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In a world where scrolling has become second nature and our devices an extension of ourselves, we’ve become completely detached from both how dependent we are on being perpetually ‘connected’ and how negatively this is impacting us all.
Last week, I finally did what I’ve been urging myself to do for years and deleted Instagram.
Reading that back, it doesn’t sound like much, but doing so required a great deal more willpower than I’d like to admit and I’ve since found myself asking why on Earth I didn’t do it sooner.
The thing is, I’ve been slowly trying to distance myself from social media for a while now.
In early 2023, following God knows how many hours wasted scrolling, I deleted TikTok, which had me hooked from the moment it became popular at the start of the pandemic and which, as a result, was eating away at my life, my quality of sleep, and my ability to focus for longer than a few seconds.
Addiction likes to jump, however, and without even being conscious of it, the next day I was back to watching one video after the other – often for entire mornings – only this time they weren’t on the For You Page, they were Reels.
hate the fact i’m actually addicted to my phone/social media🥴 spend hours on it for literally no reason just scrolling though shite still bored out my brain
— 𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝🍓 (@elhullxnd) October 12, 2020
Once again, my hours spent scrolling were racking up.
Ignoring the blatant fact that I was simply filling the app-shaped hole that getting rid of TikTok had left, I justified this transition by constantly reassuring myself that I needed Instagram to stay in the loop, to see what my friends and family were up to, for work.
Blindly accepting this is what’s had me in the platform’s clutches for over a decade and it wasn’t until I spontaneously decided to quit that I realised you most certainly do not need to be chronically online to feel connected – you just assume you do.
For starters, as someone who’s on a mission to give the present moment their undivided attention, I can’t tell you how hard this is when you’re accustomed to staring at a screen.
Though you’ll likely think I’m stating the obvious, put down your phone for a minute, look out the window, and notice how quickly you get bored.
I gotta put my phone down more . I’m sad to admit but I’m addicted to social media . I habitually get on it and scroll everyday . It maybe robbing my creativity . Or my drive to dig
— Cheat Code Wav (@slimwav) July 17, 2022
This has always been the biggest red flag for me: that whenever there’s a palpable lapse in stimulation, my impulse is to immediately drown in heaps of short-form content and shut out what’s right in front of me.
