Category: privacy

Screenlifting might be a real thing. Surely some people do look at other people’s cell phones, laptops, and tablets without invitation to do so. But is it a problem?  I’ve never heard anyone complain about another person looking at her screen. I’d be interested in hearing from those who have heard someone say, “God, his eyes were all over my Facebook account, looking my up and down my updates.”

For fun, though, let’s examine some different screenlifting situations.

When a stranger views your phone or laptop, your response should probably be uncomplicated. You’ll never see each other again, so unless it was some private financial information they saw, who cares? Because they don’t know you, any personal information will be out of context, less embarrassing, less likely to be understood.

People you see regularly but don’t know well, such as some co-workers, neighbors, or fellow church members, exert a lot of influence. You strive to maintain a certain reputation among them, you compete with them for promotions, seek help or alliances with them, and so forth. They are probably the people you least want to see your screen without your knowledge for fear of it being misinterpreted or taken out of context. At the same time, overt efforts to conceal a screen might foment suspicion that you harbor a lot of secrets.

People close to you such as life partners, family, good friends, should be able to see your screens without worry. It’s reasonable to hide a message about a birthday gift you want to be a surprise, or if you are working on institutionalizing that person due to an unsafe mental illness. But otherwise, if you try to keep other secrets from these individuals, you might need to re-examine your entire relationship.

If you find someone peering at your screen, let it be a door to explore yourself and another person instead of a nest to hatch hasty, ill informed judgments. Are you upset or pleased that a person is looking at your content? Would you rather the person look at you, instead of what you are looking at? Would you rather people pay you no attention, or do you only want attention on your exact terms? If you are worried about exposing your bank account numbers, what are you doing checking your balance in line at Chipolte anyway?

Such situations are ideal to explore how much space or privacy you require. All of that leads to questions about what you expect of others. And if you know your expectations, do you make others clearly aware of them? We should all know those answers about ourselves, and even more important, we why think that way.

In general I would suggest we treat this visual intrusion with more curiosity than anything. When someone looks at you or your screen, you may well discover that person does not have your best interest in mind. But don’t assume it. Not long ago, when someone felt his personal space or honor being challenged by a stare, it was common to say, “What are you looking at?” If we continue to keep interacting with our phones instead of each other, though, that question might become a new, innocent way to just start a conversation.