Today, audiovisual consumption almost always happens alongside another device, usually a phone. While a series plays in the background, notifications arrive, timelines refresh, messages demand replies. This phenomenon is often called the second screen, and it has quietly reshaped how stories are written, produced, and consumed.

What is the “Second Screen”?

The idea is straightforward: when people sit down to watch something on platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, or Disney+, there is often another screen competing for their attention, their smartphone.

Studies consistently show that this behavior is especially common among younger audiences (around 60%), but it is far from exclusive to them. Many adults also watch with one eye on the TV and the other on their phone. Attention is no longer singular; it is split by default.

A telling observation from The Guardian

A few months ago, The Guardian published an article that captured this shift particularly well. The piece reported that Netflix had begun encouraging certain types of content designed for “casual viewing”—shows meant to be followed even when viewers are not fully paying attention.

According to the article, some screenwriters were asked to have characters explicitly announce what they are doing, so that viewers who are mostly focused on their phones can still keep track of the plot. If the TV becomes the secondary screen, the story should not demand enough effort to pull attention away from the primary one.

In other words: if your phone is your main screen, the show should not challenge you so much that you feel the need to stop scrolling.

This is not necessarily a conspiracy to “dumb down” audiences. It is better understood as a set of incentives:

• Improve retention
• Optimize engagement metrics
• Compete more effectively within an overcrowded streaming market

Clarity, repetition, and constant reminders become rational design choices.

Why this matters

For platforms and writers

When attention is fragmented, content tends to evolve toward being scroll-proof:

• Dialogue that explains what is happening
• Gentle repetition of key information
• Rhythms built around frequent “peaks” to recapture attention

For viewers

There is a risk here. If everything is designed for distracted consumption, storytelling can become flatter, more explicit, and less demanding. The danger is not that we lose “great art” overnight, but that subtlety, ambiguity, and silence slowly disappear.

The Teletubbies of one era may very well be the Shakespeare of another.

The real competition

This raises an important question: what are TV series actually competing against?

Are they competing with other series? Or are they competing with social media platforms whose entire business model is optimized around capturing and retaining attention?

If the competition is with social networks, then the playing field is uneven. A film competing with another film is not the same as a film competing with an infinite stream of notifications, likes, and algorithmically tuned stimuli. One is cultural competition; the other is closer to digital pharmacology.

This leads to another question: if cultural consumption habits change, should cultural products change with them? Or are we smuggling deeper assumptions into that adaptation?

A dangerous equation

I think many of these changes orbit around an implicit equation:

Stimulation = Entertainment

And, by contrast:

No stimulation = Boredom

Repeated often enough, these equations start to feel obvious.

If I am not being stimulated, I must not be entertained. Visual stimulus becomes the sole measure of engagement, and entertainment loses its conceptual depth.

Why the Equation Fails

Social media floods us with stimuli to achieve its goals. If we accept that stimulation equals entertainment, then the phone will always win. It will not only feel more stimulating, but also be judged as more entertaining, even when the experience itself is shallow or forgettable.

Think about genuinely entertaining moments in your life. Very few of them involve replying to a stranger on social media. Entertainment, at its core, is not purely sensory. It may rely on sensory input, but it also involves meaning, memory, reflection, and emotional resonance.

Stimulation is not the same thing as entertainment.

The more dangerous half

The second equation is even more troubling:

No stimulation = Boredom

Real boredom can be painful, there is no denying that. But lack of stimulation is not the same as boredom. In fact, it can be the condition for some of our most valuable mental processes.

When there is no room between stimulation and boredom, there is no space for:

• Focused thought
• Conceptual depth
• Reflection
• Creative wandering

Fear of boredom can trap us in a conceptual flatland, jumping endlessly from one stimulus to the next, never staying long enough to think deeply about anything.

Ironically, this fear is historically recent. In other eras, boredom was common and unavoidable. Waiting an hour in a plaza without knowing whether someone would arrive was normal. Today, that silence feels intolerable.

Conclusion

We should not fear boredom, but even more importantly, we should not fear non-stimulation.

Yes, boredom can appear if stimulation is absent for long enough. But before that point, there exists a rich territory of thought, imagination, and mental depth. If we never give ourselves time to enter that space, we may reach the end of the day having consumed endlessly, yet thought very little.

That should not be our default exit.

So here is a small invitation:

put your phone down and dive into non-stimulation.

Let’s see what non-stimulation has to offer.

TL,DR: I Built a Game to Help You Quit Doom-scrolling: Armageddon Detox

Install on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/armageddon-detox/id6752503165

Learn more: https://armageddondetox.com/

A couple of months ago I finally started building an app I’d been day-dreaming about for years: a game that helps you detox from your phone.

It’s called Armageddon Detox, and it turns your time away from distracting apps into a fantasy adventure. Instead of white-knuckling your way through a “digital detox,” you set timers, win allies, fight battles, and unlock achievements—so your discipline feels like progress, not punishment.

How it works (in plain English)

• Set your detox goals. Choose how long you want to stay off your phone.
• Earn allies. Every goal you complete unlocks a new hero to add to your party.
• Face battles. At the end of each campaign (every 3 days, weekly, etc.), your team fights a boss. Your recent behavior determines whether you win.
• Collect achievements. Victories add badges (and sometimes dragons 🐉) to your trophy case.
• Track your streak. See your wins stack up and keep your momentum going.

It’s playful on purpose. Quitting bad habits is hard, making it a game gives you feedback, rewards, and a reason to try “just one more day.”

Why I built it

Like many of us, I’ve had stretches where “five minutes on my phone” silently becomes forty. I wanted a tool that wasn’t preachy or joyless—something that nudged me toward better habits while making the process feel fun. So I fused two things I love: game design and solid engineering.

Under the hood (for the nerds)

Armageddon Detox is powered by a fast, reliable backend and a smooth mobile experience:

• Backend: Rust + PostgreSQL + Redis
• Mobile: Flutter (iOS today; Android is coming soon)

If you’re not technical, the short version is: it’s built to be quick, secure, and scalable.

Multilingual from day one

The app is available in English and Spanish, and I plan to keep adding more languages over time.

Try it (and please leave a review!)

• Install on iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/armageddon-detox/id6752503165
• Learn more: https://armageddondetox.com/

If you enjoy it—or if it helps you win back time—a rating and review would mean the world. And if you have feedback or ideas, I’m all ears. This is very much a living project, and your experience will shape what I build next.

Thanks for reading—and good luck in your next battle against the doom-scroll boss. ⚔️

From Activate Xdebug in VVV

Running xdebug_on inside Vagrant:

• Copy and paste output from phpinfo() to Xdebug wizard, analyze and check step about editing the php.ini file (step 9 in my case).
• Check if /usr/lib/php/*/xdebug.so is present in the VM (it should be):

$ ls /usr/lib/php/20170718/xdebug.so

• Update /etc/php/*/fpm/php.ini inside the Vagrant VM according to instructions from the Xdebug wizard website.

$ sudo tee -a /etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini >/dev/null <<'EOF'
 [xdebug]
 zend_extension = /usr/lib/php/20170718/xdebug.so
 EOF

• Restart php service

$ sudo service php7.2-fpm restart

• Check phpinfo()–it should contain a new section for Xdebug

If you are using VVV and want to create a symlink (for example, in order to have your plugins folder outside the Vagrant installation), the following is a way to do it.

Go to your ./Vagrantfile and add the following code:

if vagrant_version >= "1.3.0"
   config.vm.synced_folder "/Users/path/to/your/plugins/folder/", "/srv/www/wordpress-one/wp-content/plugins", :owner => "www-data", :mount_options => [ "dmode=775", "fmode=774" ]
 else
   config.vm.synced_folder "/Users/path/to/your/plugins/folder/", "/srv/www/wordpress-one/wp-content/plugins", :owner => "www-data", :extra => 'dmode=775,fmode=774'
 end

Details:

• In the ./Vagrantfile you should use the param: config.vm.synced_folder
• The first path should point to the folder where you want to keep your plugins
• The second path should point to the Vagrant folder that has the plugins

These are some steps to run PHPUnit on a VVV instance.

1 – SSH into a running Vagrant machine (more info) with this command:

$ vagrant ssh [instance id]

2 – Go to the plugin’s folder with this command:

$ cd /srv/www/wordpress-one/public_html/wp-content/plugins/woocommerce-admin

3 – Update composer:

$ composer update

4 – Execute tests:

$ vendor/bin/phpunit

4.1 – Install tests if it’s necessary, running:

$ bin/install-wp-tests.sh 'wordpress-one-test' 'wp' 'wp' 'localhost' '5.3.2' 'true' //dbname=wordpress-one-test user=wp password=wp host=localhost wp-version=5.3.2 skip-database-creation=true

And try step 4 again.