by Kane Harth
This is taken from my notes I took during my screen time challenge. I’ve edited out some personal bits both for being off-topic and slightly controversial.
6:16 p.m., October 19, 2025
Just twenty minutes ago, I got out of bed, and cooked myself a chicken breast.
As I sat down to eat, my body began to act on its own. Plate in one hand, mouse in the other, open YouTube, look for a video to watch. But just before I clicked, I stopped. I pondered what exactly I was doing.
Can I not just, enjoy my food? Fully take in the experience of eating it? Do I have to put on a distraction to trick my body to eat? I still sort of did. Instead of a video, I put on pleasant piano music. Then I tabbed over to a personal website and started reading their blog posts.
Ten minutes later, I stop again. I’m still distracting myself. I slowly turn around and look at the closed blinds of my window. I stand up, plate in one hand, and I take the stick which opens the blinds and start turning.
As the blinds open up, a sunset is shown to me. Cars driving by, I see someone whoosh past on a bike. I pierce the Chicken Breast with my fork, and bring it to my lips.
As I chew, with the pleasant piano music playing in my headphones, I stare outside. I ponder what exactly just happened to compel me to break away from the distractions for a moment. I begin to think, maybe my mom had a point in telling me to go to the dinner table.
From my understanding, the dinner table is a time for everyone to share a space together. That space is easily disturbed, mind you. But, if by some miracle, some uncle doesn’t ruin it for everyone, I can kind of get it. For me, the dinner table has always been a place of awkward conversations at best, or the battleground of shouting matches at worst.
As I continue this challenge, and slowly open my eyes to different ways of operating in the world, these ideas keep cropping back up for re-examination. And every time, I discover something new and useful. I really hate to be cringe on main, but it really is like leaving the Matrix. Seriously. God, teenage me would’ve beat my ass if he caught me saying this, “its just like the Matrix man,” crap.
But it’s true. When I was driving, I couldn’t help but notice how prevalent billboards, businesses, and advertising are everywhere. The sky can be advertised upon. The outside world has become a canvas of marketing messages. So has my home. Right now, I glanced about an inch below the monitor to see the ASUS logo adorning my monitor as I write this. I could go on pointing out every single brand.
It reminds me a bit of Mother 3. In that game, a small, remote town, is suddenly invaded by these pig masks who bring the townsfolk «happy-boxes». These happy boxes are analogous to TVs, and the once bright and cheerful town turns to disrepair as everyone sits at home watching TV. As a teenager, I didn’t really get it. Okay, TV bad, what else is new? But I completely missed the point. It’s not necessarily the TV that is the problem, it’s the way it manipulates its viewers to isolate themselves from their community.