Big Tech Quietly Hijacked Daydreaming
It's time to reclaim our peace.
When I was a child, I spent hours at a time staring out the window. I liked to watch cars coming down the highway. It was rare to not see a car over a two-minute period, despite it being a rural area. Aside from cars passing, branches were usually swaying in the wind. On clear days, the Teton mountains were visible out the window.
At age eleven, we moved to another house. This one wasn’t on a highway but a quiet street. And it didn’t have windows that were good for long periods of staring. But I still found another good way to daydream. During the summers, I would sit in the shade on the back porch and eat sunflower seeds, spitting the shells into the grass. I would watch the clouds and relax to the quiet rhythm of summer vacation.
Sitting and quietly observing life as it passes by is really good for our minds and bodies. We crave it. We love ocean waves, crackling campfires, creeks, waterfalls, and birdsong. Smartphones try to recreate the quiet rhythm of life with their algorithms, but nefariously exploit it to make loads of money. Tech companies designed it so that we scroll endlessly. Instead of quiet, innocuous, natural life rhythms, we’re now being exposed to scary news articles, angry comments, super attractive people, super wealthy people, unfunny memes, and (to be clear) some funny memes. It’s all mixed together so that we keep scrolling, we don’t know what it’ll serve us next.
Scrolling is like daydreaming but instead of being a time for rest, it’s exhausting. Instead of having a minute to relax and close our eyes, we feel compelled to make sure there are no notifications that we missed. There is social pressure to answer text messages upon receipt and to be one phone call away.
I struggle to curate this beautiful daydreaming that is integral to who I am, but I’m going to renew my effort to do so. I’m going to spend less time on my phone and more time observing nature so that I can live happier and truer to my nature. Please join me!