What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?
You may recall, when you go back to stories and poems back in the 80s and 90s, there are more than a few stories and humorous poems on how the television was taking up our valuable time. Terms like ‘idiot box’ and ‘couch potato’ had become commonly spoken terms back then. There were so many people addicted to television with a cable connection.
When I had come to the world, television had quite deeply become a part of many households. Yes, it may seem difficult to imagine but some people actually did not get a television by choice then, and there were even those who got one, but later got the cable disconnected realising how much time it was actually eating up or how it was making someone in their household addicted.
I had limited time to look at the television screen set by my parents. That was the only screen that was taking some of my time and it was manageable. Then, the desktop computer arrived. Now, knowing how to operate a computer was really important back then, it was considered an ability to be able to work on a computer to the point where people literally mentioned it in their resumes so I was given more freedom with the computer until I was caught playing games multiple times and later my father got them removed.
It was still manageable till here, the arrival of more advanced computers, portable laptops and internet connections in households did pose a bigger challenge, and there were mentions of people spending all day on computers, but things had not really run out of control in the primary sense. People were not carrying the device everywhere in their pocket after all.
I don’t think humanity was prepared for smartphones. The way it came, the way it took over our lives, our dreams and wishes, how it reduced our thoughts and thinking to the four edges of a screen in our hands.
I have never been much of a scrolling through videos type of person, I am more of a news reading type and games, yes games have consumed a lot of my time. I intentionally plug out my gaming console when I am done playing, I pack it and keep it nicely in a dedicated place, so whenever I have to play, I would also have to go through the process of taking it out, connecting it and playing then again keeping it back. This way things stay in control since it is not readily out there for switching on and playing.
But smartphone gaming apps? You may think, smartphone games, what do they really have in comparison to something like console games, how much time will they take, a few minutes? That is where I was wrong and they can take up a lot of minutes, make you addicted and for some people they can also take away wealth. So, gaming apps are the ones that have taken most of my time in recent years, once my smartphone was full of them like around 30 games. But I have proudly got rid of most and the rest I don’t play much at all, you can say it has been one of the better life changing decisions.
Written by Anuran Chatterji
Early Morning Memories 
One response to “Four edges”
What a wonderfully honest and relatable reflection! 👏📱
I especially appreciated how you traced the evolution of screens—from television to desktop computers, laptops, and finally smartphones. It beautifully illustrates that technology itself has never been the real challenge; rather, it is our relationship with it that determines whether it enriches or consumes our lives.
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