You’re scrolling on your phone and believe you’ll only be on your social media for 10 minutes — now an hour has gone by and you’re stuck scrolling. No matter what time of the day, students tend to scroll on their phones. Many tend to use this as a solution to their boredom, an escape from stress or even a refuel on dopamine.
Mindless scrolling is the need to consume news or social media by obsessing over an answer to your question or curiosity. During early COVID-19, many people were stuck inside and heavily used the internet to provide entertainment. Due to this, many of us tried to use the internet or social media to answer our questions.
The reason mindless scrolling becomes so addictive is because of our desire to consume content. A lot of videos on TikTok or Instagram remain under a minute or close to 30 seconds to keep the attention of the viewer. Your brain automatically believes this is a reward, making the ability to stop scrolling impossible.
I’ve been a recent victim of mindless scrolling, and I always catch myself scrolling longer than what I originally wanted. We’re currently halfway through the semester, and now would be the best time to start a digital detox. There are many solutions to easily stop scrolling, it is just a matter of disciplining yourself to these solutions.
Physical Solutions:
The easiest way to replace your urge to mindless scroll is to resort to anything physical. That could mean almost anything, such as playing with a fidget toy, reading, walking, cooking, writing and more. If it gets you away from your phone and removes your urges to look at it, then this may be your solution.
Turn off Notifications:
This is most likely the easiest and quickest solution for anybody to do. It is an automatic response whenever you see a notification to instantly click it, which can lead you to start scrolling after that notification. If you remove notifications for social media apps, you will not feel the urge to constantly check your phone for notifications.
Phone-free Times:
Going certain times in the day, especially morning and night, without using your phone is probably the second most challenging solution. We tend to use our phones as soon as we wake up in the morning to either turn off our alarms or see what notifications we received while asleep. If you have done the step above, you should receive barely any notifications and will not risk bed scrolling. Try to give yourself at least an hour without your phone after you wake up and before you go to sleep.
TIME LIMITS:
Adding time limits for social media apps is probably the third hardest solution. Although it is super easy to add time limits to your phone, it’s a matter of keeping your word and not cheating to increase the time limit. Think of this as parental control — you can use social media apps for a certain amount of time. Although there isn’t a certain healthy amount of time to be on social media, it would be best to aim toward being on social media for up to one hour per day.
UPDATING YOUR FEED:
The last and hardest solution to quit mindless scrolling is to fix your social media feed. Although this can be aimed toward both negative and entertaining accounts, if you constantly watch their videos, you should remove them from your feed. If it is content you enjoy consuming, try limiting how much you tend to watch their content, such as only two videos a day from the creator.
Although these steps sound easy, it’s hard to implement these changes into your routine. Following these steps will not only improve your mental health, but it will also improve your focus.
Mindless scrolling is a digital addiction that many people don’t tend to realize they are a victim of until it’s too late. Next time you catch yourself scrolling, think to yourself, “There’s a limit. Am I just wasting my time?”