21 April 2020, 5:55 pm - In Which I Reflect On My Screen Time

We started Screen-Free Sundays. Okay, I started it, and my partner held me accountable. I did not open my laptop at all, and I only used my phone to call/text and read on the Kindle app. Luckily, Sunday was a beautiful day. We spent time together in our backyard. My partner worked on garden projects, and I worked out then took a nap in my hammock. I also Facetimed with my mom for nearly two hours.

The break from social media was delightful. I did not realize how much the constant flow of information I was digesting was affecting me. No wonder I felt so exhausted all of the time. While we should stay up-to-date on world happenings and on new information about the virus, we should also take breaks. I am not sure how characters in our apocalypse texts handled it (besides being fictional, and young, and the knew there was an end in sight). I am glad I have the means to contact my mom at any given time and get some respite from the world. Jane McKeene, the main character of Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation, did not have an easy line of communication with her mother, who she misses dearly. Dread Nation is set immediately post-Civil War and Jane can only contact her mom through letters smuggled out of school. Not only do letters take a long time to reach the receiver, letters in pre-U.S. Postal Service and traditional addresses era took an unimaginable amount of time to go between sender-receiver. So much can happen in between letters! So much information can be lost, or actions taken, and they may never even get the letters!

For those of us with the means to video chat, call, or text people in our life and receive instant replies, we are the lucky ones. We are the ones who can stay connected in this time if isolation. Yes, we can send heartfelt, handwritten notes via the USPS (support them!), but let’s be honest - we prefer the instant gratification of texting and phone calls.

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Works Cited:

Ireland, Justina. Dread Nation. Balzer + Bray, 2018.