Overgrown
behind our
screens
Xaver Egert
They say that the city is where nature ends.
This statement is a good example of the fact that human perception is subjective – a matter of opinion.
If you board a crowded underground train in Munich, for example, with a little imagination you will soon find yourself in a forest full of trees, their shallow roots swaying back and forth to the rhythm of the wind and the constantly changing stops.
When a person gets on, they choose a place to put down roots. They are helped in this by a fertiliser that almost everyone now carries with them: their smartphone.
Without their smartphone, people would be too restless to imitate the static nature of a tree. One would fail.
But as soon as the display lights up, their eyes and body are transfixed and they stand rigidly, remaining in the place where they have decided to put down roots. Only extreme weather, or a new passenger who they are in the way of, can uproot them now. Or the moment when it is time to take up the axe and get off.
During the rooting process, however, the person is only physically present; their mind wanders somewhere beyond the unknown wilderness of the bluish light. So it can happen that you feel lonely and alone even in a crowded underground train.
But it's not just when we're on the move that we put down roots as soon as our minds come into contact with the fertiliser of our smartphones. At home, too, we sit down at our desks, switch on our computers and lose ourselves in digital worlds.
This detachment of the mind from the body and the simultaneous rooting of the body in one place only appear to be contradictory.
It is a state that can feel liberating or oppressive and freedom-robbing. It is full of ambivalence.
Anyone who knows someone close to them who is addicted to computer games, for example, is surely familiar with this question: Is it the person who turns the PC on? Or does the PC turn the person on?
In such cases, the people close to us literally grow wild and overgrown behind their screens. Shallow roots become deep roots. And we stand by, unable to destroy the shoots that grow faster than we can remove them.
Computer game addiction has now been included as a separate diagnosis in the latest edition of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), the ICD-11. If you know someone who may be affected by computer game addiction, or if you are seeking help yourself, you will find advice and contact points for those affected and their relatives who specialise in the topic of media addiction on the website of the Fachverband für Medienabhängigkeit e.V. (Professional Association for Media Addiction). The website offers a list of contact points throughout Germany, which you can narrow down to those in your area using a postcode search: https://www.fv-medienabhaengigkeit.de/hilfe-finden/adressliste/. Alternatively, you can also contact Caritas' online counselling service.