Fifty-Six Hours
I’m writing this longhand. By the time you read it, I will have typed it up into this blog.
This is what happens when you check your screen time, and your daily average is that of a full-time job. A. Full-time. Job. Last night, in between clearing a few work emails, finishing watching a YouTube video (on minimalism of all things!), and challenging my daughter to some online brain quizzes, I reached over, grabbed my phone, and checked my screen time—8 hours! Just on my phone. My daily total on my computer was 7.5 hours.
Houston, we have a problem.
It’s not that Facebook and Instagram feed my soul or that I’m certain I’m going to meet my future life partner on Bumble or Facebook Dating. It’s just that my phone offers something to do, makes me feel productive, needed, less bored, lonely, or aimless.
Eight hours.
I could be out fighting for affordable, quality healthcare for those who aren’t offered insurance through their jobs, because some people work long, hard hours and still can’t afford the current rates of even the crappiest policies. I could be feeding the unhoused, working for food equity, or speaking on the injustices underlying the American food system and the heavy funding of the meat and dairy industries by our government, industries whose products have been consistently shown to contribute to chronic disease—heart disease, diabetes, strokes, and cancer—the leading cause of death in this country. With 56 extra hours a week, I could be out making a goddamned difference in the world.
Instead, I’m double-tapping on @vegan4evah’s photo of Buffalo Cauliflower Ranch Salad—because it’s pretty.
So I put myself on a screen time diet. I need to figure out who I am, what I’m about, and how I can positively impact the lives of others aside from sharing the occasional high five or fire emoji.
In the summer of 2020, when the Black Lives Matter protests hit the streets, I remember feeling supremely useless. I verbally supported those who were protesting. I posted an overwhelming number of BLM-positive memes. And yet, what was I doing in the real world? What was I doing to facilitate policy change at the level of my local government, to implement structural improvements to lesson plans or textbooks, or to reconfigure our food system to eliminate food deserts—areas lacking access to fresh, healthy, affordable food, primarily located in low-income communities of color? Not a thing. No, I was online arguing with Brian about why growing up without new school shoes every year did not qualify him as exempt from white privilege.
I want to make a difference.
I want someone else to have a shot at quality food, shelter, and opportunity—the same shot as those have who are born white and wealthy and who pretty much stay white and wealthy during their lifetime, despite facing a struggle or two here and there. I want smart children who don’t have food at home to be able to focus on reading and math instead of watching the clock, counting down the algebra minutes until they can eat lunch. I want schools in poor neighborhoods to have the same resources as schools in top-rated suburban systems. I want mothers of Black sons not to have to have “the talk” with their boys (the one about how not to die in a white-dominated world). I want my Black male friends not to have stories to share with me about how they were face down on the sidewalk, the road, the parking lot, for no reason other than being Black.
Fifty-six hours.
It won’t fix everything, but it’s a start.
