resting scroll face

I don’t want to tell you how many hours I spend on Instagram, but it’s embarrassing. Reddit, YouTube, YouTube shorts – you name it and I can find a way to spend minutes – no, hours – scrolling.

Instagram reels are the bane of my existence. I’ve stayed away from TikTok but I think Insta reels have a similar hit of dopamine with every swipe. It’s designed that way, isn’t it?

I don’t want to be a brainless consumer though – I work full time, technically I study full time too, I’m a writer and this time drain needs to stop. Yesterday.

The more I consume mindlessly, the less I can create mindfully. (That feels like some sort of rhetoric from a self-help book. Wow, I contain multitudes and in those multitudes is a self-help guru.) Let me just quote myself so this post looks sickeningly helpful:

The more I consume mindlessly, the less I can create mindfully.

A friend of mine told me that he gave up YouTube (GASP) and as someone who watches YouTube videos nearly everyday, this shook me. To my core. How? And also – why haven’t I tried this before?

Being a woman of quick decisions and dedicated carry-through, I’ve now disabled YouTube on my phone. I’d already removed the internet browser from its easy access menu.

It can be hard to quit everything cold turkey, but darn it, I’m going to try. This year I’m desperate to mindlessly consume less. I have books to write, damn it, studies! work! living! The motives are endless.

I suppose the biggest stumbling block (you can tell when someone was raised Christian because there’s this whole vernacular that we use – ‘stumbling block’ is one of them) to it is beating yourself up if you fail. I don’t think I want to be in the business of doing that. It’s really quite exhausting. I’ll be gentle to myself but I’ll keep trying.

I find that the best way to create new habits is to make them accessible and low effort. (Self-help guru strikes again!) Don’t focus on what you’re not doing (scrolling), but focus on what is easy to do (using that language app or scrawling a letter).

The best way to create new habits is to make them accessible and low effort.

I keep my diary tucked away on my desk within easy reach and mounds and mounds of books are available. I’m never lacking for activities.

I’m part way through reading How To Break Up With Your Phone which highlights lots of research which says that you know, FYI, you can be hella addicted to your phone. I don’t want to be addicted to anything that I absolutely do not have to be. I resent it. I can’t help it. Breathing, sure, okay. Phones? Thank you very much, but no.

So good luck to me – no, good luck to all of us who are trying to shake the shackles of the endless doom scroll. We’ve got this. Unless we haven’t, but then we’ll keep trying until we do.