As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, one of the predominant ways that we lose track of ourselves is through idle distraction. But what exactly makes something “idle distraction?” How is it different from other forms of distraction? Could not all distraction be considered “idle?” Broadly speaking, I consider idle distraction to be the kinds of activities that we mindlessly enter into as a result of boredom or discomfort or some sort of derivative of these states. These kinds of activities do not force us to think in a very meaningful way. They tend to induce a type of detachment from the world around us as well as from ourselves. And in the modern age, they tend to be dominated by screens. That is why I have chosen to focus on only two specific modes of idle distraction in this section; because by all accounts they are two of the chief avenues for idle distraction that exist today. In this post, I'll start by sharing some astonishing facts about the prevalence of what I consider to be two of the main ways we idly distract ourselves. Then in the next post, I'll try to tackle why so much idle distraction exists.
It is truly mind-boggling how many opportunities for idle distraction exist today. The industry of idle distraction is thriving, and that is an understatement. Consider the myriad ways we can and do distract ourselves on a daily basis. To try to detail each and every one of these options would take forever. So, instead I will focus on two titanic industries within this category that I believe to be emblematic of what I’m talking about here. The two industries are games (specifically video games, as long as they occur on some form of screen) and TV.
Games: A cursory search of “games” on my iPhone “app store” yields 466,713 results. Seven of the 10 “top grossing” apps in the app store are games. If we just look at the top three app games—Clash of Clans, Game of War, and Candy Crush--the details are quite astonishing. Now bear in mind that each of these games are free to download. So the app developers, presumptively, do not earn any money from the apps being downloaded to your mobile device. However, it is estimated that each of these three games earn well over $1,000,000 per day. You might be wondering: How do they earn so much money by offering a “free” product? Well, the entirety of the sales are from “in-game purchases” that users buy to enhance their game playing ability, or something like that. Stuck on that pesky level 269 in Candy Crush? Buy a Lollipop Hammer for only $1.99! Want to destroy your opponent with even more ferocity in Clash of Clans? Well, this Chest of Gems only costs $99.99 and then you can buy all the Wizards and Giants you need to be victorious! It is predicted that mobile gaming app revenue will reach 46 billion dollars by 2016 (source). And this is just the mobile gaming industry! This does not include console-based gaming like Xbox or Playstation or computer games.
If the money figures weren’t enough evidence of just how massively enthralled we are by games, the amount of time that is spent playing video games is quite staggering. According to Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, we spend 3 billion hours every week playing video games around the world. That is enough hours of video game playing in one week to fill up all the hours in over 8 million years. More than 500 million people around the world play video games for an hour or more every day. In the U.S. alone, about 183 million people, or close to 57% of the population, play at least an hour of video games every day.
TV: Although gaming is quite astonishing in its grasp on our collective attention spans and is on a near meteoric rise in popularity, it still does not approach that titan of idle distraction: the television. Since the TV became commercially available in the early to mid-20th century, nothing has distracted us more thoroughly than the television. Obviously, TV has evolved into many different forms since its inception. We now have TV in such disparate pathways as: network TV, cable TV, satellite TV, TV through the internet (aka “streaming content”), TV on our flatscreens, TV on our laptops, and TV on our smart phones. I’m not even sure it’s appropriate anymore to refer to this all as “TV” because it seems that only a minority of the time are we watching “TV” on an actual television. So by “TV” here I mean it in a more general sense of “television programming.”
Now, I have found that it is actually quite difficult to get an all-inclusive or “total number” of hours spent watching television programming because of the fragmentation of the television industry. Due to the fact that television content can now be consumed in so many different forms, it is difficult to come across an aggregated total. Be that as it may, the numbers that follow are still amazing. The average person in the US watches more than four hours of “live television” (meaning sitting in front of an actual TV and watching live programming) every single day. After working and sleeping, watching TV is by far the most time consuming activity in our lives (source). Overall, when just looking at Americans, we spend about 250 billion hours every year watching TV (source), or more than 4.8 billion hours per week. In a 65 year lifespan, the average American will spend nine whole years of their existence staring at a TV screen (ibid). And this is just “live TV” mind you. This does not include all the time we spend watching TV as “streaming content.”
Concerning those “streaming content” consumers, currently more than half of all households in the U.S. subscribe to at least one of the big three streaming content providers: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. People who have subscriptions to streaming content providers spend about three hours per day watching television programming (source). Whether or not that is in addition to actual “live TV” viewing is hard to surmise.
The common denominator between both of the examples that I’ve mentioned is that they are mediated by screens. Whether it is sitting in front of a TV screen, or slouching over our smartphone screens, or gazing into our laptop screens, we spend an inordinate amount of time in front of screens. Surely, not all of the time that we spend in front of screens is for the sole purpose of what I have called “idle distraction.” We also spend an insane amount of time in front of screens engrossed in social media—such as Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.--which I will expand on in the next section. Yes, many of us spend a significant amount of time in front of a computer screen for our jobs. But couldn't it be argued that work itself is a form of distraction? (I guess that's another topic for another day). Also, come on. Be honest with yourself. How many of you are never using your computer at work to offer you a distraction from work? “Just a little perusal of Facebook here.” “Oh I’ll just check on my fantasy football team real quick—like 20 minutes.” “I’ll get back to work just as soon as I win a game of spider solitaire.”
So what’s the point, Craig? I’m saying all this to preempt the possible rebuttal to the stats I’m about to share. The temptation to dismiss the figures by saying, “Well it’s obvious that a majority of that time is from doing our jobs for 8+ hours every weekday.” It is true that not 100% of time spent in front of screens is used for the purpose of distraction, but I would argue that the vast majority of it is.
Anyway, in the Unites States alone, people spend an average of 444 minutes, or nearly 7.5 hours, staring at a screen everyday. The breakdown of respective screen categories is as follows: 147 minutes for TV, 103 minutes for computer, 151 minutes for smartphone, and 43 minutes for tablets. Perhaps most surprising is that the United States is not 1st on the list of countries, she doesn’t even get to stand on the podium. The U.S. clocks in at a measly 6th place. The Screen Time Championship belongs to Indonesia, coming in with a grand total of 540 minutes of average daily screen gawping (source).
If an alien lifeform discovered earth and just observed us for a while, I think their summation of our species would sound something like this: “the humanoid race is enslaved by the digital screen race. It is clear that the digital screen race is the dominant species in Earth society, for the humanoids spend almost all of their time mesmerized by their digital masters. It appears that it is impossible for them to achieve anything apart from the digital screens. The screens have succeeded in entrancing the humanoids to such an extent that nearly all of the humanoids’ basic survival behaviors—eating, defecating, exercising, working, sleeping, socializing—are controlled by the screens.”
I imagine that talking about this stuff—especially that last bit about the aliens—makes me sound like a luddite. The type of cantankerous old guy that shakes his fist at modern society with disdain and says things like “back in my day…” and “pass the Metamucil…,” but I promise that this is not the case. I am not a luddite. In fact, in many ways I consider myself a futurist. Advancements in technology excite me. I enjoy talking and reading about how the future will look and feel as it is augmented by technology. As I alluded to earlier, the technology itself is not to blame. It is a cop out to point our fingers in shame and embarrassment at the iPhone and exclaim, “He made me do it!” By passing the blame, we get to pass the responsibility, as well as any uncomfortable feelings that come along with it; and that is a strong temptation. After all, the avoidance of pain and discomfort is a survival instinct bred into our very DNA. However, if we make an effort to resist that inclination to pass the blame onto our devices and take a look at ourselves, we may come to learn something about our individual selves. I’m not promising we will like what we learn, but it may be worthwhile nonetheless.
Games: A cursory search of “games” on my iPhone “app store” yields 466,713 results. Seven of the 10 “top grossing” apps in the app store are games. If we just look at the top three app games—Clash of Clans, Game of War, and Candy Crush--the details are quite astonishing. Now bear in mind that each of these games are free to download. So the app developers, presumptively, do not earn any money from the apps being downloaded to your mobile device. However, it is estimated that each of these three games earn well over $1,000,000 per day. You might be wondering: How do they earn so much money by offering a “free” product? Well, the entirety of the sales are from “in-game purchases” that users buy to enhance their game playing ability, or something like that. Stuck on that pesky level 269 in Candy Crush? Buy a Lollipop Hammer for only $1.99! Want to destroy your opponent with even more ferocity in Clash of Clans? Well, this Chest of Gems only costs $99.99 and then you can buy all the Wizards and Giants you need to be victorious! It is predicted that mobile gaming app revenue will reach 46 billion dollars by 2016 (source). And this is just the mobile gaming industry! This does not include console-based gaming like Xbox or Playstation or computer games.
If the money figures weren’t enough evidence of just how massively enthralled we are by games, the amount of time that is spent playing video games is quite staggering. According to Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, we spend 3 billion hours every week playing video games around the world. That is enough hours of video game playing in one week to fill up all the hours in over 8 million years. More than 500 million people around the world play video games for an hour or more every day. In the U.S. alone, about 183 million people, or close to 57% of the population, play at least an hour of video games every day.
TV: Although gaming is quite astonishing in its grasp on our collective attention spans and is on a near meteoric rise in popularity, it still does not approach that titan of idle distraction: the television. Since the TV became commercially available in the early to mid-20th century, nothing has distracted us more thoroughly than the television. Obviously, TV has evolved into many different forms since its inception. We now have TV in such disparate pathways as: network TV, cable TV, satellite TV, TV through the internet (aka “streaming content”), TV on our flatscreens, TV on our laptops, and TV on our smart phones. I’m not even sure it’s appropriate anymore to refer to this all as “TV” because it seems that only a minority of the time are we watching “TV” on an actual television. So by “TV” here I mean it in a more general sense of “television programming.”
Now, I have found that it is actually quite difficult to get an all-inclusive or “total number” of hours spent watching television programming because of the fragmentation of the television industry. Due to the fact that television content can now be consumed in so many different forms, it is difficult to come across an aggregated total. Be that as it may, the numbers that follow are still amazing. The average person in the US watches more than four hours of “live television” (meaning sitting in front of an actual TV and watching live programming) every single day. After working and sleeping, watching TV is by far the most time consuming activity in our lives (source). Overall, when just looking at Americans, we spend about 250 billion hours every year watching TV (source), or more than 4.8 billion hours per week. In a 65 year lifespan, the average American will spend nine whole years of their existence staring at a TV screen (ibid). And this is just “live TV” mind you. This does not include all the time we spend watching TV as “streaming content.”
Concerning those “streaming content” consumers, currently more than half of all households in the U.S. subscribe to at least one of the big three streaming content providers: Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. People who have subscriptions to streaming content providers spend about three hours per day watching television programming (source). Whether or not that is in addition to actual “live TV” viewing is hard to surmise.
The common denominator between both of the examples that I’ve mentioned is that they are mediated by screens. Whether it is sitting in front of a TV screen, or slouching over our smartphone screens, or gazing into our laptop screens, we spend an inordinate amount of time in front of screens. Surely, not all of the time that we spend in front of screens is for the sole purpose of what I have called “idle distraction.” We also spend an insane amount of time in front of screens engrossed in social media—such as Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.--which I will expand on in the next section. Yes, many of us spend a significant amount of time in front of a computer screen for our jobs. But couldn't it be argued that work itself is a form of distraction? (I guess that's another topic for another day). Also, come on. Be honest with yourself. How many of you are never using your computer at work to offer you a distraction from work? “Just a little perusal of Facebook here.” “Oh I’ll just check on my fantasy football team real quick—like 20 minutes.” “I’ll get back to work just as soon as I win a game of spider solitaire.”
So what’s the point, Craig? I’m saying all this to preempt the possible rebuttal to the stats I’m about to share. The temptation to dismiss the figures by saying, “Well it’s obvious that a majority of that time is from doing our jobs for 8+ hours every weekday.” It is true that not 100% of time spent in front of screens is used for the purpose of distraction, but I would argue that the vast majority of it is.
Anyway, in the Unites States alone, people spend an average of 444 minutes, or nearly 7.5 hours, staring at a screen everyday. The breakdown of respective screen categories is as follows: 147 minutes for TV, 103 minutes for computer, 151 minutes for smartphone, and 43 minutes for tablets. Perhaps most surprising is that the United States is not 1st on the list of countries, she doesn’t even get to stand on the podium. The U.S. clocks in at a measly 6th place. The Screen Time Championship belongs to Indonesia, coming in with a grand total of 540 minutes of average daily screen gawping (source).
If an alien lifeform discovered earth and just observed us for a while, I think their summation of our species would sound something like this: “the humanoid race is enslaved by the digital screen race. It is clear that the digital screen race is the dominant species in Earth society, for the humanoids spend almost all of their time mesmerized by their digital masters. It appears that it is impossible for them to achieve anything apart from the digital screens. The screens have succeeded in entrancing the humanoids to such an extent that nearly all of the humanoids’ basic survival behaviors—eating, defecating, exercising, working, sleeping, socializing—are controlled by the screens.”
I imagine that talking about this stuff—especially that last bit about the aliens—makes me sound like a luddite. The type of cantankerous old guy that shakes his fist at modern society with disdain and says things like “back in my day…” and “pass the Metamucil…,” but I promise that this is not the case. I am not a luddite. In fact, in many ways I consider myself a futurist. Advancements in technology excite me. I enjoy talking and reading about how the future will look and feel as it is augmented by technology. As I alluded to earlier, the technology itself is not to blame. It is a cop out to point our fingers in shame and embarrassment at the iPhone and exclaim, “He made me do it!” By passing the blame, we get to pass the responsibility, as well as any uncomfortable feelings that come along with it; and that is a strong temptation. After all, the avoidance of pain and discomfort is a survival instinct bred into our very DNA. However, if we make an effort to resist that inclination to pass the blame onto our devices and take a look at ourselves, we may come to learn something about our individual selves. I’m not promising we will like what we learn, but it may be worthwhile nonetheless.
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