Forget Screen Time. We Need to Talk About Screen Real Estate

“For these of you who need Election Evening to really feel much more unhinged, I extremely advocate elections.omg.lol.” That is WIRED senior editor Andrew Couts talking about a single-serving site with a three-by-three grid of 9 YouTube embeds, every broadcasting a 24-hour information channel’s dwell protection. Election.omg.lol’s 9 portals into the way forward for America supplied a relentless stream of red-and-blue maps, speaking heads, and man-on-the-street stories. It was nauseating, “horrifying and kinda helpful,” and “a hell web site.”

It was additionally one among 4 screens I used to be trying in the meanwhile I clicked on it.

Sure, on election evening 2024, like so many others, I had CNN on, a laptop computer open, and a telephone in my hand. This isn’t new; a lot of folks watch TV with a second system close by. What turned clear because the outcomes began pouring in was how a lot area on every of these screens was dedicated to some smaller, use-specific display screen.

CNN, in fact, had chyrons filled with headlines and tickers displaying what number of Electoral Faculty votes Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris had. There have been additionally packing containers blaring countdowns for when the subsequent polls would shut. My iPhone contained a revolving door of TikTok, X, and Instagram. (I saved myself a small piece of digital property by not turning on the Dynamic Island election results service Apple unveiled this week.) My laptop computer, a mixture of Chrome tabs open to information websites and a Slack filled with chats with coworkers—which is how I acquired served that Verge put up within the first place.

Nobody does picture-in-picture on their TV screens anymore, actually, however TVs have been supplemented with tablets, smartphones, laptops. Almost each display screen accessible to us, is now filled with different screens, bifurcating into oblivion.

Even in VRChat, the place my colleague Boone Ashworth spent much of his election eve, there have been folks taking a look at screens … embedded into the screens strapped to their faces.

To not be all Andy Rooney about it, however possibly that’s an excessive amount of. Not that I need to return to the times of simply watching one factor on TV or studying one ebook, absent different issues to distract me, however maybe it’s time we began treating the area on screens prefer it holds precise worth. This column is known as The Monitor as a result of it’s concerning the issues we watch, system agnostic, but it surely’s additionally about what we take note of, what we observe. Perhaps decreasing the variety of issues one pays consideration to gives a method to observe extra.