For those of us born before the world of screens was upon us, we remember a time of life off line. We can picture playing outside until the street lights came on, playing monopoly with friends, and doodling on the edges of notebooks until there wasn’t room left to draw anymore. It was being present was the default. Sure, it wasn’t all screen free rainbows and sunshine; TV trays did exist and were utilized in front of the “boob” tube on the occasional week day night and some Friday nights were a total movie binge watching all movies in a series from the video store. I myself watched way too much Star Track (TNG - Trekkie here) in the winter, when I should have probably been outside, or something. But back then, being glued to the TV was different; when it was off, it was off. When you went to bed, there was no screen to follow you into your room (at least I didn’t have my own TV) and when I went to school, I went to school. And our school had just got a computer in grade three and we could practice playing the one game the computer had or drawing (__(__) because why not?
The contrast between those two times could eat up this whole post with stories of the 90s analog moments. But I think what we had was something many of us millennials know we are missing. The fact that the majority of us have had a phone with a screen of some sort since 2010, and have been active in a daily capacity on social media since 2012-2015 is a touch scary. WHY? Two big reasons: ONE - Because it means we have been looking at short form content, on a daily basis for a decade. AND secondly, that we have been eating up our day on screens from our phones for a decade. I don’t think a lot of us realise we have had social media and increased “screen time” for a decade now. A decade is a long time, long enough to have made a meaningful impact on our lives.
It all started out fairly innocently with tagging your grandma in a facebook photo or posting what you ate for dinner on instagram. Those were the good old days, where we were building that social network. It was a simpler time of social media. Ads didn’t exist yet, and very few people were trying to make a living as a content creator. Although, I don’t think this type of posting was without consequence. I remember going for breakfast with a group of girlfriends I hadn’t seen in ages and when the food was served, everyone pulled out their phones and started snapping photos, then texting everyone they knew. I felt like I was in a twilight zone. No one was talking, and they were all face down looking at their phones. Even though social media was “simpler” and back then algorithm really only showed you what your friends ACTUALLY posted, it still got people in the habit of sharing, tagging, and posting. It was the slow build of becoming more connected to our devices. Invitations were no longer sent via email or possibly even paper, they were now online where you could see the guest list and any updates. So fancy. But gradually, it moved too much of our lives online so that now our daily social or community events are only available online. Any attempt I have had to quit social media has led me to show up at playgroup when it was closed or missing out on the local Fall Festival because it was only posted on facebook… alas.
I digress, but this innocent sharing was the inevitable migration of moving our lines online and as our lives moved online, they also moved into a device we can carry around with us in our back pocket and check at any time. Now you can tag your grandma in a photo at a stop light, but no one actually does that. They will text their friend about dinner plans or look up a recipe on the way to the grocery store. They will do so many things whenever they want from the tiny screen that follows us around. Of course there are countless articles and posts about the topic since it affects so many parts of our lives from day to day events to how we bank or socialise or honestly, live. But what interests me, is what is happening to our brains since we have essentially been glued to a device for at least a decade now.
In that decade, how and what people post has changed. People make a living off of social media now and thus put an effort into how they are posting. Reels have an esthetic and style that sparks inspiration in it’s viewer, they are shorter in order to capture and maintain our attention; we are no longer looking at your basic meal post, we are experiencing the space, the aroma, and being carried away to a whole new place. So we scroll and keep scrolling, but does all that scrolling change our brain? What happens when we only see videos of perfect lives in short clips. When we spend anywhere from four to eight hours a day scrolling through short form currated content? Any guesses? Well, for me personally, I became addicted to it. I loved the feeling of watching a short video that perfectly captured my attention. I would pull out my phone when I was waiting for the kettle to boil, or while stiring dinner. I would look at it as soon as I parked somewhere, and when I got back in my truck, not to mention looking at it while waiting in line wherever I was. I probably sound like an insane addict, but then again, when I look around, this is what everyone is doing. EVERYONE. We have lost our ability to NOT pick up our phone when we have a moment. How did we get here? And why can’t people see how disgusting it is. Because it is disgusting.
I will date myself, but there was an episode of TNG (Star Trek - The Next Generation) called the Game, when Riker (one of the main characters) brings back a game from vacation that the whole crew of the ship becomes addicted to. When players succeeded in the game (think candy crush) they received a dopamine reward and were instantly hooked. Sound familiar? THIS is what is happening when people hear a ping or get a notification on their phone or when they watch the perfect video while doomscrolling or find their dream item on marketplace. People’s days are now filled with dopamine hit after dopamine hit like an addicted crew of the Enterprise, and no one thinks it is weird. We are loosing out humanity and becoming more and more addicted to our devices as the companies fine tune their algorithms.
The result is that a new word is added to the dictionary, phubbing, the art of snubbing someone because they are on their phone. Picture the typical parent answering a kid’s question without looking up and replying “uh-huh, uh-huh”, that is phubbing. And subsequently, we are losing words from the dictionary as our dialect is narrowing to the simple words we see on screens since fewer and fewer people have the attention span to read anymore. The short form content has caught up with us, and people can no longer sit still long enough to desire to read long form content. That’s what they call it now, long form content.
The hours spent scrolling through the currated content is slowly changing our brains so we are chasing dopamine in a tiny screen instead of working to get dopamine from real activities in our lives. The screens in our pockets have literally replaced the part of your day where you did something to get the dopamine from hobbies, socialization, cleaning, creating, building, and more. If you don’t take five minutes to step back and look at it, you can’t see it. And no one ever takes five minutes to step back. They might take 30 seconds if they see someone talk about it in a reel, but no one is asking themselves these questions on their own. And how can staring at our phones for four to eight ours a day for ten years not have impacted how we think and feel in ways we cannot compute. Having a phone free evening or day, is fun, but I find that getting your brain back isn’t an overnight success? Does an addict recover in a day? What if you quit your phone for a month? Would you think that would do it? And what are you even quitting? Are you still texting all day and getting email notifications? Every ping counts as a dopamine hit. You would have to use your phone as a phone for a very long time to FEEL like yourself.
I “quit” my phone four months ago, but then I told myself I needed youtube and instagram so I could share content, since I make youtube videos and I need to promote them using certain features only available on a mobile device (stories and adding music to reels and shorts). But gradually this turned into obsessive checking to see how my content was performing. Actually obsessive. I would check it so much it seemed compulsive. I feel gross just thinking about it. And I thought to myself, I don’t think I need these specific mobile features if the trade off is feeling like a full blown addict. So now I can’t share to stories or post reels with good music. Oh well. It’s not my end game anyway.
But the point I wanted to make, was noticing how I felt in each stage of “quitting” my phone (ie deleting most of the apps.) Initially, there is a lot of boredom. Like being a lost puppy and just picking up your phone and putting it down again a lot. You can check how often you “pick up” your phone in a day, and I was around 150 pick ups per day, even without any social media on my phone. Now, I am between 30 and 60 pick ups per day. I often just pick up my phone, look at it, realise there isn’t anything to do on it, and put it down. It’s like the phone was the filler, so I didn’t have to think for myself. And so I keep checking to see if my phone wants to fill my time for me. It doesn’t.
I have text, calling, maps, banking, calendar, and a workout app (I paid a year for - not available online) and that is it. No email. No weather. No social media. Oh, I do have spotify, to play music in the truck. And I do listen to podcasts and audiobooks. So there is that? But a funny thing that I have noticed, with time, I actually like silence more and more. Usually I listen to a podcast while walking the dogs each morning, but more often than not, I am feeling like I just want to walk and to no feel berated by a podcast.
And for all the deleted apps, I have a lap top, where I can check my email, and such. I can look at instagram on it, but honestly, whenever I do, I feel gross. Now when I go on it, because I do post on it from my computer, I feel like people are all trying to impress me and show me something. Like it is a weird weird world of people competing for your attention.
A recent video from my channel. The beginning of my journey.
And side bar, yes, I do make youtube videos. I enjoy it, because it does feel like an art, as I try to tell a story and share my life out there. Is it brain rot? I hope not, but I can see the similarity to instragram. I mean, they are just a shorter version of the same thing, right? Well, maybe? Maybe not. I find on youtube, clips are usually 3 seconds or longer. People linger and chat and I find are more willing to be themselves and more raw. It’s definitely less polished and currated. Now this is just what I am doing on youtube. There is a TON of brain rot on youtube. Particularly videos directed at young kids that have click bait videos of smashing or destroying things. Kids. We talk about it a lot in our home, but of course it exists on a platform where it is still about capturing attention. So it isn’t all sunshine and roses. But back to our phones.
I wanted to make a point about how long it might take to get our brains back. And can we? What is a normal brain of a 43 year old millennial who has been on facebook since 2006-2007 and instagram for over a decade. Do I even know what normal is? Do I know what I am getting back to and what it will feel like when I get there? At first I thought I was over my phone addiction when I started forgetting it places because I didn’t need to bring it with me? What for? A call or text can always wait. And that’s great. But I still pick up my phone 30-60 times a day. What about my dopamine and attention span? For the dopamine. I think this will take a few years. Actually. I need to work on doing activities without my phone for long times to build up my focus. Even as I write this, I have lost focus probably twenty times. Seriously. I checked instagram stats, texted a ton, looked up a sewing pattern, and organized my tabs in chrome. WHYYYYY??!! So I want to work on that. Playing cards with my kids, dominos after dinner, and just doing ONE thing in a moment. All the moments really. I want to read the classics, scrub my floors, and sew some clothes. I hope this helps, and I believe it really will.
One of the biggest changes I have already noticed is how much I day dream. I will stare out a window and just get lost in my thoughts. And this hasn’t happened in aged. AGES. It feels so good. It feels like I am thinking my own thoughts, and not those influences by social media posts about bangs, nutrients, frothy matcha clouds, or the catastrophe of the day. Remember when you were little, and you (your parents) would be driving somewhere and you would stare out the window and watch the trees as your drove by or the rain drops running down the glass? That’s what I feel like I am coming back to.
So this really brings together the dopamine addiction and brain rot cure into one, really. The moment where you are alone with your own thoughts, whenever you have a moment. That’s pretty precious. I wonder how this will grow and transform as the days, weeks, months go by, and my pick ups reduce to a landline (lol) and I will feel like myself for the first time in ten years. Possibly.
I share about my interest in going analog and our phone addiction in my videos. As I said earlier, it is a moving and evolving thing. If you have any questions about it, I would be happy to answer them.
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