Modern writing practices have changed to accommodate the presence of several screens at a time; something which has drastic impacts on the quality of entertainment.

By: Steven Ball

Have you ever checked your phone to see how many minutes you have spent on an app? How about how long you spend with the television on? Odds are that you have quite a bit of time logged on both, and the time spent on those devices might not always be when you are watching. This type of behavior has been popularized with the growth of at home entertainment, a category known as “second screen viewing” where what you have on screen is not necessarily meant to be engaged with at all times. This seems counterintuitive, but it has quickly grown into a predominant method of structuring media, leading us into an era of entertainment we don’t have to engage with.

According to Nielson.com, streaming accounts for 46.4% of all viewing numbers on a daily basis, with platforms like YouTube and Netflix being the most prominent services for viewing. As with most streaming services, they host an ever-growing library of content with almost no limit to what is available. YouTube on its own has upwards of 360 hours of video uploaded every minute to its site, whereas Netflix’s model promotes buying and hosting pretty much anything that comes across their table. There used to be limitations on what you could watch and when you could watch it, but now we are bombarded with a deluge of options available at all times of the day.

“One of the things about second screens is the way in which it kind of takes away the experience of watching what it is you are trying to focus on,” says Professor Linquist, an English instructor at Hilbert College. “But it’s also tied to the weird ways that we live now and the ways in which we have never been so busy. That there’s always too many things to do with too many things to watch and too many things to look at. That we’re kind of always being stretched in so many different directions all the time.” With so many options available at all times, we feel pressured to keep up with new entertainment or develop a fear of missing out (FOMO). In order to compensate for this, it has become increasingly common to throw on a show while scrolling on your phone or performing duties around the house.

In order to compensate for this, services and networks have changed the way in how they write their programs. The primary screen, your phone or other device, holds the majority of your attention while the second screen fills in the background. With this kind of behavior most prominent in younger audiences who are more reliant on their phones, information needs to be communicated to the audience with the expectation of them not paying full attention. Characters might bluntly list characteristics of someone else while they are in the room, actions are declared as they are being committed, plot relevant details are broadcast verbally as if the story itself needed to validate itself. It requires less of your attention to maintain continuity, and makes sure to advertise when you should set down your primary screen to re-engage with the secondary.

For example, Netflix released a film in 2023 called Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire. Heralded by Netflix as a premier exclusive sci-fi franchise created by Zach Snyder, it had plans to become a flagship franchise for generations to come, but was quickly discredited upon its debut. What follows is a piece of dialogue from the movie’s protagonist, Kora, as she speaks to a man named Hagen.

“You know, the two seasons I’ve spent here have given me happiness… that I don’t deserve. I understand I am a child of war. To truly love and… be loved, I… don’t know if I’m capable of either. The very idea of love, of… family was beaten out of me. I was told that love is weakness. And I… I don’t know how that will ever change.”

Kora’s dialogue leaves little room for ambiguity pertaining to her characteristics. She sees herself as someone worthy of love or happiness, and holds doubts whether or not she can change. Rather than express this through subtleties, it is laid out in the open for you to easily digest without much thought. This is a common trend throughout the entire film, hosting a cast of easily recognizable character tropes running the usual playbook of story beats.

What is lost here is a sense of humanity in the characters and trust in the audience to engage with the material. People are not usually so open with each other, typically requiring heightened tension or an immense level of trust in order to be so direct with their words. Rather than feeling like a real person who is struggling with a dark past, she comes across as a stereotypical mold that can fit a hundred other forgotten protagonists.

As second screen applications have become more common, similar practices have been initiated on broadcast and cable media to maximize engagement on multiple screens. The AI marketing platform Arena.im details ways to integrate second screen interaction into the viewing process directly, creating what they call a “more engaging and personalized journey.” This can manifest in all sorts of ways such as on screen social media hashtags, interactive ads, companion apps, live-chats, and augmented reality (AR) experiences. Whatever the method, you are incentivized to pull out your phone to participate in a more “enriched experience.”

While there is no harm in throwing on a favorite classic while you fold the laundry or catch up with the family, the point of entertainment is to be engaged with it. By relegating entertainment to the second screen, you forfeit the opportunity to experience something beyond the surface of enjoyment. Stories have been utilized as a way to pass down knowledge and wisdom for generations, with the best ones sticking around long after you are done with them, enticing you to think about everything you just watched.

“If we lose those quiet spaces,” says Nicholas Carr in his article ‘Is Google Making us Stupid?’, “or fill them up with ‘content,’ we will sacrifice something important not only in ourselves but in our culture.” Are we ready to embrace the second screen? To enter a world of shows you aren’t supposed to watch?