The Problem with Screen Time

Last night, I gave myself a very good demonstration of the problem with screen time. A couple of weeks ago, I was trying to figure out, if I'm just on line reading the papers, it's different from, well, reading. So there I was on the couch last night with laptop. I was sleepy and should have gone to bed, but I wanted to look a couple of things up first. Three hours later, I had played a few games of Spider Solitaire, looked a few gazillion times at CrackBook, read around in the Times and the Guardian and the Huffington Post, and googled Nadya Suleman. I vaguely recall that I watched one embedded YouTube video, but I have no recollection of what it was about.

Had I been reading a book, I would have had to work hard enough to engage with the author's argument, or with a narrative. That probably would have persuaded me pretty quickly that I was tired enough to go to bed.

The punch line: I forgot to look up either of the things I turned the computer on for.