Screen Time

March 26, 2025

I have spent a great deal of time in this still-new year reflecting on my use of technology. While I’m choosing to rely less on electronics in my life outside of work, news from the wider world shows technology playing a bigger role than ever in human existence.

A friend recently gave me a gentle reminder that I was using “too many screens” when she saw me simultaneously consulting my phone and scrolling on the computer. (It was for work, but I agree with the sentiment.) This happened around my birthday, and it caused me to think about how much the landscape of technology has changed in my lifetime. When I started school, the concept of a “screen” was narrower and didn’t seem all that dangerous.

One of my earliest memories is of riding in the car with my parents to drop off our clunky VCR at the repair shop. To young Grace, technology was the videos I checked out from the library and the little drawings Dad would fax to our house when he got bored at work. I also listened to stories on cassette tape every night before bed. We only owned a handful of tapes, so I soon memorized them. It made me happy to be so familiar with the stories that their narrators were like old friends. I couldn’t imagine a world where someone could carry most of the stories ever told in the palm of their hand.

Computers came into my life early on. I was adept at figuring out how to play games in every new format – from floppy disks to websites. As an only child, I also used our computer as a source of inspiration and creative identity. I could take my art and writing ideas and turn them into finished products (which, at the time, I still printed out).

I remember my parents presenting the computer as something I would be learning in school and something I’d need to know how to use as I got older. This could be a whole essay in itself, but I will never understand the negative comments that are leveraged against young people who use technology. My peers and I didn’t choose to grow up in an era when computers were being aggressively marketed to schools and families.

My parents’ lives were tied to technology trends in other ways. Shortly after they’d started dating, my dad had opened his own printing business and my mom had begun selling stationery. Later, financial need dictated that they both get other jobs. I will never forget the sight of Dad’s beloved printing press getting hauled away. Perhaps appropriately, this was right around when the digital era took off.

In 2005, we got our first digital camera and began recording our family’s life in great detail. A few years later, my friends were begging me to make an account on Facebook so I could join them in the online world. Screens started appearing on the dashboards of cars. Classmates started to show up to school with iPods. And when the first smartphones hit, I clearly remember thinking of them as music players that could also make calls.

Speaking of music, we all went through multiple transitions to new audio and video technologies. Each time, it felt like we’d somehow been duped into buying so much of the previous format. Only Dad’s favorite Christmas albums have withstood the test of time, having been migrated from vinyl to cassette to CD to digital files that still live on my laptop today.

All this to say: the pace of change seems to be getting faster, and there does seem to be such a thing as “too many screens.” I don’t believe society is doomed if we accept a new technology. But neither do I believe that technology will save the world like its promoters want us to think. Being new and being good are two completely different realms.

I will always seek out music, stories, and connections with loved ones in my life. I will always be interested in documenting such a life in words and images. I’m grateful that I have numerous opportunities to do it all. As my own story unfolds, it hasn’t made much of a difference what technology is in my hand (or on my desk) along the way.