Doom Scrolling? More Like Dumb Scrolling
Why and how to avoid the dangers of infinite content consumption
Congratulations!! You have chosen to do something on your phone that isn’t mindless! Great job being intentional with your time, attention, and energy. These are some of the few valuable resources we actually have, and today on Wisdom Now: Why and How (with Ryan, wow!) I want to look at one of their biggest threats: Infinite Scrolling.
These days it seems like you can’t escape apps that employ an infinite scrolling feature. From social media to Amazon to search engines to even Substack, for many of us it feels unavoidable. I think most of us can relate to the regret of wasted time on these apps. But not only is it a waste of time, it also involves us unwittingly subjecting ourselves to the marketing, ideologies, and perspectives promoted on these platforms. If we’re not intentional and self-aware, these influences can seep in and affect our thought life, which affects our experience of everything. As someone on the quest, this should concern you.
Really Quick Bonus Why and How:
Why do the media companies want to monopolize our attention, and how are they doing it? The why is pretty simple: advertising revenue. The average person checks their device 55-144 times a day. In the eyes of media corporations, this is a lot of time a that can be monetized. The how has to do with neuroscience, so bear with me for a second.
All phone use involves some dopamine triggers because of the instant reaction time to your inputs. The biggest culprit in mindless infinite content consumption is short form video such as TikTok, Reels, Shorts, and some on Facebook. This type of content has the highest concentration of dopamine triggers: sound, bright colors, receipt of new information, and uncertainty AKA intermittent rewards (when you’re not sure which video is actually gonna be useful or funny so you keep looking). Dopamine is a neuromodulator, which means it affects how our brain wiring gets altered. In other words, it reinforces neural pathways when those pathways prove to be beneficial. So in this case it reinforces our scrolling behavior and causes us to subconsciously desire it. Many of these dopamine triggering techniques are exactly the same as those used in slot machines, but we think of those addicts much differently. Perhaps this is because video consumption doesn’t really cost money, but I’d wager it comes at just as high of a cost nonetheless.
Ok bonus Why and How- over. Let’s dig in to our main Why and How
Why should we avoid this trap and How do we actually do it?
Why?
Here’s a list of 20 reasons why you should avoid the trap of infinite content consumption:
The most compelling reason for me is the time wasted. I have spent countless hours on YouTube and Netflix and Instagram and TikTok and can barely remember a percent of a percent of what I’ve consumed. I find myself even re-watching TV shows and barely remembering anything about them. This is proof to me that it’s not well spent. When my time feels so limited and my attention so scattered, I really regret wasting them on content consumption.
For those of us with kids, being in the same room with your loved ones but spending the time disconnected and scrolling is a sad excuse for relationship. Modeling this for your kids doesn’t help them learn to interact and relate in mature ways.
When we are so drawn to our phones that we subconsciously point our attention to them instead of our own children, something is obviously out of whack. Having had our first child in January, I have been confronted with how often my default is to try to multitask with something on my phone (which normally ends up getting distracted by Instagram or something) while feeding or spending time with Lewis. It takes a lot to resolve to rewire the dopamine reinforced circuits that lead me back to my phone time and time again.
Social media affects us in subliminal ways. It leads to a lot of mimetic desire (when people want things only because it seems like other people want them). This leaves people not really knowing their values or what they really want out of life. They think that money, fame, cars will satisfy them, but that’s only because that’s what it looks like for other people on the Internet. Social media also can influence our morals by normalizing things that we know to be unethical.
Social media is fragmenting our attention; we’re training ourselves to be distractible. Many can relate to how much harder it seems to be able to just read a book than it was in the pre-smartphone era.
Infinite scrolling is interfering with our ability to retain memories, because we’re not being present or experiencing things and therefore not forming new memories. Additionally, they get in the way of our brains ability to transform short term memories into long term. This process involves the creation of new proteins, and that gets interrupted when we’re distracted by our phones. This is not good if you want to be a creative and insightful person. For that you need to be able to sustain your attention and remember things.
It’s a morally degrading environment. Ancient religious wisdom and stoicism both encourage being slow to judge and quick to forgive, but the culture of social media is the opposite.
Endless content consumption has deprived us of any chance or reason to be bored. How often do you allow yourself to be bored? Can you even take a shower without listening to something? Creativity and insight can really only happen if you can cultivate boredom.
The rate of diminishing returns of dopamine hits is high, just like what happens AFTER the first bite of an amazing meal, the first drag of a cigarette, the first sip of coffee. After a couple minutes you end up losing all the pleasure if not feeling worse than when you started.
Our souls and psyche were not created to consume the amount of content we consume. We are not supposed to be omnipresent or omniscient, but social media can approximate it. We don’t need to be everywhere, if we can see posts from other people in Paris or Australia, etc. we can live multiple extra lives through the window of our phone. This is why it’s so refreshing to disconnect while camping or doing a social media detox. It’s a chance to reconnect with our own life, our own environment, our own thoughts. We simply aren’t capable of handling so much input and information.
Because of such wide access to information and other peoples lives, comparison and FOMO run rampant on social media. We’ve all heard that comparison is the thief of joy, and sometimes overhearing an idea leads us to be deaf to it. But there is deep truth in this concept. The constant comparison on social media has been shown to contribute to lowered self-esteem. FOMO has no redeeming qualities either. And in fact, tangentially, it is the worst quality to have if trying to invest finances and time well. Tell yourself: “I’m perfectly happy watching somebody else get rich doing something I would never want to do.”
Social media scrolling leads us to engaging more with strangers than the people in our actual lives. Do you ever catch yourself reading strangers talking to each other about something irrelevant in some obscure comment section? Why did you end up there? Do you value that as a use of your time and attention? You can intentionally engage with humorous or interesting ideas elsewhere in a more constructive way.
The social media algorithms learn your specific behavior to keep you trapped longer. Don’t give up this power so unintentionally.
Our brains naturally want to pay more attention to negative and stressful things. They have become this way to protect us from threats. So, it takes more of an effort to refocus your attention on positive and constructive things. Most of us can easily end up in a deep rabbit hole of negativity.
The way we encounter news gives us a skewed perspective of reality, because when good things happen, there’s no headline. We wind up thinking the word is as bad as it’s ever been but that’s not true. Just the state of modern medicine and the amount of people being brought out of poverty every day is convincing enough the world is much better then in generations past and it’s quickly improving. But that stuff doesn’t make for as clickable headlines as the negative information.
91% of the tweets generated in America are by those in extreme political ideologies. The other 9% are generated by the rest of us. The wide majority of people are not the political extreme tweeters. So interacting in that area again leads to a biased and skewed perception of reality.
The average person consumes between 10,000 and 20,000 news stories per year. Can you think of one that you’ve encountered that has helped you live more according to your values or make better decisions in your personal life?
Being well informed has value, but also high cost. There’s no competitive advantage to being up-to-date on the news, and if something truly important happens, you will hear about it from your friends soon enough. The added stress from the news will exasperate your existing personal worries. Does the news you consume offer solutions, or is it just giving you problems? If you value being informed, what actionable steps are you actually taking to help the causes that you care about? Or are you just complaining about them online? If you consider being informed valuable, are you taking time to actually process what you read away from the screen? Are you journaling or talking it over with somebody else? Engaging in the circles that educate you or are meaningful is good, but when there are no guidelines, you can quickly find yourself accidentally falling asleep to 911 calls of people confessing to murdering their family. That’s probably an unhealthy mind space to unwittingly find yourself in.
Spending needless hours scrolling social media leads to ignoring one’s responsibilities. As you learn to practice more awareness with your social media habits, ask yourself, “Are you neglecting other things you should be doing or even just things that might be good for you?” There might be days that you find yourself without any time to exercise or make a healthy meal. That might just be due to wasted time on social media.
If you find yourself scrolling negative news stories, be aware of how it affects your brain and body. On a technical level, these things are perceived as threats, and therefore your brain releases larger amounts of cortisol. Heightened levels of cortisol for prolonged amounts of time are clearly linked with mood disorders, stomach issues, headaches, fatigue, and shrinkage of parts of the brain, like the hippocampus.
How?
The first step toward this goal, as with many other goals, is to increase your awareness of your own habits and motivations. Ask yourself, what you want to pay attention to? Your attention becomes who you are. Know your triggers, or times of day that you most likely go to the infinite scroll. Do you treat it like stress relief, or sleep aid? Do you think they’re going to sleep is boring, or are you just waiting for yourself to get more tired? If you’re scrolling, you usually won’t get more tired because it’s stimulating. Plus, you have to actually move your thumb to scroll, you can’t just zone out like people used to do in front of a TV or while reading a book.
A good way to increase your awareness and intentionality is to give yourself speed bumps. Keep a rubber band/ hairband on the phone to slow you down and spark reflective questions. You could also download different delay timers or use time limit settings. Try deleting the social media apps off your phone. You can still login through your browser if you need to, but it’s best to log out afterward to have that much more of a speed bump next time. Whenever you encounter one of these speed bumps, be sure to ask yourself what were you logging in, or getting on your phone for? Why did you do it right then? (Bored, feeling socially awkward, needing connection?) What else could you do instead that would meet that same need more intentionally?
There are also some very practical steps you can take to break your habits:
Change the phone itself. Switching to a black and white phone screen will limit a lot of the dopamine release. Rearrange home screen to prioritize the meaningful and necessary apps. Reduce notifications and think of them as interruptions. Ask yourself what do you actually want to be interrupted for? Uber is probably a worthy interruption to let you know they’re three minutes away, but just remember how easily any notification can start your autopilot route to the social media scrollers.
Take metaphorical smoke breaks whenever you feel the need to disengage your attention for a second. Walk outside for a few minutes and leave your phone and earbuds inside. Take time to actually engage with the nature that’s around you, and you will experience stress relief and much more. I believe this is a much better alternative than getting a dopamine fix from social media for 10 minutes.
Another strategy is to get some physical distance. Charge your phone elsewhere at night so you don’t default to scrolling before bed. Consider having no-tech times and no-tech places in your house. Practice connecting face to face and actually getting comfortable with your own thoughts.
Your goals in this area might take a long time to accomplish. Give yourself grace, and time to make small changes. These will build up overtime into a lifestyle you could be proud of! Remember your goal of controlling what you can control and giving the rest up to God like we talked about last week. Social media and time wasted on your phone is something you absolutely can control. But don’t beat yourself up about the times you fall into the trap. That’s exactly what these apps are designed for, and they’re highly incentivized and trained to monopolize your attention.
I hope this post has been helpful to you! Please let me know if you disagree with anything here. This is just the truth as I see it at this point in my life. I would love to engage in deeper discussion about anything I might’ve missed or gotten wrong.
Quick shameless plug: if you’re here you’d probably like my daily newsletter that analyzes wise quotes mostly from Tolstoy. Check out Daily Wisdom- Mostly from Tolstoy on Substack!
Ok, I’m Done.
Sources
[1] Effect of Infinite Scrolling on Mental Health - Psychology of Everything https://psychologyofeverything.com/effect-of-infinite-scrolling-on-mental-health/
[2] How infinite scroll hacks your brain and why it is bad for you ... https://gulfnews.com/special-reports/deadly-scroll-without-end-how-infinite-scroll-hacks-your-brain-and-why-it-is-bad-for-you-1.1676965239566
[3] The Scary Truth About How Zombie Scrolling Impacts Mental Health https://www.newportinstitute.com/resources/mental-health/zombie_scrolling/
[4] How addictive, endless scrolling is bad for your mental health - Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1510pc8/how_addictive_endless_scrolling_is_bad_for_your/
[5] The Dangers of Endless Scrolling: Do TikTok and Other Social ... https://thesagenews.com/21801/opinion/the-dangers-of-endless-scrolling-do-tiktok-and-other-social-medias-cause-mental-illness/
Doom scrolling is the bane of my existence.