Be careful how much time you spend on electronic devices the first hour of your day.
“You’re setting your dopamine level; what you input into the system in that hour is going to dictate the rest of your day,†says Rashida Jones, who stars in one of the Season Seven episodes of “Black Mirror.†In it, she plays a woman who gets a second shot at life — but one that comes with a price tag.

In an Season 7 episode of "Black Mirror," Rashida Jones plays a teacher who spouts commercials to her class.
Tracee Ellis Ross plays the corporate representative who can give her those second chances, but only if Jones agrees to the company’s demands.
That control factor, Ross says, is why she takes social media off her phone on a regular basis — “just to break the habit. When I start waking up and scrolling, I’m like, ‘This is problematic,’†she says. “It’s one thing to check your voice, text and email. It’s another to go on to swipe.â€
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Tracee Ellis Ross plays a sales representative for a company that offers life-saving opportunities in exchange for messaging in an episode of "Black Mirror."Â
The speed of electronic devices — like cellphones — can prompt unnecessary purchases, Jones says. “It’s the ease of being alive right now.â€
When Jones’ character is rolled into an emergency room, her husband is given the option of signing up for “Rivermind,†a high-tech system that will keep her alive. In exchange, she becomes a living commercial for any number of goods and services. Since she’s an elementary school teacher, that “product placement†becomes a sticking point for her students.
In one scene, they hear her extol the virtues of a product and don’t know what she’s trying to teach them. For Jones, “the tone has to be close enough where they’re like, ‘Oh, what she’s saying is something we should be learning right now’ and not just having a full-blown panic attack. My regular dialect and my ad dialogue had to be related enough to each other so that kids wouldn’t detect it.â€
Even though those child actors knew she was playing a role, “kids are such truth tellers,†Jones says. “They can’t lie.â€

Rashida Jones includes commercial messages to her students in a season 7 episode of "Black Mirror."
The land of half-truths is where Ross’s company makes its biggest moves. Each time she sells clients on an aspect of her business she’s leaving out what else could be involved.
For Ross, the episode reminded her of ones in the first season of “Black Mirror.†Ones that are eerily close to home are particularly surprising because “you’re so invested in the people.†Had her character just been a salesperson she might have been seen as a villain. Because she’s also a client, she has “a sense of connection and a reality … like an intimacy to what she’s talking about and knowing.â€
Both Jones and Ross say they might not mind having a “setting†on their life dials, if it could remove things like fear and anxiety and replace them with serenity. But the issues “Black Mirror†raises makes them cautious about electronic advances. The ability to watch a TV show and scroll at the same time may be intriguing but “second screen watching†could be too much, Ross says.
“I’m not a person who leaves the TV on,†Ross says. “My life has so much talking and noise-noise that I (embrace) the silence. Trees and birds make great music. It’s totally good for your nervous system.â€
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“Black Mirror†is now streaming on Netflix.