Diel's daydreams

The small screen is evil, the medium screen is nice, and the big screen is a reward

I have been trying to reduce my addiction to social media and, by proxy, my phone. I don’t use Tik Tok anymore, I never actually liked Instagram, and I’m trying to use Twitter and Bsky only on the computer. But it’s difficult.

The small screen is evil.

It’s too easy to get distracted, and WhatsApp gives me anxiety. All my social media are there, and I'm tempted to look.

I’m trying to only use my phone for:

  1. Pictures; it is practical and has a decent camera;

  2. Music; I like YouTube Music and do basically everything with background music;

  3. Games; not only mobile games (Uma Musume got a grip on me, don’t judge me) but I have some emulators to play Pokémon, Harvest Moon, and Animal Crossing, and of course, Sudoku;

  4. Read; I read a lot, just not books, mostly fanfics and mangas (+ manhuas and manwas);

  5. Art; I commented before I have not been drawing much recently, but when I did, I used Ibis Paint X on my phone. I would do the sketch in traditional and then take a picture and pass it to digital;

  6. Navigation; Just to look at the bus schedule, maybe for maps, that is it;

  7. Payments; as a Brazilian, I use a lot of Pix;

It's still a lot, but if you consider many of these actions are done relatively quickly. 2, 3, and 4 are where I spend the most time; 5 I have not done a lot recently; and 1, 6, and 7 are things done in less than 5 minutes.

The medium screens are nicer.

On my computer, I do a lot of things I have done on my phone in the past, but better this time.

  1. Answer messages; except for WhatsApp, I answer e-mail and social media on my laptop.

  2. Studying; I had to do it on my phone in the pandemic. Yes, I had online classes and only my phone to watch/do homework. Those were dark times. I study not only for college but also for anything I want. (I will organize myself and try to learn Spanish and Italian);

  3. Games; More games! I’m not playing a lot recently, but I like to play Stardew Valley, Papers Please, Tetr.io, and RPG Maker horror games.

  4. Writing: I have always written a lot. As a child, we had a PC but no internet connection, and I would spend a long time in Word. As I grew up, I started writing on my phone. Now I only do it in my laptop. There are a lot of WIPs I need to finish.

  5. Social media; for some reason, doom scrolling does not hit the same in medium screens, so it's easier to just leave the feeds.

  6. YouTube; does not need explanation. YouTube is nice. The quality is lower now with all the AI slop, but I have some YouTubers I cycle from time to time. I usually watch a lot of commentary and gameplay. I'd rather watch the YouTube upload than the lives on Twitch, there are too many ads there, which I can easily bypass with AdBlockers on YouTube;

I feel the “medium” screen increased my life quality a lot. It feels less addicting, and I actually get things done. 

I also use my sister's tablet. It's a cheap, inefficient thing the government gives to the public school students. But I like to use it to read. The memory is astonishingly small and has barely any apps, so it's easier to keep focus. Also, the bigger screen helps too. It actually has the size of a book, and the case opens like one too, so it tricks my brain into thinking I'm holding the real thing. So I have been using it as my "e-reader".

The big screen is a reward.

Here I consider my TV and theater.

I have not actually watched anything on open TV in a long time. Not even the new. As a Brazilian, I grew up watching novelas (or soap operas, as you guys call them there), but I feel the quality has decayed a lot. The last one I can say I really liked was the remake of Pantanal. Três Graças has its qualities, but I have no desire to watch it. Nowadays I use it to watch movies, usually with my sister, sometimes with my mom too. It’s nice.

And of course, the theaters. My sister and I have gone to it a lot more now we are adults. We didn’t have the means (money) to go as children (I talked a bit about it in Piracy in my Brazilian childhood). Now we go a lot, even by ourselves (even if she nags me about me not calling her to go with me or when I don't want to go with her).

So the big screen is only joy. Doesn’t give anxiety. And I have a pleasant time with my family. A reward for a tiring week.