It didn’t start with some evil plan.
No conspiracy, no secret committee deciding that humanity should stop looking up at the sky or smelling the scent of lilies.
It just… happened. Slowly. One notification at a time.
Once upon a time, waiting was part of life.
We stood in line without knowing what time it was.
We sat on the bus and looked out the window — saw people, trees, and life itself.
Today, we look down.
Down into that glowing rectangle that promises to give us everything — but quietly takes something from us every second.
Six Hours and Thirty-Eight Minutes
That’s how much time the average person spends in front of a screen every day.
Phone, computer, tablet — it all counts.
Six hours and thirty-eight minutes.
It doesn’t sound that bad when you say it fast.
But multiply it by 365 days, and you get 2,372 hours — nearly three full months a year.
Three months when we didn’t go for a walk.
Didn’t cook a meal without a recipe video.
Didn’t look our partner in the eye across the breakfast table.
Three months when we didn’t stop to smell the flowers.
The Geography of Screen Time
In South Africa, people spend over nine hours a day in front of screens.
In Brazil, almost the same.
Bulgaria clocks in at around seven and a half hours, Sweden at about six.
And it’s not just the young.
Older generations — once proud of not understanding “all that digital stuff” — are now equally trapped in the flow.
The only difference is that they read news instead of memes.
But no matter the age, we all share the same strange ritual:
Every morning, we reach for the phone before we stretch our bodies.
It’s as if we no longer wake up — we log in.
The Brain’s New Currency: Attention
Once, wealth was measured in gold, land, or livestock.
Today, it’s measured in seconds.
Seconds of attention.
Every time you open an app, every scroll, an invisible meter starts running.
Your click, your pause, your glance — it all has value.
You’re no longer the user; you’re the product.
We think we’re free, but we’re actually wandering through a carefully designed maze — built by the world’s smartest behavioral scientists.
They know exactly how to drop just the right amount of dopamine to keep us scrolling.
And there goes another hour.
Another flower unnoticed.
The Mathematics of Lost Time
Let’s count.
6.5 hours a day equals 98 days a year.
If you live to be 80, and start using screens regularly at 15, that’s over 17 years of your life in front of screens.
Seventeen years.
That’s an entire childhood.
The time between birth and high school graduation.
Time when you could have learned ten languages, written three books, walked around the Earth four times — or just… laid in the grass and counted clouds.
We’re not just losing time.
We’re losing rhythm.
The pauses between thoughts — those quiet moments where real ideas are born.
No one has ever had a brilliant idea while scrolling TikTok.
We No Longer Talk — We “Share”
They say communication has never been better.
We can reach anyone in seconds.
And yet, we seem to understand each other less than ever.
Maybe because we’ve stopped listening with our ears — and started listening with our thumbs.
We send hearts instead of words.
We “share” emotions instead of showing them.
We don’t ask for advice — we Google it.
And when someone is grieving, we send a praying-hands emoji.
It’s not unkind. It’s convenient.
But convenience is rarely the same as closeness.
We think we’re connected — but maybe we’re just encapsulated.
The Forgotten Scent
When was the last time you truly smelled something?
Not just noticed it, but breathed it in deeply.
The scent of rain on asphalt.
Freshly cut grass.
Someone you love.
We live in a time when everything has become filtered — even smells.
Light comes from screens, sound from speakers, food from apps.
In the end, life becomes a series of deliveries, not experiences.
And somewhere in that comfort, we lose our raw humanity —
the one that comes from freezing, sweating, waiting, longing… and feeling.
Can We “Unsceen” Ourselves?
Yes — but not by throwing our phones into the sea.
It’s not about rejecting technology, but about reclaiming rhythm.
Choosing when to be connected — and when to be alive.
One hour a day without a screen equals 365 hours a year.
That’s over two weeks of life instantly regained.
Two weeks to walk, think, feel, or simply be.
It’s like unplugging the charger — not because the world breaks,
but because you need to recharge for real.
The Quietest Revolution
We often talk about big revolutions — AI, climate, politics.
But perhaps the biggest one right now is the quietest:
those who dare to turn off notifications.
They reclaim their minutes, their glances, their breaths.
To choose silence today is an act of rebellion.
To not answer right away is almost subversive.
But maybe that’s where the future of freedom begins —
in our ability to choose presence over distraction.
The Human Return
Maybe it’s not too late.
Maybe it’s now, in this age of digital excess, that something new begins to grow.
A longing for stillness, for conversation, for true connection.
Because no matter how advanced our screens become,
none will ever replace the feeling of sunlight on your skin
or the scent of wildflowers in July.
So next time you reach for your phone — pause.
Reach out for reality instead.
It’s still there.
And it smells wonderful.
By Chris...