Screens Aren't the Problem. We Are.

FEATURE | ISSUE EIGHT | SCREENS

Written by Ishani Mathur (she/her) | Contributing Writer

There was a time when waiting simply meant waiting. 

Sitting in the car before driving home. Standing in line for your morning coffee. Walking to class. Lying in bed before sleep found you. Looking out the window on the bus. 

Today, those moments rarely exist. 

We press play. 

We scroll. 

We search. 

We consume. 

Not because we have to. 

Because we can. 

Somewhere along the way, we stopped treating boredom as part of life and started treating it as something to fix. Every quiet moment became an opportunity to fill the silence. A playlist for the drive. A podcast for the walk. A reel while waiting in line. One last scroll before bed. We carry the world's knowledge, entertainment, and conversation in our pockets, and with it, the ability to avoid being alone with our thoughts almost entirely. 

This issue isn't really about screens. 

It's about what they reveal. 

About attention. 

About distraction. 

About convenience. 

About what happens when the world is always one swipe away. 

It's easy to blame technology. Every few months, another headline warns us that smartphones are destroying our attention spans, AI is making us lazy, or social media is rewiring an entire generation. We talk about screens as though they're acting on us, as though they're somehow responsible for every habit we've developed. 

But maybe that's too simple. 

Screens didn't invent distraction. 

They amplified it. 

They didn't invent comparison. 

They accelerated it. 

They didn't invent our desire to escape boredom. 

They made escaping effortless. 

Technology has transformed the way we learn, create, communicate, and connect. It has opened doors that previous generations could scarcely imagine and continues to reshape what is possible every day. The question has never really been whether technology is good or bad. Perhaps the more interesting question is what kind of relationship we choose to have with it. 

The platforms we use are designed to compete for our attention. Infinite scroll, autoplay, personalised recommendations, and notifications that arrive at just the right moment all encourage us to stay a little longer. Yet even in a world designed to capture our focus, we still have the ability to decide where we place it. 

Maybe that's why this conversation feels so important. It is less about the technology in our hands and more about the habits we build around it. What moments are we choosing to fill? What thoughts never have the chance to form? When did silence become something we felt the need to escape? 

Perhaps the greatest thing we've lost isn't attention itself. 

It's our relationship with stillness. 

Stillness is where ideas begin. Where creativity quietly appears. Where reflection has room to exist. It asks nothing of us except our presence, and perhaps that's exactly what makes it so valuable. 

This issue isn't asking whether screens are good or bad. That debate has been had countless times before. Instead, we're asking a different question. 

What do our screens reveal about us? 

Because screens aren't going anywhere. 

AI isn't going anywhere. 

The next generation of technology is already arriving. 

The real question is whether we'll continue to shape it, or quietly allow it to shape us. 

Maybe screens were never the problem. 

Maybe they simply revealed something about us. 

That we've become so uncomfortable with being still that we'd rather fill every empty moment than face the possibility of our own thoughts. 

And perhaps that's the debate worth having.