Main Character Energy: How Screens Turn Us Into Spectators

2026-06-26

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What happens when screens stop being something we watch…and become a place we live? Today, The Atlantic writer Megan Garber unpacks the strange new social reality she explores in Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency—where everyone’s performing, politics feels like plot, and “main character energy” starts to warp how we treat real human beings. Then we connect it to the next generation, with Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up by...

What happens when screens stop being something we watch…and become a place we live? Today, The Atlantic writer Megan Garber unpacks the strange new social reality she explores in Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency—where everyone’s performing, politics feels like plot, and “main character energy” starts to warp how we treat real human beings. Then we connect it to the next generation, with Technology’s Child: Digital Media’s Role in the Ages and Stages of Growing Up by Katie Davis, a guide to how kids experience tech differently at each developmental stage—and what “good enough” digital parenting actually looks like.

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