Avidly Reads Screen Time

What happens when screen time is all the time? In the early 1990s, the phrase “screen time” emerged to scare parents about the dangers of too much TV for kids. Screen time was something to fret over, police, and judge in a low-grade moral panic. Now, “screen time” has become a metric not only for good parenting, but for our adult lives as well. There’s even an app for it! In the streaming era―and with streaming made nearly ubiquitous during COVID-19―almost every aspect of our day is mediated by these bright surfaces. Whether it was ever the real villain in the first place, or merely a convenient proxy for unaddressed familial, social, and institutional failures, screen time is now all the time. Avidly Reads Screen Time is a funny, insightful work of cultural criticism and history about how we define screens, and how they now define us. From Mad Men to iCarly , Vine to FaceTime, binge-watching to doom-scrolling, Phillip Maciak leads us on a sometimes heartwarming, sometimes harrowing tour of the media that brings us together and tears us apart. Cover Series Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents 1. Creatures Made of Screens 2. The Screen Time Era 3. We Are Not Alone (good vibes) 4. We Are Not Alone (bad vibes) 5. Space Junk Acknowledgments Works Consulted About the Author "Avidly Reads Screen Time is a heartwarming, harrowing diary of our relationship with screens and the complicated feelings we have about them"-- Provided by publisher