Escape That Screen!
I am officially fed up with spending all my time in front of a screen!!!!
Like many others my age, I’ve grown up surrounded by developing technology. Products from Nintendo, Xbox (Microsoft), Apple, Samsung, that Magic Whiteboard in school that the teachers could never really get to work. I’ve witnessed a lot of it. In primary school, computers weren’t used unless we had to type up something or go on Mathletics for ‘fun’. At home, if it wasn’t the television, it was the home computer, where I would sit by my sister’s side as she played Club Penguin. Although every time she left the computer I would spend all her coins on new clothes for our penguin (it was actually just her’s… sorry Kailey). Regardless of what it was, whether it was at school or at home, I was consuming technology for at least a few hours a day from the age of five.
Three years later, circa 2010, my sister signed me up for Facebook – but we had absolutely no time for timeline posts, or poking, because we were incredibly obsessed with Farmville. The only reason my sister sought to create an account for me was solely so I could send coins to her farm. Despite having access to this form of social media, at eight years old I was only concerned with playing video games. Some of my best childhood memories are the hours spent on Minecraft and Skype with my friends. Wakeup, go to school, come home, Skype and play, eat dinner, beg my parents to play for another hour, sometimes succeed, play for an hour (and a half, if Dad wasn’t keeping track of the time) and then go to bed – this happened multiple times a week. Although I’ll forever look back at my Minecraft phase with blissful nostalgia, I can’t help but think that I was setting myself up for a long-term addiction of being available, and online, for the majority of my night.
Growing older, I took a step back from gaming and discovered a video-sharing platform called YouTube. I still remember the monumental day that the One Direction ‘Best Song Ever’ music video dropped. I became obsessed with the British Crew, PewDiePie, Bethany Mota and so many other creators. I loved it. I dreamt to be half as creative as them and idolised them, even if all they were doing was filming themselves doing made up ‘challenges’. From memory, this was the first time that I ever became interested in seeing what public figures were doing with their lives. At twelve years old, I downloaded Instagram. I wasn’t necessarily interested in posting yet, and my only followers were some close friends and my Mum. It was the only offical social media that I had for a while until I entered high school. A multitude of other social media apps were created and throughout the years I joined up to most of them. I’ve had Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter (now ‘X’), Pinterest, LINE messenger, Kik messenger, WeHeartIt, Vine, Musical.ly, and TikTok. I began to interact online more frequently, post on my feed and connect with more people I knew in person, as well as strangers. In the beginning I actually had a lot of fun, and I was learning new things, keeping up with pop-culture and constant trends. I even made online friends on Twitter because of our mutual love for Harry Styles, whom I went on to meet in person. Over the years, I used social media to solely keep up with everyone else’s lives and constantly knowing what people were up to, and how they were spending their time led me to a lot of isolation. I found immense comfort in sitting down and watching somebody else live their life and I used to think watching was just gathering inspiration for how I wanted to live my life, but eventually I became an adult – capable of making my own decisions and I couldn’t hide behind that anymore. It was only this past year when I concluded that I was scared; scared to go out there and experience my own timeline. Which is totally normal by the way. The world is vast, and the unknown is terrifying, but I knew that I wasn’t going to get where I wanted to go if I remained where I was.
Eventually, before I could even consider getting bored of being online, the content shifted too. It became more curated, and my feed felt more unique and interesting – the dreaded algorithm which, no doubt kept me in the cycle. It kept me in that comfortable space that I knew too well. It wasn’t that I was consuming the boring content anymore, I was consuming perfectly curated content – but too much of it. Technology advanced and suddenly social media became all the more interactive. Across majority of the apps, features like livestreaming, calling, photo messaging, and story prompts to initiate conversations became available to use. And I’m not here to suggest that these changes were bad, if anything they became all the more necessary to converse with people in our lives, especially throughout COVID. When we all were in lockdown – these features were somewhat essential to survive socially. Though even after the pandemic, I couldn’t go out for drinks or attend a party without adding people on Instagram – because asking for somebody’s number was definitely too serious. I formulated my own rules when it came to the apps, which upon reflection, is completely ridiculous. It became a social norm to add someone on social media if you had any intention of becoming friends, dating or even working together on a creative project. At some point in time, these apps pivoted from being fun to becoming an essential part of my day. An essential part of socialising, something I love doing. I couldn’t go an hour without checking one of them, and when I did, I would get caught in a scroll that went on for far too long.
My sleep hygiene, brain fogginess, eyesight and mental health all suffered as a direct result of consuming way too much content, too often. My screen being a constant in my life started to ruin everything that actually mattered. At least, that’s the diagnosis I’ve given myself. Reclaiming Our Minds: Mitigating the Negative Impacts of Excessive Doomscrolling (1) asserts that doomscrolling was used as a coping mechanism for managing stressors due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that some (i.e. myself) have developed into a long-term coping mechanism. Their studies found that an average of four hours per day consuming non-work media revealed high levels of psychological stress and sleep disruption, which turned into ‘chronic anxiety, emotional exhaustion akin to burnout, insomnia often with next morning “hangover” effects, and trauma symptoms resembling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)’. There is so much research out there on this topic, though this isn’t a literature review and just a thought piece, unfortunately they all confirm that it really is that damn phone.
Knowing and acknowledging all the negative impacts of social media and doomscrolling is one thing – but consciously living a better, healthier life is another. In reality, getting rid of a bad habit is incredibly difficult. It has taken me forever to just acknowledge the problem. With all this time spent online, I came to realise that I hadn’t learnt how to do something new in so long, and also to do something without documenting it. I was being constantly stimulated in a harmful and useless way. I’ve always valued and loved education, as I’d forever been a curious child – I committed 2025 to be a year where I would try my very best to spend my spare time experiencing media and activities offline, before anything online. I started with deleting TikTok, the worst of all the apps, and going from there. After a week, I had redownloaded it, and then eventually deleted it again. Three months went by, and I redownloaded it again – but this time I found it boring, and honestly a bit annoying. So, I deleted it a final time, this time deleting my entire account as opposed to just deactivating it. I can confidently say that I don’t even miss it. My sleep has improved and I’ve managed to gain back several hours to fill them with activities I actually enjoy.
For the first time ever, I’m on track to reach my reading goal this year. My goal being ten books and I’ve read seven, almost done with my eighth! Unfortunately, I definitely would have not read seven books this year without deleting TikTok. I’ve picked up painting again, something I’ve loved to do for years but ‘never had the time to do’; Initiated more hang outs with friends; Crocheting; Practiced my baking; I’ve gone to more museums, concerts, musicals, and shows; I’ve even started planning to go backpacking in Canada next summer. Shifting my attention from other people’s lives to my own has made me feel more at peace and hopeful about my future than ever before. Maybe it’s just my brain developing and coming to my senses, but either way I’m happy with my decision.
Although I’ve acknowledged I’m extremely happy not being on social media anymore – there are times when I do miss it. I miss out on seeing what my friends are posting, I find that I’m the last person to know about something that’s happened in the world, and I feel a little bit left out – but it’s all about perspective when it comes to doubting my decision to remove myself from the digital space. If I look at this concern differently, there will always be a story, or a situation to talk about the next time I catch up with a friend. I can always catch up. I’m also willing to take that effort to reach out, because there isn’t any good relationship without effort. Obviously, I’m still navigating what works and what doesn’t. I was on social media for over ten years, so taking a step back will be (and has been) different. What I’m doing isn’t revolutionary either – many people have decided that social media isn’t for them, there are some who have even never had it. I also fully acknowledge that I might go back to social media again. But for now, I feel like it’s the right time for me to stop this cycle of mind-numbing scrolling before it gets too late and I’m the hunchback of Notre Dame with square eyes. I know that there’s no quick fix to my dilemma of extensive screen time and social media use, but I am choosing to step away so I don’t miss moments of my own life, as well as all the lives that surround me. Oddly, Theadore Roosevelt is whispering in my ear, ‘Nothing in this world is worth doing unless it means effort, pain and difficulty.’
You could argue that although I’ve removed myself from social media, isn’t having a blog the same thing? I’d like to think not. Besides, I still have LinkedIn too, but only because I accidentally paid for premium for the year (don’t ask how, I don’t even know). And although I’ve removed myself from a couple of platforms, it’s not that I don’t care about seeing other people’s lives, it’s that my priorities have changed. A goal to build more meaningful relationships instead of parasocial ones online. I think my friends and family deserve that, too. I feel that online, people (and especially myself) have given so much of their lives to consuming other people’s that I just want to spend some time developing mine. In saying that, this space is just a place for me to dump my experiences and get writing again. If you’re here for that, then I welcome you! And before I end this blog post, I want to encourage you to take the steps that you need, to be the person who you want to be, because no one else is here to do it for you.
Thank you so much for reading!
I’ve been workshopping this thought piece for a while now and I’m excited to finally share it. Hopefully some of it resonates with you. Feel free to share any thoughts of your own via the email at the bottom of the screen too, I’d love to hear them. I’ve always loved writing, and I’m working on showcasing what I write – so stay tuned for many more thoughts and feelings to come.
Much love,
References
(1) George, A. S., George, A. H., Baskar, T., & Karthikeyan, M. M. (2024). Reclaiming our minds: mitigating the negative impacts of excessive doomscrolling. Partners Universal Multidisciplinary Research Journal, 1(3), 19-20
