“Do you want to play Pokémon with us tonight?” asked Sean Reid, my new concrete frat house brother. His question marked the first time in my adult life I had been invited to play an in-person game instead of an online one.
When I sat down with the other players to strategize and create my makeshift Pokémon cards, I was surprised by the deliberate meditation required to craft each one. The act of scribbling on and tearing apart 60 index cards made me realize that something had changed since the start of my journey through the criminal legal system.
At Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, in Pendleton, where I’ve been incarcerated since last October, the droning noise of my screen addiction has finally fallen silent.
Growing up an ‘iPad baby’
The noise began in 2007 when I was 5 years old and had near-unrestricted internet access. Unbeknownst to me, I was a part of the world’s first generation of digital natives. I was an “iPad baby,” naïve about my eventual responsibility for my mental health and addiction.
I learned to tune out trauma by succumbing to the salacious stimuli of screens. I waded in what my age cohort would call “brain rot,” rarely finding respite from the hunt for dopamine.
Screens became as necessary as food and water. Phantom phone vibrations against my thigh were like my stomach signaling hunger. I scavenged through direct messages as a starving animal would dig through trash. Social media was my friendship. Video games were my vocation. And pornography constituted my intimate relationships.
Child psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Dunkley terms this condition electronic screen syndrome. Dunkley said people with the disorder can exhibit anxiety, depression, irritability and impairment with social interaction.
“The developing child’s brain gets wired to crave constant stimulation and the child has difficulty coping when the stimulation is withheld,” according to a 2018 Mendocino Community Health Clinic article.
The article goes on to say that the constant availability of dopamine hits through screens means that children lose out on mental breaks, and therefore precious thinking, processing and reflecting time.
Goodbye brain rot
I gave a sharp exhale through my nose, disrupting the silence at the Pokémon table.
“It really was those damn phones the boomers warned us about,” I said under my breath.
I thought about how loud the noise got when I withdrew from college classes and retreated to my bedroom like a hermit crab retracting into its shell. Although it felt safe, in hindsight I was hypnotized by the same siren song that haunted me all my life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, my phone said average daily usage approached every waking hour. The noise blared in my one-bedroom apartment until I was pressed against the gray wallpaper and surrounded by police. With chilled cuffs clasped around my wrists, it all stopped at once.
But sitting at the Pokémon table surrounded by my peers, I felt purpose and pride for the first time in more than 15 years. I was in prison, obviously, but I realized what had fundamentally changed. I was unplugged.
