Has Tech Taken Over Our Entertainment?

Imagine being confined in the 90’s. No internet, no smartphone, no social media, no way to connect with others besides phone calls. Inconceivable, isn’t it? Entertainment back in those days was simple, you watched whatever movie was on TV or available to rent and that was the end of it. 

Today we find ourselves immersed in the era of entertechment. By entertechment, I mean the way technology shapes entertainment, and vice versa. Entertainment and technology have become inseparable from one another. Today we spend more time than ever using technology, thanks to our smartphones there’s not a second we are not watching videos, playing games, or sharing images. But why has this happened? Do we have an inherent need to be entertained? If so, does it really need to be 24/7?

Contemporary entertainment builds upon some very powerful built-in human neural processes, and as a result it's sort of a Big Mac for the brain.

Entertainment is fundamental to the human experience. According to the Anthropologist Peter Stromberg, entertainment “taps into aspects of our evolutionarily conditioned mental and emotional heritage. Contemporary entertainment builds upon some very powerful built-in human neural processes, and as a result it's sort of a Big Mac for the brain.” In other words, our reliance on smartphones and social media to fulfill our basic human need to be entertained is not that different from when our ancestors sat around the fire telling stories.

Being entertained disconnects us from the reality we live in. It helps us to escape from stressful situations, to feel less lonely, or to distract us when we are afraid of facing a new situation in our lives. Science proves we have a human biological need to entertain ourselves. But, the readily-available entertainment media we have nowadays presents a new layer of challenges, those that arise from passive consumption and technological overload. We’ve become a technology-dependent society, and it is affecting how we develop a basic and necessary human quality: creativity.

To really create fresh, competitive business or communication ideas, we need one key ingredient we seem to have less and less of every day: boredom. Yes, it might sound silly or even lazy to some, but if you think about it, when we were kids we were able to transform a box of shoes into a spaceship, or cook “invisible food” in our toy kitchens and have fun for hours. As a 2019 study by Academy of Management Discoveries found, boredom enables and inspires creativity and problem-solving by allowing the mind to wander and daydream. So does this mean that too much technology is destroying “our ability to be bored”, and is it therefore disconnecting us from ourselves? The answer is not a simple yes or a no.

There may be negative side effects resulting from the way we use technology to entertain ourselves, but the solution isn't to stop using technology, it's to become more conscious about how we use it.

While technological developments have continued to bring endless value to humankind, they have also deprived today’s society of many natural ways of interacting. Meeting people in a casual way has become something unusual; emojis have replaced many of our real emotions, substituting our facial expressions and reactions towards someone or something. Our social skills and interactions have changed due to our dependence on technology to communicate. Remember when people used to talk with each other while waiting in line to get food? Today’s way of waiting is to immediately scroll through your phone until it’s your turn.

But does this mean we should go back to the pre-entertechment days? I don’t think so. 

There may be negative side effects resulting from the way we use technology to entertain ourselves, but the solution isn't to stop using technology, it's to become more conscious about how we use it. During quarantine, technology has been critical for us to stay sane and to fill in the gap of our social and entertainment activities. We've stayed connected through multiple devices, and to a certain extent, we have felt the warmth of having people around virtually. We were able to keep working out from our homes thanks to personal trainers and an incredible diversity of instructors who started streaming classes on social media and on YouTube. We were confined, but united thanks to technology.

For me the key is we must be mindful. I use technology just for the basics. I stopped defaulting to playing smartphone games or spying on other people’s lives through social media to “take a break from work.”

Perhaps we can start with small changes that can begin to change our habits. Let’s take a longer walk. Let’s explore the city without following the GPS on our phones. Let’s have more spontaneous conversations with strangers who might become future friends. Let’s just sit and listen to music without any visual stimulation. Other ways of entertainment exist, and they exist not to compete with technology, but rather to complement it.

What about turning off your phone for a day during the weekend? It’s difficult, but to reconnect with ourselves and to recover our ability to create, we need to be more mindful and conscious. You may end up meeting a special person just by waiting in line, notice your kid's new skill or embrace the art of creating a made up recipe. There are a countless number of things that are better, perhaps even more entertaining, without technology.