Second-screen writing: The middleman’s intervention 

With an increase in social media and technology’s monopolisation over our time, I’m sure that we, television watchers, often find ourselves guilty of scrolling through or checking our phones repeatedly while watching a show. It may not be every show, it may not be every time we watch a show either, but it does happen – no matter how ‘above it’ we think we may be.   

This tendency has a term to it – ‘second-screen viewing’ – and it is certainly not a new phenomenon. People, for as long as television has existed, have been watching it in the background of something else. It can be to alleviate the boredom of checking work emails, or just some white noise if you’re on your own, but as long as you are aware of its purpose, second screen viewing should be fine, right? But what if that became your natural viewing habit?   

Everyone has different approaches to television – some look for the next masterpiece akin to Breaking Bad or Fleabag, while some do it to turn their brain off. The question arises now, about whether the latter should be frowned upon or (contrarily) encouraged.It’s a problem of a cyclical nature

Despite denying or refusing to comment on these allegations, ‘beloved’ streaming giant Netflix has been accused of encouraging the modification of screenwriting to accommodate for second-screen viewing. These claims have come from a variety of sources, anonymous or not. Matt Damon, when promoting The Rip, said that Netflix does tell its writers to repeat the plot a few times as people would likely be on their phones while watching.  

  You yourself may have noticed this taking its toll on former fan-favourite Netflix shows. A sad example of this is the latest season of Stranger Things. The show started off with a strong, cult-like following, which is why it was so sad for those followers to see how dull the show became. The problems seemed bizarre and the dialogue childish. And the faults in writing can perhaps be attributed to the characteristics of second-screen viewing so obviously present in this show.  

Half the (lengthy) runtime of the episodes can just be summed up as the characters explaining, in excruciating detail, the events of previous scenes/episodes to the others. Repetitive garbage, and it is likely to only grow worse. Using this show as an example, we should probably think about the implications of ‘second-screen writing’ on television and pop culture as a whole.     

The term itself is chilling: second-screen writing. It’s built upon the term second-screen viewing, meaning that apathetic viewing habits are contributing to apathetic writing patterns. It’s a spiral of half-hearted, lazy, non-art and it’s dangerous to television. For one, second-screen writing can be used as a guise to produce low-quality, low-effort content, to minimise costs of production and maximise profits (assuming consumers are willing to ingest just about anything, which unfortunately seems to be the case).  

But capitalistic greed being at the causal forefront of any issue is disturbingly normal. The big problem that second-screen writing causes itself is…boredom.  

Whatever happened to screenwriting as an art form? If second-screen viewing is accepted as the norm, I can foresee a sort of learned helplessness permeating writers’ rooms across the television industry. Why would artists create for an audience that is permanently disengaged? They have every right not to. They have every right to be lazy out of defiance and to write purely for extrinsic motivators like money.   

And what of the viewers? Of course, if viewers are faced with shows that don’t need much attention, they will eventually stop feeling any urge to give them attention. It’s a problem of a cyclical nature: dangerous phenomena that reinforce each other, and honestly, neither side is to blame.  

The issue lies not with the artist, nor the consumer of the art, but with the middleman: the streaming giant that encourages this. Pressuring screenwriters to adhere to a low standard, actively discourages art and its creation, very blatantly putting profit over expression (as we’ve established earlier). Additionally, the role of corporations similar to the streaming giant in creating the second-screen viewer in the first place cannot be denied. Declining attention spans, likely perpetuated by doomscrolling, could be one of the primary reasons for increasing second-screen viewing.   

But of course, it’s not all that grim. There will always be a demand for ‘background’ shows and there will always be second-screen viewing. But we shouldn’t make it the norm. So, make it a point to appreciate television for what it is: an art form. It can be an escape, but it can also be so much more, and that is what you will find if you revert to single-screen viewing.