When Screens Outshine Life: Reclaiming the Real Colours Around You

Humans love colour!

Think of that big red fruit in the forest standing out from all the greens and browns. It is either going to be really tasty… or really poisonous… isn’t it tempting to find out?

I think that we all need colour in our lives. Whether it is colourful light, tastes, touch, stories, feelings, relationships or projects. But I know one teenage boy very well, he is a very colourful soul, and if he would be allowed I think that he would eat colourful junk food for most meals, spend most of the day on his cell phone scrolling through the colourful memes, videos and advertising, and reading about colourful romantic dramas.

From what I have seen I do not think this is unusual among our current generation of teens…

How can we create an environment for teenagers to develop a healthy relationship to all the colours they are exposed to?

I think a good place to start is by looking on the example we set as adults.

Do you know the experience of over-stimulating yourself with colourful experiences? After a while the colourfulness tends to lose it’s magic. Why? Maybe there is a certain amount of ‘silence’ needed in you for the colours to be noticed and appreciated.

If you keep looking for the next colour ‘hit’, and lose connection to that silence, the colours start to blend together in a big soup until nothing seems colourful at all. When life loses colour that can be a scary place to be. That is also a scary place to see our children be.

Colour attracts attention, and where your attention goes your energy flows. Marketing psychologists know this well, because where your energy flows your money flows too. There are so many colourful things competing for your attention, it might seem toe be overwhelming sometimes. That is because you forgot something very important. You forgot that the only way someone or something else can own your attention, is if you let them.

Imagine if advertising would all be black and white. Then the most colourful things around you would be trees, flowers, homes, your clothes, your feelings, your ideas, your partner’s eyes, the sky, the stars, the feel of the ground under your feet…

Here is an idea for you, turn the screen on your cell-phone to black and white mode (Yes it is possible!, Google it!). Why wait for the advertising industry to do it for you?

Remind yourself what it is like when the colours of your cell phone are not competing for your attention against the colours of your life. If you want to… try it out for a week and see what happens. It is great. Because why should your cell phone be more colourful than your life?

A scene from the movie Pleasantville.

Written by Tristan Girdwood.

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