Masayuki Uemura, a hardware engineer at Nintendo, died on December 6, 2021, at the age of 78. In the ’70s and ’80s, Uemura led the development of Nintendo’s earliest home consoles and peripherals. The video games of that generation, with their slow and rudimentary graphics and their signature electronic music, became hits with kids and adults alike in an era when screen time was hardly a pixel of concern in anyone’s mind.
Game technology had greatly advanced since those happy days. Today, most of us spend a considerable part of our waking hours in front of screens. The strain on our physical and mental health is evident in all facets of our lives and presents a challenge for our well-being that cannot be ignored.
The freedoms and opportunities that this technology offers are monumental and allow us to expand our imagination and abilities in ways unheard of before. But with freedom comes responsibility, and that freedom is crucially important when it applies to this technological universe. It makes us powerful and able to act and perform with greater access and power, but it also makes us vulnerable in equal amounts through the same opportunities it affords us. The challenge is therefore not only how much and how far we can take this technology, but also how much and how far should. The higher they rise, the harder they fall.
We are all boiling frogs in this reality. The changes occur in small portions of technological steps, herd behaviors, and creeping social standards. When we are injured by an action related to this, it is often too late to make a correction and repair the damage. Our goal should be to keep aware of those changes and modify our behavior to prevent pain and loss. Some checks can be done by healthy personal reflection, others can be done with the help of others or the technology itself:
- Are you using the technology to drive your life or is the technology driving you?
- Do you keep using the technology despite it causing you physical discomfort (headaches, loss of sleep, vision problems, etc.)?
- Does your personal life, including hobbies, suffer as a result of your technology use?
- What is the ratio of your physical social interactions vs. your online ones?
- How much screen time do you spend daily/weekly on games and social media?
- Which parts of your screen time are spent on addictive behaviors (surfing aimlessly, playing menial games with pleasing graphics) vs. productive/creative behaviors (reading, writing, communicating with others)?
Being aware of these parameters and keeping a tab on how you use this technology is an essential first step for keeping a healthy digital environment. It is easier to start monitoring and modifying this in your world. Your professional environment deserves such treatment even more, as it is typically more demanding on your time and can have a greater effect on your stress levels. The changes could be minute, but the earned values they will offer your quality of life will be great for you and your surroundings.