Screened Out Documentary Review: How Screen Time is Hijacking Our Mental Health

Real Vs. Highlight Reels Of Our Online Lives

The below are the ideas shared by the documentary, Screened Out, that discusses humanity’s technology addiction.

It’s the same thing we’ve been hearing about from Tristan Harris of the Human Tech and of the Screenager documentary fame.

Why are we plying our children and teens with digital devices when we and they don’t know how to deal with the effects of dopamine on our bodies? Every click, every coin and every like we earn is giving us a surge of dopamine, the feel good hormone, which in turn is making us into Digital Crack Addicts. We’re looking at flashy celebrity lifestyles through phones while not having a well-rounded sense – their emotions, thoughts, surroundings or circumstances, of the real lives they are living.

The CAMRA Act

To amend the Public Health Service Act to authorize a program on children and the media within the National Institutes of Health to study the health and developmental effects of technology on infants, children, and adolescents.

This Act may be cited as the ”Children and Media. 4. Research Advancement Act” or the ”CAMRA Act”
The bill’s titles are written by its sponsor. Congress Bills H.R. 1367 (116th) H.R. 1367: CAMRA Act

What the CAMRA Act would do:

Establish a program to support research on the role and impact of media and technology on the development of children and adolescents. Fund research that can help parents, educators, and the tech industry make smart decisions about how to maximize tech’s potential for good. Passage of the CAMRA Act is important so that research can be funded and we have evidence and facts about the impact on children’s brains and socialization.

So far, there have been no solutions for the massive epidemic that has become Screen Addiction Disorder, from the Big Tech FAANG.

Our Daily Tech Use

Research from Common Sense media shows that children between 0 to 8 years old are on personal devices for upto 3 hours a day. And teens 13 and older are on their phones for 6 hours not including the time that takes to finish class and homework. And sometimes they’re on it upto 9 hours a day. 70% of adults use the internet 3 to 5 hours and some upto 7 hours a day. Most of that online presence is on a mobile device. An average person at this point will end up “liking / tweeting” for 7 hours of our life.

Those of us who have smart phones, which is pretty everyone around us these days, are reaching for it upto 150 times a day. And this type of compulsiveness is classified as addiction – a certain loss of control around a certain behavior.

The average person is checking his phone every 4 minutes. New studies on addiction have revealed that when it comes to addictions, we’re not victims of our own “uncontrollable vices” but are products of our environment. Just like slot machines and then video game, our digital devices are designed to addicted, because they give complete the feedback loop for us. Recognition, connectedness and the false sense of efficiently managing our different streams of useless information.

Our Hopeless Addictions

Our attention spans have been altered forever. Humans now have an attention span of 8 seconds compared to 9 seconds that a gold fish has. Our pockets and bags have many interactions that are constantly interrupting us with the pings from our emails, news and social media notifications.

Yes, our skin has melatonin receptors & because of the screen light our body thinks its still day light and that we are unable to go to sleep sooner. We’re literally electrifying our nights. Sadly children as young as 4, teens and many adults are taking melatonin in the night to be able to sleep.

They make the rewards of likes, hearts, and shares come to us unpredictably and at random; not every time we open our phones.

Same was the case with gambling, then with videos games and now social media.

1. trigger
2. easy action
3. variable reward
4. investment for future benefit

Repeat this cycle. and you’ve got a formula for undeniable attention from the consumer.

The Screened Out Documentary

As technology grows and advances, so does our addiction to our devices. Filmmaker Jon Hyatt explores the life changing effects of screen addiction and its greater impact on our lives. Are we too dependent on our devices?

– 0 –

Truth About Technology – A Digital Literacy Project