The Loss of Idleness

            Something that digital media has changed is how time works for us; to be more specific, we no longer enjoy any idle time. We are always on. Our. Phones. Did our friend run a little late and now we’re stuck at the coffee shop alone for a few ten minutes? Subdue that awkwardness by getting busy on your phone. The metro’s not here until a couple minutes? Get on the phone. Is it that time of day where I must now go wind down on the toilet? Yup…I’m bringing my phone. We spend all of our free time on our phones whether it involves mindlessly scrolling through our social media news and discover feeds, looking back at our photo albums, checking our email every ten minutes for any updates, reading whatever human interest piece, and so on. We stopped actually having true free time because we use whatever time left from our duties to go on our phones and browse the internet.

            This is a problem because it is during our times of idleness where we can actually stop and think for a bit. Instead of reflecting on our days or on a certain moment that bothered us, we have—possibly without knowing or trying to—found an escape by retreating to our phones instead. During times that we could actually relax and give our minds a break from all the stimulation and business, we occupy it with a bunch of junk that it remains cluttered. We have essentially forgotten how to actually relax and let our minds be. But there is something else at stake besides what first appears as lost idleness. I have read in a few articles that, because we are not giving ourselves the space and time to reflect and such, we are precluding ourselves from producing creative thoughts. We don’t daydream much anymore and lie around doing literally nothing, which might stop us from coming up with ideas or resolving some emotional issue in our heads because we are too distracted by our phones and computers. We don’t give ourselves permission to just be, if only for a few minutes, in silence (physical or mental). And maybe that’s why we say that our best thoughts come to us in the shower when we’re alone with our thoughts and without phones (maybe it’s a good thing they’re not waterproof).

            I think that the best solution for this is to practice something akin to meditation (or to practice meditation itself). We must learn how to balance our time and our space. This means that when we have free time, sure…we can look at our phones for a bit, but this action should not corrupt all of our free time. We must grow a little more conscious of these habits and learn when it is best to not look at our phones and instead just sit there and think. We must give ourselves space to unplug and be away from our devices and from people. We should also learn to not stigmatize the idea of lying around “doing nothing” or spacing out, as though it were “unproductive,”  because these moments can also be beneficial for us at least in how they can clear our minds from the clutter of digital media.

One article that speaks about this problem:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2016/02/02/a-stanford-psychologist-explains-why-spacing-out-and-goofing-off-is-so-good-for-you/?utm_term=.5a6810df6226