When no one is watching

I’m pretty sure everybody knows that you’re not supposed to be on your phone too much before going to bed. The light from the screen suppresses your natural melatonin which makes it harder to fall asleep. Something like that, right? Anyway we’ve all heard those warnings a million times. But let’s be honest. There’s a big difference in 2019 between “going to bed” and “going to sleep”. Think about it— how do you typically spend that screen time in between laying down and actually closing your eyes? And does the content even matter?

And how long is that gap for you? Is it 15 minutes or an hour? Is it over an hour of being all alone and 100% focused on your device? Let’s call it an hour. If I know my generation at all, an hour might actually be understating it. But even so, an hour at night is about 6% of the time you spend being awake. That’s like a college lecture that you sit through every night. And I think what you do with that time is nothing short of a BIG DEAL.

So you’re finally alone in bed, phone in hand and you get to pick your poison. Are you on twitter reading about how someone is angry at what someone else said and they didn’t like? Are you on Instagram looking at pictures of what someone else did today that you didn’t? Are you on YouTube watching videos recommended by an algorithm that thinks it has you nailed? Are you listening to your podcast of choice telling you all the things you want to hear?

Recent studies on young people show that in privacy they tend to use their devices for social media, gaming and pornography. I’m only going to address the first one of these because this is not a Tumblr blog— you’re welcome. So let’s talk social media. The amount of time the average teenager spends on social media is up 62% since 2012, according to Science Daily. I regularly witness my peers scrolling through their timelines looking at “someone else’s version of things” and letting it throw them off balance. It makes me wonder how much time they spend doing that when no one is looking.

So here’s the point I’m trying to make. If you’re already going to use your phone at bedtime, use it in a way that’s constructive to yourself and to your community.

Here’s what I mean. The internet offers us endless ways of connecting with each other. One constructive way of using social media is teaching ourselves about the lives of people outside our normal reach. The same is true for podcasts and blogs as long as we don’t trap ourselves into any echo chambers. When used with the right intentions, these platforms can seriously help us improve our capacity for empathy. We no longer live in a time where accountants and doctors and artists and construction workers have to be confined to their own separate worlds. The internet gives us all the tools we need to learn and understand each other. We can use it to broaden our horizons and improve the quality of our public dialogue.

“Your true character shows when you think nobody is watching.”  Is it true that your actions when no one is looking show you really are? I’ve always felt like that expression is mostly just about the things you’re not supposed to do. Because if you wouldn’t do it with eyes on you, you shouldn’t do it at all. But nobody talks about what you should be doing when nobody’s watching. Nowadays, the possibilities are infinite.

So what do you think? When the lights are out and no one is watching, what does your online behavior say about your character?

Filip, again.