What Would Aristotle Think of Screens?

Several weeks ago, I spent a bit of free time learning Italian online in preparation for traveling to Rome for a Memoria College seminar. In fact, I’ve been spending more and more free time online—more than I’d like to admit, if I’m honest with myself. I heard about a free language-learning website, and the animations and positive sounds that play when I am engaged make learning fun and easy. Whenever I had a free minute in my homeschool day, it became my activity of choice. I was drawn to it over and over again, putting off making lunch until I could finish a lesson and move up to the next level. Soon, I found that my two youngest children quickly became obsessed with the program, asking to sit on my lap while I “played Italian.” Even though they weren’t learning Italian, they stared at the colorful people and animals bouncing around the screen, cheering along with the program whenever I got an answer correct.

This has been a strange experience for me, a self-proclaimed tech minimalist who didn’t own a smartphone until last year. Even today, I hardly ever access the internet from it. Although I had certainly heard of “tech addiction” before, until this language program, I had never experienced it for myself. Over the course of just a few weeks, I suddenly had a much more personal understanding of the “pleasures” of screens and the addictive properties of the dopamine feedback loop.

An addiction is defined as a person’s inability to control use of a substance or behavior, despite negative consequences. Some people who are engrossed in screen time or video games while ignoring other normal activities could be close to meeting this definition. So why does this happen? The reward center in the brain releases dopamine in response to a pleasurable experience or hyperarousal. If a person experiences hyperarousal while playing video games, the brain associates the activity with dopamine. The person develops a strong drive to seek out that same pleasure again and again. Dopamine is a powerful neurotransmitter in the brain. It helps sustain people’s interest and attention, which is why it can be hard for people to tear themselves away from a situation or behavior. It’s also self-reinforcing. The more times people experience the behavior, the more dopamine is released, and the more driven they are to return to the behavior.¹

Can choosing the presumed good (“that which is choice-worthy”) truly be a choice if it is compelled by addiction? It seems that many people have an addiction to the pleasure that screens provide. What would Aristotle think of this? Even though he had no screens in his time, we nonetheless know what he would think, since he so thoroughly covers the topic of pleasure in the Nicomachean Ethics. Much of what constitutes “screen time” would rightly be classified by Aristotle as a pleasurable “amusement,” a form of relaxation, but not happiness. The same can be said for other common modern-day amusements, such as listening to pop music, reading fluff novels, or mindlessly watching a sports game. Certainly, none of these is bad in itself, but for those participating, the pleasure of engaging is the telos itself—not a sufficient end for a fulfilling life.

Many of us, however, don’t play video games. But almost all of us are guilty of what modern Americans call “multitasking.” If you’re like I am, you rarely have only one tab open on the computer, even if the tabs are solely for business-related purposes. Who among us isn’t guilty of checking email while talking on the phone, watching the news while cooking, or staring at text messages while “listening” to a child? It seems Aristotle foresaw this juggling act: “When a person is engaged in two activities at the same time…the more pleasurable activity interferes with the other, and if it is much more pleasurable, does so increasingly so that the other activity ceases altogether. Hence if we are greatly enjoying anything, we do not effectively do something else; and when we are only mildly interested in one occupation, we turn to another.”²

These “pleasurable interferences,” especially in the form of dopamine-inducing screens, can easily and quickly morph into sinister addictions, distracting us from the true pleasures of life: the gift of a conversation with a friend from afar on the phone, the joys of cooking a tasty meal for the people we love, and the heart-melting fulfillment of looking deeply into a child’s eyes and really hearing him. Whether it’s video games, online shopping, or the illusion of multitasking, the promise of these pleasures can turn humans into slaves of addiction. They can rob us of eudaimonia, a successful and fulfilling life of contemplation of the divine. “Anybody can enjoy bodily pleasures—a slave no less than the best of men—but nobody attributes a part in happiness to a slave, unless he also attributes to him a life of his own. Therefore, happiness does not consist in occupations of [finding pleasures], but in activities in accordance with virtue.”³

Regularly staring at screens or busying ourselves with other amusements can be a distraction from life rather than an engagement with it. It’s the opposite of contemplation: an obsession with something so unimportant that one doesn’t even notice what he is missing. “[M]an is happy in so far as [his life] contains something that resembles divine activity,”⁴ and many activities in front of screens are about the furthest from contemplation of the divine that one can get.

Of course, as I type this article, I am doing so on a computer, looking at a screen. It isn’t that screens themselves are intrinsically evil. Rather, using them is a means toward an end, in this case increasing my wisdom through the writing process and sharing that wisdom with others. There can be moderate and useful ways of incorporating technology into our lives, as long as we are the ones choosing the good, rather than allowing screens to become our masters. But what about those who would advocate for dopamine-inducing screen time for themselves and their children? “[These choices] may be pleasant to a person of an unhealthy disposition, but that does not compel us to believe that they are really pleasant (except to these persons), any more than that things are really wholesome or sweet or bitter that seem so to sick people, or that things are white that appear so to people with diseased eyes.”⁵

Aristotle might not outright condemn the use of screens, but he would certainly urge moderation and caution with such a powerful tool, which can quickly lead to addiction. And I suppose Plato might have Socrates ask us endless questions about the purpose of such tools until we end in aporia, a sort of frustration that leaves the reader confused about the next step. However, it behooves educators to think very carefully about incorporating technology into their schools, and to share research with parents about the consequences of screens in the home, so we all have more time for contemplation of the good rather than simply filling our time with the pleasures of the latest distraction.

Thankfully, a few nights ago, I figured out a way to adjust the settings on my language-learning program to stop all animation and noise, which has decreased my preoccupation with the program. While I’m still learning Italian, I am using it in an appropriate way that serves me (with a micro-telos of preparing for the Rome trip) rather than controls me. And I now have more time in my life for the things that matter, choosing eudaimonia as I engage with and care for the family God has given me.