Dreaming about screen
Screens in dreams do not work, and the reason is not symbolic. A screen is a surface covered in text and fine detail, which is precisely what dreams cannot render, so the reports are dominated by failure to read.
Also searched as: a computer, a television, a monitor, a laptop, watching a screen
The unreadable screen is the characteristic report. Dreamers describe looking at one and being unable to resolve anything on it, or finding it different on a second look.
A screen showing something the dreamer recognises, a place, a person, an event, is a distinct group and is described with more weight.
Controls that do not respond form a third pattern: typing that produces nothing, a cursor that will not go where it is sent, and that belongs with the wider effort-without-effect material.
A screen that is on but shows nothing is reported occasionally and is described as unsettling out of proportion to the image.
Common associations
- Text that will not resolve, which is the whole of it.
- Controls that do not respond.
- Something shown, in the recognisable-content reports.
- A surface that should carry information and does not.
Positive readings
This is a good reality check and an increasingly available one, since most people are near a screen constantly.
Dreamers practising checks report using text on a phone or a monitor as their most reliable trigger.
Difficult readings
Frustration rather than distress. The unresponsive-controls version is the more annoying of the two.
Where the screen shows something distressing, the content rather than the screen is the subject.
Psychological perspectives
Two well-documented findings fully account for this entry: text is unstable in dreams, and motor commands are not executed. A screen requires both to work and gets neither.
That is unusually satisfying by the standards of dream interpretation, and it means a screen dream is evidence about how dreams work rather than about the dreamer.
Continuity accounts for the frequency, which has clearly risen with the objects themselves.
Cultural and historical
None. Screens are decades old and there is no interpretive tradition, which the entry states rather than reaching for mirror or eye material.
What exists instead is a great deal of recent commentary about attention and distraction, which dreamers may bring with them and which is not evidence.
What the sleep science says
Well documented: text and fine detail are unstable in dreams and are used as reality checks.
Well established: motor commands are not executed during REM.
Not established: any meaning for a screen, and no tradition exists to appeal to.
Your own context
- Could you read anything on it?
- Did it stay the same?
- Did the controls work?
- What was it showing?
If this recurs
Log with the book, letter and number reports. All of them are the same finding and the group is the most practically useful one on the site.
Emotions often reported
- frustration
- confusion
- unease
- curiosity
- detachment
- alarm
Specific screen dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
What happened
What state it was in
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Could I read anything?
- Was it the same on a second look?
- Did the controls do anything?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 2.Induction of Lucid Dreams: A Systematic Review of EvidencePeer-reviewed research
Tadas Stumbrys, Daniel Erlacher, Melanie Schädlich and Michael Schredl (2012) · Consciousness and Cognition
Cited for: That no induction technique has strong evidence of reliable effectiveness, and that the better-supported ones are cognitive rather than external.
- 3.The Brain as a Dream State Generator: An Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis of the Dream ProcessPeer-reviewed research
J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley (1977) · American Journal of Psychiatry
Cited for: The activation-synthesis model: that dream narrative is partly the forebrain making sense of brainstem-generated activity.
- 4.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of screen have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- SymbolPhoneThe phone that will not work is one of the most reported modern dream frustrations: wrong numbers, no signal, keys that will not press, and calls that do not connect. It belongs squarely with the effort-without-effect family.
- SymbolBookBooks are reported almost entirely through the failure to read them, and that failure is one of the few dream phenomena with a solid explanation behind it: text in dreams is genuinely unstable.
- SymbolPhotographPhotographs in dreams behave like text: they do not hold still. The most reported version is a picture whose contents change or are wrong, and it is one of the more effective reality checks available.
- NumberNumbers in dreamsNumbers behave badly in dreams for a documented reason: digits are text, and text in dreams does not hold still. A number you are certain about was probably assembled on waking, and knowing that changes what is worth a line in the journal.
- SymbolMachineMachines in dreams are reported through two failures that mirror each other: one that will not start, and one that will not stop. The second is considerably more common and more distressing.
- SymbolMapA map is the worst possible object to hand a dreamer. It is text, it is fine detail, and it claims to describe a space that has no underlying model, so it fails on three counts at once.
Records that mention screen
These pages link to screen, either as something reported in the same dream or as a related subject. This page does not point back at all of them, so the list is assembled rather than chosen.