What is Screen Time Lifeline?
Photo by Laura Short
Welcome to Screen Time Lifeline: a place for digital wellbeing with a social justice lens
. . .
Hi, I’m Christina.
Ever since I was a little girl I’ve passionate about supporting others to reach their full potential. Starting with my stuffed animals!
So, it makes sense that when it came time to decide what to do with my life I started with a career as community organizer. Later, I became a psychotherapist, which is the other side of the same coin: macro social change / micro social change, external work / internal work.
People need to to feel good about themselves to be able to have an impact on the world.
I had been a therapist for awhile before Facebook, Instagram or even smartphones were a thing, and before we relied on text messaging as our primary form of communication. I’ve noticed how useful all this technology is, how it can create connection, empowerment, and access to resources.
I have also noticed the ways in which it creates suffering.
The 3 areas where I have noticed this the most are:
1. Social Media, which has changed our lives pretty profoundly. There are great things about this medium. It connects people and gives them access to other ways of communicating and connecting. Social media can be especially great if you are isolated in some way: a trans kid feeling isolated in a conservative small town, a person with a disability that prevents in-person hang outs or makes them overwhelming, or just deeply introverted. And of course, social media platforms can be powerful tools for organizing for racial and social justice, giving voice to people who do not have access to more traditional forms of media.
But excessive social media use and hyper connectivity can increase anxiety, depression, loneliness and of course FOMO (fear of missing out). We joke about that last one, but it’s truly very painful to see that your friends are out to brunch without you, or to have access to your ex for the rest of your life! The one who broke your heart and seems happily re- partnered.
On social media, we are pressured to create curated, edited and idealized versions of our lives and bodies. It’s a comparison trap on steroids!
Social media not always a place for authentic or complex connection because we’re always getting some embellished, filtered version of each other. Reduced to memes and subject to algorithms that can keep our voices hidden if we do not get enough “engagement” on Instagram.
2. Text Messaging. I have watched, in real time my therapy clients transition from phone calls to text messaging as a primary form of communication. I remember when people started coming in and talking about deep emotional conversations they were having in their lives and realizing that the conversations were happening over text message and clients were experiencing a lack of clarity and feeling hurt and confused.
I understand that the ship has sailed and we’re not going back to phone calls as our go-to. The problem is that there’s no agreed-upon etiquette for text messaging and this creates a lot of suffering.
A lot of my clients express hurt and puzzlement over the perceived (or misconstrued) tone of a text message, being ghosted, or second guessing their own responses and not feeling empowered to just pick up the phone and get some clarity.
Text messaging is really great for “i love you” or “i’m running late” but it’s not great for deep emotional conversations, and is actually a pretty impoverished form of communication.
70% of communication is through body language. We lose that. We lose eye contact. We lose vocal tone. We can curate and edit our text messages. So, we miss the value of deep, nuanced, messy conversation and their improvisational nature.
3. Hyperconnectivity. There is an unspoken cultural expectation for us to always be “on” and available.
This causes a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress, and a lot of fear of not being loved or valued. It also allows employers to abuse employees by expecting them to be available 24/7.
We’ve lost leisure. We’ve lost stillness. We’ve lost the generativity that comes from pushing through boredom.
How Screen Time Lifeline Came to Be
Back in 2017, I had been sitting with this problem of hyperconnectivity, realizing that I had been observing it in my clients but not reflecting on my own relationship with technology.
I, too, was getting lost in the rabbit hole, over-scrolling and using my overuse of technology as a way to enable workaholism and bypass my emotional reality.
So, I took myself on a week-long screen-free vacation — no phone, no laptop, no tablet.
The first few days of it really sucked. They were much harder than I thought they would be. I felt anxious, I felt agitated, I felt disconnected, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Then, on day three, I just dropped in. I dropped into my body, I dropped into my values and asked myself: what is meaningful to me? What are my deepest desires? I had space to really think about how to center myself and my relationships. I had time for contemplation and rest.
I truly had a profound, life-changing experience.
When I returned to “reality”, I came equipped with strategies to have more balance with technology that I’ve been able to maintain to this day. I believe it’s because I took the space to experience something different than being chained to my phone and laptop 24/7.
I came back from my digital fast and immediately thought, “I want to recreate this experience for everybody!”
Knowing nothing about marketing and how much work it is to pull it off, I booked a venue and decided I was going to hold a retreat.
Once the charming alpine retreat center was booked, I immediately proceeded freak out. What have I done?! What if no one comes and I just wasted all this money and burned a bridge with this retreat venue?
Much to my delight and relief, people did show up, and it was wonderful. It was amazing to see participants connecting with each other, tapping into their true natures, their values and truths.
When it was all over, I honestly felt high. After that, I was hooked.
The rest is history.
But retreats aren’t accessible for everyone, and I wanted to make my work available to as many people as possible.
So, I decided to expand the concept to build a community where people can have regular tech-life balance discussions, enjoy group support, and attend (for now, online) workshops, and, yes, in-person retreats again one day.
In order to spend less time on our phones, we need to reclaim our lives in ways that greatly transcend quick fixes, “tips” and hacks. This is a personal growth project that is most powerful when held in community.
People are often surprised when they attend one of my retreats or events that the focus is not just about reaching tech-life balance goals. It’s also about building community, having deep conversations, learning mindfulness and self-compassion skills and exploring meaning.
I don’t call my work “digital detox” because let’s face it: detoxing is awful! It’s a term connected to the diet-industrial-complex that creates a binary of good/bad that only fuels guilt and obligation. I’m much more interested in helping you to create space, have a different experience and be fully present. It’s about adding good stuff, not “detoxing” “bad” stuff.
There are many ways to enter this work.
It’s important that you’re able to start the journey with baby steps. So, a retreat might be really overwhelming. But a one-hour introductory presentation might be a great entry point.
Powerful entities are working tirelessly to keep us hooked to our screens. Because of this, In some ways, we are powerless and we do need help.