Screen Time Epidemic
Noah Phillips
Franz Kafka and Screen Time Addiction
Franz Kafka was an absurdist author and a pioneer in what is now known as ‘Kafkaesque’ stories in which the character or characters are thrown into an illogical situation that they do not normally figure out, question, or escape. All of his writings produced such qualities, which is why it would be reasonable to assume that he would agree with the absurdity of wasting the time you have alive in front of a screen. He might not necessarily see it as completely useless, but he would definitely see it as absurd because of how people knowingly participate despite the clear health downsides that come from it, the lack of concern from parental figures over the youth who are most susceptible to its addicting qualities, and the apparent pressures society puts on everyone to participate in these events.
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Kafka would probably find a distaste in phones because of how easily they can affect your health. At the age of thirty-five, he “developed influenza… and thereafter his health continued to decline. He retired… after exhausting his sick leave and spent the bulk of his remaining years in various sanatoriums, writing fiction until his death in Kierling, Austria, on 3 June 1924” (Bargeron). Kafka became remarkably familiar with this immobility, and probably would not wish it upon anyone else, which is why he would see the use of phones as absurd. From one of his diary entries, he claims, “I write this most definitely out of despair over my body and over the future with this body” (Kafka 5). Though Kafka had many lows in his life, it is obvious he valued the functions of his own body and would agree with the absurdity in withering away by lack of use. This is also mirrored in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, in which the main character Gregor is “suddenly and inexplicably transformed into a giant vermin” (Bargeron). He experiences decreased mobility and rapidly declining health due to a lack of support from his family after the incident, once again showing his familiarity with immobility. Kafka’s mannerisms and way of writing shows that he would see this screen pandemic as absurd.
Furthering the idea of lack of support from familial figures, Kafka would most likely blame much of this addiction on the adults of the kids who are addicted. Kafka was also familiar with issues from family members, as his life was plagued with many such examples. His dad demanded that he get a stable job, and “he worked briefly for an Italian insurance company but found the work dull and the hours too long” (Bargeron). Kafka’s wishes to pursue his writing were also stifled by his father’s will, as “the latter continued to disdain writing as an unworthy occupation long after Kafka became a published author” (Lawson). Kafka’s mother was like his father in the beginning, as “Julie Kafka, helping her husband in the business, neglected the boy in his early years. Appearing to mediate between her husband and her son, she ultimately always sided with the former, so that Kafka felt deserted and betrayed. On the other hand, she later smothered him with solicitude, engendering and fostering in him extreme dependence.” (Sokel). These are only a few of the many examples of him and his parents’ issues, but they all point to how Kafka would most likely already have a distaste for parental figures. He would simultaneously blame the parents for letting their kids become addicted to such a device, but also would warn of a potential overbearingness if parents were to take complete control of their child’s life. He would most likely conclude that a healthy balance between letting kids enjoy the usefulness of their phones while not letting them become overtaken by their devices is a great compromise, but would nonetheless see the current state of the addiction due to unconcerned parents as absurd. This is especially emphasized by the fact that many adults have become addicted as well, seeing as “addiction to smartphone usage is a common worldwide problem among adults'' (Alhassan).
Kafka was also familiar with societal pressures, and he would probably note the ingraining of phones into society as illogical. About a decade before he was ridden with tuberculosis, Kafka was “strained by constant pressure to fulfill familial, professional, and scholastic obligations and expectations, Kafka again succumbed to exhaustion after earning his law doctorate in June, 1906. Shortly thereafter he re-entered the sanatorium…” (“Franz”). Being able to understand how pressures in life can affect an individual means that Kafka would feel sympathetic for those who use phones simply because everyone else does. However, he would also see it as absurd and illogical to let societal pressures control your life, since he was a man who was willing and able to stand up against his father to pursue a career in writing, despite the constant demanding.
Despite the glaring issues that phones possess, Kafka most likely would have conceded that they still have their uses. Throughout his youth, “Kafka was plagued by the discord between his vocation and literary ambitions and by his ambivalence about marriage, which he believed offered the greatest happiness, but which he feared would stifle his creativity” (Bargeron). Kafka was familiar with the struggle between understanding the pros and cons of a given situation, which is why he probably would have been very on the fence about the situation. He would have noted that phones are extremely useful, but the qualities that make them counterproductive, such as social media, are the ones that are glorified and overused, leading to this pandemic.
Franz Kafka would have noted that screen time addiction is an epidemic, regardless of what his opinion is on phones themselves. He also most likely would have settled on the fact that the entire situation is absurd due to its glaring health side effects, unlimited access given to children by the adults who are supposed to guide them, and the way society forces everyone to use one, whether they want one or not. He would have also noted their usefulness, but most likely seen that the negatives outweigh the positives and encouraged the world as a whole to rid themselves of the unnecessary distractions that their phones provide.