Stopping Cues

A I Generated Picture

This could be a rant, it could be overly bleak, it could be controversial. There’s so much I could write about the biggest issues facing us, but I have decided to take a different tack with this post. I am going to look at a change that society will not make, but that we can. It’s a change that will make us feel calmer and more in control of our surroundings.

There is an excellent Ted Talk by Adam Alter called Why our screens make us less happy. The main focus of this talk is the lack of stopping cues given to us in modern life. Stopping cues are simply opportunities to reflect on what we’re doing and to decide whether we want to continue or to finish. What I would change about modern society is that I would bring these stopping cues back to our televisions in particular. So how would I do this?

Rein in the 24 Hour Society

The first stopping cue to bring back would be the closedown on the main channels. In the 70s, 80s and even the 90s, the channels all stopped at a particular time in the night. It varied, but usually between 11pm and 1am the announcer wished you a good night’s sleep and then played the national anthem or gave way to a high pitched continuous note. There were no satellite channels, no streaming services and very few, if any, home computers with more than 48k of memory, so when he said goodnight you switched off the set. These days you could keep the set on and move to Netflix, but at least you would have reflected as to whether that was what you wanted to do. Simply doing this would also have, I think, a knock on effect for your phone scrolling because it would be a clear indication that you needed to get some rest. Yes, you could override it but I feel as though you are less likely to.

The second stopping cue I would bring back would deal with the ever worsening and trivial news cycle. 24 hour news channels are not only unnecessary, they are damaging to society. When we had 3 news bulletins a day and a paper printed the following morning reflecting on the events of the previous day, the treatment of the news was generally more serious, more considered and more balanced. Now, with endless hours to fill up we have pointless speculation, constant repetition, many unqualified members of the public being asked for their ill thought out opinions, and politicians trying to govern according to what they see on these programmes. It has made newspapers worse, because they are also trying to keep up with 24 hour demands, it has made interviewing worse as there is no time for proper reflection, and it has made us worse as we are just not evolved to deal with this constant diet of fear and misery.

The third and final idea is to say to iPlayer, ITVX and 4OD etc, that they are only allowed to stream an entire series once that series has finished on scheduled television. Let’s bring back shared experiences and discussions. Nowadays you can’t start conversations about ‘last night’s television’ in many cases because some people will have gone ahead and binge watched the whole series while others have decided to keep the binge watching until next week or next month. It has robbed us of the water cooler moments that we used to share and which made television a national experience rather than the solitary atomised and largely sterile one it has become.

Final Thought

My ideas above will never be taken on board on a national and international level, but they are totally possible on a personal level. We can choose to watch TV until a certain time and institute our own closedown, recording what we otherwise would miss as we have been doing since the advent of VCRs in the late 1970s. We can avoid 24 hour news channels and perhaps only watch one bulletin a day to get the news we need. Finally, we can watch that new series at the speed of one episode a week, or however often it is on, and savour it as an individual entity.