According to my Apple tracking data, I spend between four and nine hours a day in front of a screen (not accounting for TV time), yet if you put a gun to my head, I'm not entirely sure I could name a Pokemon.
I also have no idea who the villain is in Reservoir Dogs (no spoilers, please), and I saw Die Hard for the first time on Christmas Eve when we had a holiday-themed movie night.
I'm not so culturally dense that I don't recognise the names - Star Wars is a sci-fi movie about a cowboy and his pet space bear, Home Alone is a horror movie for kids starring Donald Trump, and Mario Kart is a video game, not a shopping channel. I've picked up the gist of most of the cultural touchstones, but I never got around to reading a lot of them all the way through.
It was probably our upbringing that did it. Mum had a strict rule about no cartoons in the morning before school, so a lot of those '90s cultural icons that my friends grew up with tended to pass me by in a kind of mixed-up blur of half-understood references and mismatched fictional character assassinations.
We were also fortunate enough to grow up in the country where most of the free time we would have otherwise spent online or in front of a screen was taken up by other diversions like trying to catch the poddy calves or learning to read a river current.
I'm not so old as to have not grown up with the internet and personal screens as a formative part of my life; as an adult, I make my living in front of them. And I'm not so curmudgeonly as to not appreciate the privilege that I grew up with; not all kids are fortunate enough to have had the opportunities and space that my siblings and I had.
But I found myself thinking about those things this week as the summer holidays stretches on, and thought invariably turns to just how much time we spend in the glow of the blue light instead of the daylight.
The conventional wisdom is that most of us, especially kids, are spending more time in front of a screen to the detriment of our general health and well-being.
One study in 2020 found that as many as one in three people over the age of 15 aren't doing enough physical activity, leading to generally poorer health.
"Sedentary lifestyles are spreading worldwide because of a lack of available spaces for exercise, increased occupational sedentary behaviours such as office work, and the increased penetration of television and video devices," researchers wrote.
Some data reported in the Newcastle Herald on Thursday finds that Australian kids over 12 are spending as many as nine hours a day online, leading to what one University of Newcastle researcher is calling a "sedentary disease" of "doing too much sitting and staring at screens and ... not getting out and moving around" that could outstrip other leading causes of poor health for younger generations as they get older and personal technology becomes more ubiquitous.
But it's also worth noting that attention to our personal health and fitness has become one of the major concerns of our very online modern lives.
Wearable tech has made it easier to track and analyse everything from our heart rate to how well we sleep. We have apps that record us when we snore, apps to wake us up and calm us down, apps to track how far we run and how often, and if that wasn't enough, we also have an army of thousands of fitness influencers online to #inspire us.
Three of Apple's top 10 most popular apps of 2023 were social media, including TikTok and Instagram, where a casual search for "Fitspiration" returns a torrent of unrealistically slim and sexualised bodies to compare ourselves to and (allegedly) feel inspired to go out and lift something.
A 2023 analysis and audit of Instagram's fitness accounts showed that our social media obsession with certain aspects of our health, and the influencers who hawk it to us, does as much to fester the toxic relationship we have with our bodies as they do to improve it.
Researchers who screened 100 of the most popular Instagram fitness accounts found 41 with credible information like exercise demonstrations or healthy eating tips. Of the other 59 accounts, 26 sexualised or objectified the idea of the ideal body, 22 contained some form of nudity, and 15 contained extreme body types.
What's more, according to some estimates, there are as many as 50,000 fitness influencers on Instagram alone, claiming to have the secret to a healthy lifestyle. And more than a few studies have drawn correlations between exposure to images that encourage a specific physique to disordered eating and dips in body satisfaction, mood and perceived sexual attractiveness.
There's no denying that our kids especially are spending more of our time in front of a screen. There's also compelling evidence that all this time online is causing us to lead more sedentary lifestyles that are impacting our health.
But for better or worse, our screens have become a ubiquitous and near-universal part of our lives. They're on our bedsides, on our wrists, and in our pockets and kitchens and living rooms. They are constantly on our minds.
I pick up my phone more than 100 times a day. It's my calendar, my contact with family and friends, my encyclopaedia, boredom companion, dopamine drip, and (occasionally) my fitness coach. It informs me, encourages me, entertains me, annoys me, confuses and exploits me, mines my data, and often makes me feel bad about myself and how I look.
We need to have a healthier relationship with our screens - there's no denying that. But to achieve it, we are going to have to contend with what is on them and come to terms with our sometimes-toxic ideals of what a "healthy lifestyle" actually means in a world where screens are everywhere.
