See the light pour through: how art can free us from the exhaustion of smartphone addiction | Katy Hessel

How often do you look up at the sky, rather than down at the black mirror on which you might be reading this column? Will you read to the end of this page? How many tabs have you opened today? If you’re on a train, how many people are interacting with fellow humans rather than looking at their phones? I am not one to judge. I am as addicted to the dopamine hit as anyone. But lately, with the world becoming more disillusioned and divided, it seems more urgent than ever to look outwards rather than in, and to pay attention in the most valuable ways.

I was reminded of this when seeing Bed Rot, a tapestry by US-based artist Qualeasha Wood, at Salon 94 in New York. It shows a woman slumped, drained, or “bed rotting”, with bright white eyes seemingly lit by her screen. Framing her are numerous tabs with slogans that are emblematic of 2024 culture (“brat summer”, for instance) but somehow already feel outdated, lost in the speed of our internet-fuelled world. She looks exhausted. I feel exhausted looking at her. And her malaise is a common one.

In a new radio series, Appetite for Distraction, Matthew Syed explores the state of our attention spans. While debates around this issue have existed for millennia – medieval monks were outraged at the technology of “the book” – it feels especially applicable to our digital age. Studies have found that on average people spend a mere 40 seconds or less on something viewed on a screen – an 80% reduction since 2004.

While distraction can come in many forms, the problem today, Syed informs us, is the unregulated exploitation of us by giant tech companies. With their sophisticated algorithms, they are using more of our data than ever, turning our ever-longer scrolling into cash. This encourages addiction and prevents, especially in children, the growth of the brain. Slowly, it seems, we are becoming less engaged, less creative, less connected, less human.

This is not to say that we should do away with modern digital technologies. Great things come out of them: global connectivity; community building, especially for subcultures; movement-making; a platform to give voice to people, to spread joy, beauty and knowledge. But we should be aware of the more nefarious aspects that are encoded into their design, made to keep us captivated. Wood’s tapestry is an unnerving vision for what this world could, or has already, become.

It is worth recognising that Bed Rot held my attention for longer than my screen usually would, affirming art’s power to make the viewer stop, look and think. It is so much harder to turn away when a material object is in front of you – just as a conversation is more meaningful in person than on a screen.

I do believe that art can help counteract the damaging effects of scrolling on our smartphones. More than ever, we are craving art that can offer world-shifting perspectives to get us to believe in our humanity again. For instance, the work of land artist Nancy Holt re-acquaints us with the natural world and the mysteries of the atmosphere above us.

Lying in the Great Basin Desert, Utah, are Holt’s Sun Tunnels: four giant concrete tubes, tall enough to walk through, that face each other in an X formation. During the day, you can see the expansiveness of the arid landscape and sky through the tunnels. If it’s sunny, light dapples through holes in the pipes arranged in the constellations Capricorn, Columba, Draco and Perseus – as if you were walking on stars. Twice a year, on the summer and winter solstices, the sun will align exactly with the tunnels and the light will pour through.

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Using the Earth and cosmos as her tools, Holt, who died in 2014, accentuates the vast beauty of the natural world by providing a vessel with which to view it. Her work reaffirms the fact that land, sea, sky and human connection are all out there, vying for our attention, but without any motive for capitalist gain.

As the writer Iris Murdoch said in an interview: “Most of the time we fail to see the big wide real world at all because we are blinded by obsession, anxiety, envy, resentment, fear. We make a small personal world in which we remain enclosed. Great art is liberating, it enables us to see and take pleasure in what is not ourselves.”

Art reminds us to look up from the tiny world we’ve made on the black mirror that lives in our pocket. It helps us to understand our place in the universe, and look out to the expanse, rather than into our filtered selves through tech. It’s time to take back our attention; and to give it to the things we deserve and that matter.