possible because human beings always click on the bad stuff first. For businesses that make all of their money based on clicks, the more harmful the content, the more money they make. No other media entity has this type of legal protection or this kind of incentive that directly harms the public all day, every day. If Congress repealed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and made the platforms responsible for the content they both permit and promote, the platforms would change their behavior and the internet would become less toxic. Full stop. 

(3). Banning cell phones in schools. I’m 51 and can barely make it through a meeting without checking my phone (and often do not make it). To expect teens and pre-teens to have the discipline to have their phones in their pockets during class and not check them is beyond unreasonable. There’s a strong movement already in many states to ban phones in schools and they’re having success. Legislation in New York seems likely to pass by the end of March. Hopefully that can spread nationwide. 

(4). Regulate AI properly. Too much regulation can kill a budding industry. Too little can lead to a lot of individual harm. Social media is a good example of this – we failed to regulate it at all, we gave the platforms legal protection to post and promote any content they want, and we ended up with epidemics ranging from loneliness to suicide. Finding the right approach to regulating AI is critical. Odds are the federal government will not do much in the next few years to regulate AI (the federal government, across both parties, typically does very little in the way of thoughtful early stage tech incentivization or regulation). But a lot is happening at the state level. Given that every app we use will ultimately incorporate AI one way or another, if there is a desire to prevent an endless diet of empty calories, regulation can take that into account rather than decreeing that every activity online has equal value. Right now, I don’t think anyone working on AI regulation is thinking about the diet and mix of screen time consumption, so introducing the concept into the dialogue can only help. 

(5). Ratings and rankings. The internet loves ratings and rankings. What if there were a version of Commonsense Media that rated websites and apps and platforms based on how good or bad they are for your mental health? But rather than it being a resource for parents to decide what movies to show their kids, it’s something that anyone, at virtually any age, can access to see for themselves. With AI, you could input a variety of metrics to balance good and bad, consider your individual needs, priorities, concerns and context and give users personalized information that might influence their choices. 

(6). Mental health. We’re in the midst of a national mental health crisis. More people are suffering, partly because of social media and the internet, partly because of addiction, partly because of changing social norms. The combination of already fragile mental health and unlimited internet usage is very dangerous. Treating mental health as seriously as we treat physical health in terms of funding, training, access to care and when care begins is critical. 

One idea is to dedicate a class from kindergarten through twelfth grade to physical and mental health ranging from training like dialectical behavioral therapy to meditation to healthy screen time diets to healthy actual diets to how to handle conflict to how to sit with anxiety — in other words, how to navigate life. Since schools are strapped for resources, this would have to come in lieu of something else (to me, it should be foreign languages; 98% of kids forget whatever they learn as soon as high school ends, Google translate is available for free to everyone and kids who love languages can take them as electives). 

To succeed at virtually anything, you have to meet people where they are and then go from there. Just saying that screen time is toxic and expecting people to lock away their phones forever is unrealistic. But creating a sense of how internet usage can work in ways that makes you less depressed, feel less lonely, less likely to waste lots of time and money can only help people ultimately make good choices. Not everyone will take heed, but even incremental improvements can produce major changes over time. The way we’re going about living on the internet clearly isn’t working. We need to try something else.