Why our screens make us less happy

Adam Alter began his TED talk with how Steve Jobs limits technology and screen time with his kids.

This made him think about what screens were doing to people.

He collected on data how much time we were spending time with our technologies. The time we spend per day with them were increasing year by year.

The weird thing is that we were actually spending more time with apps that doesn’t make us happy.

Why is that happening?

Adam Alter said that it was because there were no “stopping cues”. Back when I was much younger, in primary school, I used to watch dramas on TV. There is no such thing as binge-watching, I had to wait till the next day/week to watch the next episode. That was my stopping cue, a sign for me to go and do something else, something new.

But with the way we consume media nowadays, there is always new content rolling in from different apps. There is no stopping because we are so connected with each other. Stopping cues are non-existent, there is nothing to stop us from looking at our screens and move on to do something else.

We need to break away from technology once in awhile. We need to breathe.

Being disconnected and giving ourselves some real alone time is a very important and healthy thing to do.

 

My One Demand

My One Demand is an interactive film about unrequited love. It’s an one take, continuous shot using a single camera, and comments from a live viewing audience.
The shoot is actually happening right outside the theatre simultaneously as the audience are seated inside watching the broadcast live.
Audiences were engaged and encouraged to interact live by responding to a series of questions posed by the narrator about, unrequited love.
Selected answers received will be added to the script. This makes the script unique as 1 will never be the same as another screening.
As the film comes to an end, the narrator asks the last question about what is something you wish you could change, but couldn’t? All the answers received are projected onto the screen.

MOD’s narrative is not just to tell the narratives of the characters in the film to the audience. But also to pull in snippets of the narratives from the audiences themselves.
This is especially so for the last question. As they watch the answers of what the others around them has to say, they wonder about their narratives too.