Screens and Interior Life

The Use of Computers—regardless of their size—must be moderated. However, it is estimated that adolescents aged 13 to 18 spend 6 hours and 45 minutes daily in front of screens. Not all, however, watch the same thing. While girls spend 1 hour and 30 minutes using social networks, boys devote only 50 minutes; conversely, while girls spend only 10 minutes a day on average playing video games, boys dedicate an hour. The respondents seem aware of the dangers of technology, but they worry mostly about others: while 10% of people consider themselves dependent on television, they believe that 70% of others are.

Even people in the secular world understand that there is something shameful in the immoderate use of screens, and they seek to hide it, even from themselves. Participants in a survey reported spending an average of 2 hours and 55 minutes a day on their phones, but when checked against a spyware program previously installed on their device, it was found that they actually spent 3 hours and 50 minutes.

All studies show that screen use greatly hinders knowledge acquisition. For example, among hundreds of similar cases, 13-year-old students were subjected to this small test: after a memorization exercise, they were offered different activities an hour later. One group played violent video games, another watched a movie, and a third engaged in random activities. The next day, the three groups had forgotten 47%, 39%, and 18% of what they had learned, respectively.

The long-term effects are far more serious. Certain attention disorders are certainly linked to screen use. There are two different neural circuits that both make us focused and unaware of the passage of time. The first is automatic and exogenous; it allows us to be attentive to the world around us. The second is voluntary and endogenous: it enables us to understand, find logical order, and learn. Screens artificially excite the first and harm the second. The sound variations, visual flashes, scene changes, multiple viewing angles, and the rapid interweaving of narrative sequences... all keep the viewer breathless without making the slightest effort. As a result, the capacity for reflection continually diminishes. Microsoft published a study showing that the attention span of humans has dropped to 9 seconds on average, and they themselves compared this to goldfish, which are capable of focusing their gaze for 8 seconds. If the messages are not always more incisive and provocative, people are distracted by something else. It is constantly necessary to capture their attention as only screens can. Reality and books become boring.

Are we, as faithful of the Catholic Tradition, preserved from the wave that is sweeping over the world around us? It is all the more difficult to protect oneself from this revolution because the presence of screens in the home, or even in the pocket, has often become inevitable, and we reassure ourselves by affirming that new technology is not intrinsically perverse. This is true, but it is dangerous! And it is only at the cost of very strict means that ruin can be avoided. Screens fascinate; the light and the rapid succession of new images hypnotize; the attraction of curiosity, which Saint John calls the concupiscence of the eyes, is powerful. Very few people impose sufficient discipline on themselves in the use of screens, yet it is possible. In Taiwan, it is not allowed to let a child under two years old be with a screen (a fine of €1500 is provided), and their use by a minor must be regulated (the goal being not to exceed 30 consecutive minutes). Is not the hope of eternal salvation and the pursuit of holiness more powerful motives than a fine? It is essential to set schedules before and after which the use of these devices must be prohibited. One must use the gaze of others to better restrict oneself. Sunday should be kept as a sacred day, far from enslaving technology.

Man is responsible for the influences to which he subjects himself, at the risk of losing his inner freedom. Consciences hypnotized by screens eventually fall into a guilty sleep. While God has endowed human nature with an ability to adapt to circumstances through the acquisition of healthy, liberating habits, modern means of communication exploit the weaknesses of this psychology for commercial and revolutionary purposes. The virtuous man rises above the complaints of wounded nature; the "digital" man allows himself to be carried away by the cleverly designed solicitations of the virtual universe.

Abbé Thierry Gaudray, Priest of the Priestly Society of Saint Pius X