Geoff Augutis from Queensland Computers in Bundaberg talks about increased screentime during the Coronavirus lockdown, good and bad.
Whether you're a concerned parent or just conscious of what your own consumption is, screen time has become a factor to determine what is “healthy” in 2020.
These days many smartphones monitor our weekly screen time and report to us on whether we have increased or decreased compared to the week before.
When the world flips on its head as happened with COVID-19, many of us have had to revisit how we view screentime.
Where once we thought lower = better, we are now having to perform many of our normal daily activities in front of a screen where we hadn’t before.
Some recent schools of thought about this topic have urged people to think of screentime like we would calories in a diet.
For starters, there is what we would call good, healthy screen time and bad screentime.
To define this, we are saying that good screentime is productive (working, learning and creating) while bad screentime is unproductive (gaming, Netflix, Facebook, etc).
This is comparable to our food pyramid; we have good calories (avocado) and bad calories (Mars bar).
It isn’t about never having the bad screentime, as we have always enjoyed this; it is just about finding a balance.
This is more important than ever in a world where screentime is on the increase.
It is also important to consider the exercise component in this discussion.
This being that spending an hour in front of the screen followed by an hour outside walking the dog can offset the large amount of time we are on devices.
Think of this as burning off those calories which is necessary for those of us working or learning where it is a must.
Many strong opinions exist around screentime, but the truth is right now most of us are just doing what we must in order to get by.
Thinking of this as we would a diet can help us keep on top of it and put it into context.
