I Tried to Limit My Screen Time

Posted September 9, 2019

External Article: The Atlantic

Ian Bogost, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Literature, Media, and Communication, recently wrote an article entitled “I Tried to Limit My Screen Time” for The Atlantic.

Here's an excerpt:

There are people who hate Twitter, and there are people who also hate themselves for using it anyway. I’m the second kind. Maybe everyone who uses the service is now. It doesn’t have to be Twitter, either. For you it might be Facebook, or Instagram, or Snapchat, or whatever other app that was built to farm your attention and now successfully reaps it abundantly.

For me, the loathing is multiple. First, there’s the compulsion of loading the app at all: of flicking its infinite scroll whenever I’m idle, even just briefly—at a stoplight, in front of the microwave, in the bathroom. Then there are the things I see there: the angry or bitter or stupid posts that make me angry or bitter or stupid in turn. And the things I share on the service, too: things I regret, or come close enough to posting to produce a phantom guilt that feels equally bad.

Read the full story here.

The School of Literature, Media, and Communication is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

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Ian Bogost Headshot Photo 2018