I spent the last couple of weeks away from computers, televisions and screens (except for arrivals and departures at Heathrow).
Being away and unplugged gave me precious time to ponder and think.
I had room to breath and margin to dwell on what is most important in life.
Periodically fasting from screens is an important discipline that you should consider.
I heartily commend it to you.
On this subject, the following passage from Douglas Groothius is compelling.
The increasingly rapid pace of television’s images makes careful evaluation impossible and undesirable for the viewer, thus rendering determinations of truth and falsity difficult if not impossible. With sophisticated video technologies, scenes change at hypervelocities and become
the visual equivalent of caffeine or amphetamines. The human mind was not designed by its Creator to accommodate to these visual speeds, and so the sensorium suffers from the pathologies of velocity. This means that one simply absorbs hundreds and thousands of rapidly changing images, with little notion of what they mean or whether they correspond to any reality outside of themselves. The pace of this assault of images is entirely imposed upon us; it bears little if any resemblance to reality.
Habituation to such imposed velocities tends to make people intellectually impatient and easily bored with anything that is slow moving and undramatic—such as reading books (particularly thoughtful ones), experiencing nature in the raw and engaging in face-to-face conversations with fellow human beings. Hence, the apprehension of difficult and demanding truths suffers and withers. The pace of television’s agenda disallows edification, understanding and reflection. Boredom always threatens and must be defended against at all costs. The over-stuffed and overstimulated soul becomes out-of-sync with God, others and itself. It cannot discern truth; it does not want to. This apathetic attitude makes the apprehension and application of truth totally irrelevant. The acquisition of knowledge (warranted belief in what is true), requires intellectual patience and fortitude. One must linger on perplexing notions, work them through, compare them to other ideas and attempt to reach conclusions that imply wise and rational actions. Before God, one must shut up, listen and be willing to revolutionize one’s life accordingly (see Ecclesiastes 5:1– 7). God’s word—‘be still and know that I am God’ (Ps 46:10)—simply cannot be experienced through television, where stillness and silence are only technical mistakes called ‘dead air.’ Television thus becomes a strategic weapon in the arsenal of postmodernist cynicism and apathy.
Douglas Groothius, Truth Decay