I have thought about stopping Instagram multiple times, yet somehow it snuck back in my life. That is until I convinced myself logically, somehow that works for me more than it should.
When I think of something taking over me like Instagram addiction I think of it targeting my emotional self but the logical self seems to also hold a lot of power. It was the same with gambling, I have played with fire and gambled some money but because I know how probabilities work I never thought of beating the house, which seems to be prevalent in gambling addicts, they always think they have “figured out the game”.
I am getting off topic here, the point was I found a logical explanation on why doom-scrolling on Instagram is completely and utterly stupid if you are doing it as a form of entertainment. You can better understand this explanation by comparing it with watching a movie, lets say I give you a free movie ticket and you have time on your hands, the movie also looks interesting but there is a caveat you forget the movie soon as you exit the halls, now would you still want to watch it?
Probably not because that would be throwing away 2-3 hours of your time and even if you got nothing to do you still might not want to just waste it away, but isn’t that what you do when you are doom scrolling reels for 3 hours? Try to remember how many reels you have watched today and how many of them can you remember, most likely none and on rare occasions one or two. How is that not same as literally throwing away your time.
If you zoom out a bit it becomes scarier, if you look at your Instagram screentime besides from chatting and other stuff, all those hours EVERY SINGLE DAY, you are sitting there like a zombie staring at a screen and forgetting everything you just consumed the second you put it away. Tell me that is not completely insane.
This was enough to get me off short form content completely, and am now thinking of getting rid of long form YouTube aswell, but somehow that thought scares me. Right now I am going through a transitioning phase of my life uni is over but I don’t have a job yet, I will have one soon and that will mark a beginning of a long new phase. This phase is most possibly going to be the peak of my life, which means I can’t keep pushing decisions forward, there is no later after this point. So I was thinking of everything that would make my life ‘perfect’, leaving social media completely including YouTube was one of them.
But the thought of not watching YouTube or Something scared me, more than it should really, the fear comes really from all the free time I am going to have if I go forward with this plan. Shouldn’t it be exciting? With all the possibilities. Yes sure I can think of countless things to do,
- Learn a new language
- Master an instrument
- Make robots
- Play chess
- Read fiction
- Write more probably
But even after telling myself everything that I could do, the mind just punches back with a question, “ok and? what are you gonna do after this?” As if everything I just mentioned is a “side-thing” or a “hobby” that is temporary and the only constant in life is consuming content. You take away that and life just stares back at you reminding you how empty it really is, and I think that is the thing that scares me.
If I am not constantly numbed by consumption, If I started seeing things clearly I would see the scary reality, I would feel the passage of time. When I was a child, this passage of time felt good, because something was coming, high school, university, job, money, freedom. But now this is scary, when I have to question myself what am I going to do for the next 50 years.
I wonder if alcoholics feel the same way, as alcohol is their way of escaping from reality and smartphones are ours, and am I feeling the withdrawal symptoms or the painfully blinding light after opening my eyes after years.