One evening a few months ago, I was lying in bed on TikTok. I thought, āI feel tiredā, but I couldnāt figure out why. As far as I was concerned, it was around 9 or 10 pm. I had been scrolling TikTok for a while, so I swiped down the control bar to see what time it was. It was not 9 or 10 pm anymore, but four oāclock in the morning. Shocked and ashamed, I thought, āI have got to put my phone away and go to sleep!ā. Did I do such a thing? No. I kept scrolling and soon became engrossed in a random American women’s road rage story. I found myself deeper down the TikTok rabbit hole than ever before. When I woke up at 2 pm the next day, I had forgotten all about the American lady and her road rage incident but I was left to discover that I had missed a lecture. Annoyed, I thought, āLet me find a way to distract myselfā, and the first thing that popped into my mind was (you guessed it) TikTok. Today, Iāve decided that the time has come to finally delete the app.
To cut ties with the app, I thought it would be good to remind myself why I need to do this. I opened the screen time section of the settings app on my phone and decided to look at how many hours of my life had gone to doom scrolling on TikTok. My average time spent on the app was 1 hour 49 minutes daily. This isnāt too bad, but could you imagine how much better I could be at something if I put those hours into a sport or a hobby? Or, dare I say, completing uni work? Donāt get me wrong, I do learn some things from my many hours of scrolling, like how to manifest a boyfriend or the recipe for a three-ingredient face mask; Iāve also learned that everything I ever thought I knew about celebrities is false and that every relationship is a PR stunt. Long story short, Iāve been filled with information, but is it beneficial? The many self-defence, karate, and human trafficking prevention videos my sister sends me are helpful information. Still, thanks to my excessive use of TikTok, my attention span is so bad that I can barely sit through the video. It doesnāt help that with three swipes of the thumb, you can go from a self-defence kidnap escape video to the most beautiful woman youāve ever seen doing her makeup to a sped-up pitch-perfect song, and then to a 10-second video of a German shepherd slipping on ice. Itās a lot for the human brain to digest.
Last week, I spent a total of fifteen hours on TikTok. Fifteen Hours. Fifteen. On one of those days, I spent almost five hours on the app. How is that possible? As Iām writing this, Iām almost in disbelief at the time itās taken from me, time that could have been used elsewhere. I think about all the assignments I submitted at the last minute and the hours of sleep that Iāve lost to watching videos late at night. Iām aware that this is all my fault; with enough determination and discipline, these things wouldnāt have had to become a problem, but for those of us susceptible to excessive brain-numbing social media use, itās not easy. TikTok, and all apps for that matter, want you to keep scrolling for as long as humanly possible. They carefully plan their algorithms to suit you and your interests so well that you never want to put your phone down, and this is precisely why we are spending hours on these apps. TikTok is my most significant ātime-thiefā, which confirmed that I had to eliminate it. Like any addiction, I had to first think, āWhat will I be exchanging my time for?ā After getting used to scrolling the app for hours, Iād have to find something else to do during that time. As mentioned above, doing necessary things like working on assignments and doing some more reading was the priority on my list, but what about all those accumulated minutes and hours spent scrolling before bed or whilst out? Not every spare minute can go towards studying; that is unrealistic. Instead, I made a list of things Iāll do as a substitute, including knitting, reading, drawing, or watching a movie. Giving up TikTok doesnāt mean giving up entertainment, but it does mean finding other, slower activities to do. Iām not a doctor, but surely watching a two-hour film is better for your brain than watching hundreds, perhaps thousands, of short clips in the same amount of time? Regardless, it is time for TikTok and me to take an indefinite break. This isnāt goodbye forever, at least not yet. I canāt lie; Iām going to miss the endlessly repeating soundbites and the made-up theories that made me believe I was single because of my choice of nail polish. Still, itās time to return to the real world and be totally out of the loop.
Written By: Ophelia Lawson
Edited By: Aimee Boo