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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
So the ordinary friction of talking to someone in person, the pause you fill badly, the thing that comes out wrong, gets read as proof that you are bad at people. It is not evidence of that. It is what conversation is like without an edit button, for everybody. Knowing this beforehand takes some of the sting out of it, and makes it a little easier to stay in the room instead of reaching for the phone the second it gets awkward.
Do not let your eyes turn away from them out of desire for the attractions of this worldly life (Quran 18:28). Real company is set against a more attractive display, and the instruction is to stay with the people.
الكهف
وَٱصۡبِرۡ نَفۡسَكَ مَعَ ٱلَّذِينَ يَدۡعُونَ رَبَّهُم بِٱلۡغَدَوٰةِ وَٱلۡعَشِيِّ يُرِيدُونَ وَجۡهَهُۥۖ وَلَا تَعۡدُ عَيۡنَاكَ عَنۡهُمۡ تُرِيدُ زِينَةَ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَاۖ وَلَا تُطِعۡ مَنۡ أَغۡفَلۡنَا قَلۡبَهُۥ عَن ذِكۡرِنَا وَٱتَّبَعَ هَوَىٰهُ وَكَانَ أَمۡرُهُۥ فُرُطࣰ ا
Content yourself with those who pray to their Lord morning and evening, seeking His approval, and do not let your eyes turn away from them out of desire for the attractions of this worldly life: do not yield to those whose hearts We have made heedless of Our Quran, those who follow their own low desires, those whose ways are unbridled
Qur’an 18:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A survey of 448 college students compared the risk and protective factors for smartphone addiction directly with those for internet addiction and found the two are related but not identical. That supports being specific about which environment you are in and what it allows you to do, rather than lumping all screen use together. It does not test the claim about confidence in face to face situations, which remains a clinical observation.
Choi SW, Kim DJ, Choi JS, Ahn H, Choi EJ, Song WY, Kim S, Youn H. (2015). Comparison of risk and protective factors associated with smartphone addiction and Internet addiction.. Journal of behavioral addictions doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
You have been practising a version of talking that comes with controls the real one does not have.
After a long stretch online people are often not fully there. Something faintly hypnotic settles in, and things get said and done that the same person would not say or do in a room.
Screens are easy to start and have no natural end. So the part worth planning is not the getting on, it is the getting off.
One gentle way to name it: those are being used as words to play with, and they were never really words for playing with. Said kindly, it lands without anyone being told off.