I’m always loath to read stories that have the phrase “a new study” in their first sentence, but those news items pointing to the Halifax Insurance Digital Home Index this week gave me some pause, if only because I thought that its estimate of the current generation of kids spending 25 percent of their lives in front of some sort of screen was pretty low. Between movies, TV, computers, smartphones, and tablets—not to mention the rise of Google Glass, which (conveniently) marketed itself via hashtag shortly after the study was released—I wouldn’t be too surprised if the mediated experience somehow extended to the sleep phase by 2040 or so.

This issue‘s pieces view the world through screens as well: There’s my interview with Community writer Maggie Bandur, which looks at metacommentary on science fiction and the relative audiences of the internet and TV; Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s thoughts on the way television consumption has shape-shifted in the wake of the explosion of blogs and the rise of the binge view; and Jillian Mapes’s personal take on Catfish, the MTV show about online romances that are often different in real life than on the internet. For a different type of mediated experience, there’s also a lovely short story about a picnic that takes on new dimensions thanks to some brownies.