Notice Regarding Second Screen Escape
The phone is checked during a video call to recover from the experience of looking at a screen.
Search History: Second Screen Escape Submitted for the Record, January 2022
The following is a reconstructed account based on observable behavior during a 60-minute video call.
0:00 Call begins. Subject opens laptop. Video call is the primary screen. Subject is attentive.
0:11 First scroll. The call contains a slide presentation. The slides are legible. The subject checks their phone while the slide is being read aloud by the presenter. The phone contains nothing new.
0:23 Notification. The subject receives a phone notification. The notification is from a weather application. The subject dismisses it and returns to the call.
0:31 Fatigue onset. The subject has been looking at a screen for 31 minutes. The screen contains faces. The faces are looking at their own screens. The subject looks at a different screen.
0:37 The escape logic. The subject is aware they are using one screen to recover from another screen. The subject considers, briefly, what a non-screen break would look like during a call. The conclusion is that it would look like staring into the room.
Staring into the room is perceived as less present than looking at a phone. Presence is being managed.
0:44 Content quality. The phone has provided: a weather notification, four emails, a news headline the subject already encountered this morning, and a receipt confirmation for a purchase made last week.
None of this is why the phone was checked.
0:60 Call ends. The subject closes the laptop. The subject checks the phone.
The call is over. The phone contains the same things it contained during the call.
The subject sets the phone face-down and looks at the room for approximately forty seconds.
This is the closest the subject comes to a break.