Restricted physical movement and social contact have increased the reliance on technology but what are the long-term side effects? We unpack the science behind screen time.



By Tiana Cline



As Early As 1955, people started panicking about the idea of too much screen time. The saying ‘square eyes’ came along with the invention of television yet today, we’re looking at screens more than ever before. The old adage of a work-life balance has shifted to achieving the perfect screen-life balance which is said to be better for sleep, brain development, mental health and everything in between.



“The problem with screens is not the screens themselves but rather the distance,” explains Dr Johann Lamprecht, a specialist ophthalmic eye surgeon based in Johannesburg. “If we look at the long- term effect of too much screen time, the most likely problem is the development of myopia, or nearsightedness.”



Lamprecht explains that the eye grows before the age of seven and again during the teenage years. The longer the eye is, the more nearsighted you become. “If you spend all day, every day, on a screen – especially during your early developmental years – and you’re focusing up close the whole time, you’re sending your brain signals that your eyes need to grow. It’s long-term, you cannot reverse that growth or make your eyes shorter again.”



Increased screen time isn’t the only link to myopia – reading can also cause nearsightedness. In East Asian countries, for example, there is a myopia epidemic which began in the 1980s. According to a Lancet journal, nearly 90% of adults in this region are nearsighted and this is due to lack of exposure to natural sunlight. Being hunched over a book indoors is just as problematic as too much time spent on a tablet, phone or e-reader – our eyes need bright, ambient light for optimal eye growth.



“In terms of near work, the recommendation is a 20-20-20 rule. For every 20 minutes, for 20 seconds, look at something [more] than 20 feet away – that’s about six meters. When something is six meters or more away from you, the light rays from that object are essentially parallel. For your brain and your eyes, that is distance vision,” says Lamprecht. “When you’re in constant focus, your eyes have to work constantly. That is the trigger for axial length growth – the front to back size of your eye which is then stimulated and eventually becomes a form of shortsightedness.”



Another screen time side effect is digital eye strain, also known as computer vision syndrome (CVS). While digital eye strain is temporary and hasn’t been linked to any long-term health issues, it can affect both adults and children.



“The type of content you look at plays a big role. If you’re concentrating on an Excel spreadsheet the whole day, it is very different to watching a movie. Staggered images and interactive images differ,” adds Vincent Mahlangu, Acer’s product manager for commercial displays and gadgets.



“Newer screens are built to protect your eyes without compromising the color quality. Today’s technology manages the light at the source to ensure compliance with the two standards for color balance and blue light reduction.”



While older monitors that flickered saw people picking up additional accessories like screen protectors or computer glasses to protect their eyes from CVS, today’s devices have this technology built in. What’s more is that there is a big difference between looking at a LED or LCD screen: “LED or OLED displays are organic. It’s been proven that LED displays – light emitting diode technology – release less than 50% of blue light compared to normal screens. It is inevitable that you’ll find flickering with LCD displays due to backlight scanning and local dimming,” says Mahlangu.



Mahlangu adds that brightness and color accuracy go hand-in- hand with eye health. Reducing the light of your screen may lead to eye strain so choosing a display that offers 100% color accuracy (which is as close as possible to what the human eye sees) is a good, long-term investment for anyone who is worried about excessive screen time.



Blue light, on the other hand, is naturally occurring – it’s one the several colors in the visible light spectrum and our exposure to it mainly comes from sunlight. Natural blue light exposure compared to what is emitted by an artificial, electronic source is surprisingly minimal and cannot cause retinal damage.



It may, however, interfere with sleep and in the long run, this plays a role in both brain development and mental health. One 2020 Harvard University study reported that different colors of light have different effects on the human body and being exposed to blue wavelengths at night supresses the secretion of melatonin, the ‘sleep hormone’.



According to Dr Michael Rich, director of the Digital Wellness Lab in Boston, healthcare organizations are considering technology addiction a pathology, similar to substance abuse, yet the use of screens has only accelerated with Covid-19 which means we need to start looking at the science behind screens before declaring what is good, bad or mentally problematic:



“It’s not a true addiction in the sense of having physiological changes when withdrawing from a substance. The word addiction is so stigmatizing&#8230; the overuse of screen time isn’t a standalone diagnosis but rather a syndrome driven by underlying psychological issues that were subclinical outside of the interactive media space or undertreated.”



“Screen time has been on the increase for the last 50 years and it’s not going to get any less,” says Lamprecht. “If you stare at a blue light filtered screen with the perfect prescription, glare-protected glasses for 10 hours, you’re still going to get digital eye strain, tension headaches and neck pain. It has got to do with the amount of time that we are exposed to screens, more than the screen itself. Positive screen time is about self-regulation, building good habits and going outside.”

Young woman doing home finances in the evening

Work-Life Balance Or Screen-Life Balance?

A blank projector screen hangs in the middle of a room in William V.S. Tubman High School. A handful of expatriates and Liberians mill around, waiting for the film that was scheduled to start rolling over an hour ago. Young women wait expectantly behind a table filled with snacks and baked goods. But most of the yellow plastic chairs are empty.
After plugging and unplugging a jumble of chords and tapping a few computer keys the film begins to play. Restless children and 20 or so adult members of the audience sit as a film titled No More Selections We Want Elections screens. It traces the 2005 elections that saw President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf come to power. The sound is gritty, light streaming through the sheer curtains washes out the image on the screen and the audience is small.
This is the first time Liberia has held a film festival. The brainchild of Pandora Hodge, a young Liberian student, and a collection of her colleagues from the University of Liberia and SPARK, a Dutch NGO that fosters entrepreneurship in post-conflict countries. The Image of Liberia film festival was held over three days in Monrovia in February and aired Liberian and African films in classrooms and communities throughout the city. Some screenings were packed and went off without a hitch; others ran late and attracted a sparse audience.
Through the festival, Hodge and her team hope to challenge the war-torn image of Liberia and build up interest in the art house cinema called Kriterion that she and her colleagues are trying to establish. Films about Liberia’s brutal recent history – it’s civil unrest that spanned three decades, killed 250,000 people and destroyed the nation’s infrastructure – are notably absent from the program that is filled with a small selection of Liberian and African films.
“We are creating a platform where young people can go to express themselves. A cinema is a really good way to get people involved and get people aware of what is happening in the country and abroad,” says Hodge.
Inspired by the model of a cinema that was created in Amsterdam by university students involved in the anti-Nazi resistance movement in the aftermath of World War II, Hodge hopes that Monrovia’s own Kriterion can provide part-time employment to students and also become a hub for Liberian cinema and intellectual debate. The Kriterion model has also been adopted by students in post-conflict cities like Sarajevo.
But, establishing an art house cinema will be a challenge in a country where most people get their slice of cinema in ramshackle video clubs, sitting on wooden benches watching Nigerian, American and Indian films off eerie television screens that sit small in the darkness. In Monrovia, cinemas are virtually non-existent – two of the three cinemas, remembered fondly by Liberia’s pre-war generation, have been demolished. Only Rivoli, a cinema in downtown Monrovia, is still standing and seems to screen Bollywood movies exclusively. These cinemas aired mainly American movies as films were largely limited to government public relations and propaganda. But Hodge and her team, through surveying and research, found Liberian audiences want to see more locally produced films.
Unlike some of its neighbors in the region, like Nigeria and Ghana, Liberia has never had a vibrant film culture. Liberia’s cinema scene is small and amateurish with only a handful of directors producing quality films.
Derick Snyder, a filmmaker and producer, describes most Liberian films as birthday party quality.
“You got a little camera for your daughter’s birthday and you just film the yard. We’ve still got a lot to learn,” he says.
Snyder is one of a handful of Liberian producers who are able to shoot and edit quality films. Most actors are untrained and perform for free; those with talent and ambition head to Nigeria, Ghana or Gambia. Lack of access to equipment, technical know-how and stale plotlines, have hindered the growth of Liberia’s small film industry, says Snyder.
“Everyone is doing ma, pa, daughter crying in the living room love stories,” he says, adding that Liberians prefer the drama and slick effects of many of the Nigerian films.
Snyder, like many producers, has a day job shooting events for the United Nations Mission in Liberia and produces films on the side. He says most filmmakers struggle to earn a living.
Unlike other African countries, the Liberian government provides limited funding for the arts.
But, over the past year, there have been efforts to develop filmmaking by organizations such as Accountability Lab, an NGO focused on funding small projects that encourage accountability. Nigerian-Liberian director Divine Key Anderson heads a part-time film school that helps train students to make short films focused on accountability issues.
“Since 1847, we have been writing papers and not much has changed in this country and that is because 70 percent of our population are illiterate… but with film even a blind man can see,” says Anderson, who, like Hodge, agrees that film can be instrumental in creating political debate and change.
For James Emmanuel Roberts, who made No More Selections We Want Elections, the arts play a vital role in creating national identity and broader political and social debate. Roberts, 70, headed the national cultural troupe in the 1970s and helped create a satire television series called Kotati, meaning ‘sit down there’ in the Kru language, that aired on Liberian state-run television.
Roberts argues the development of a film scene in Liberia will play an important role in creating a collective historical memory that was largely erased by the 1980 coup and civil war, during which many records and archives were destroyed.  He says that cinema could help Liberians shape the story of their nation, whose recent history has been narrated by outsiders, namely Western journalists. Roberts and his son are currently working on a film on the 2011 elections.
After I finish interviewing Roberts, the public electricity cuts out and Hodge and her team rush to fuel up a generator for the next screening.
Creating an art house cinema, in a country whose cultural scene is only just beginning to re-emerge a decade after the civil war, will be a challenge. Hodge is confident she and her Kriterions are up to the task and that the film festival will continue to attract a culture-hungry audience.

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