I am seated in the comfort of my bedroom at 8:00 PM, a mug of tea cooling on the nightstand and folded laundry on my chair. Nearby, my bag is packed and sits flush against the wall; ironed, arranged clothes are laid out for tomorrow. An evening engineered to combat the “Sunday scaries,” preparing me for the week ahead.
Then the glow of my phone fractures that calm. I am thumb-scrolling past a blur of videos, dances, and sponsored ads. This rhythm snaps as a specific video falls into view. The quiet and focus turns to the audio of a concussive boom that rattles my phone’s speaker. Edited footage cuts through, revealing a street stained with concrete and landscape with houses in a neighbourhood like mine. Fogs of grey, dust and falling rubble chases voices laced with terror, and this collapses the distance between my bedroom, and a war zone.
These videos don’t stop there, for a compulsion takes over: my guilt. Witnessing these events, my thumb continues to move, pulling down to reveal more aspects of conflict that tears peoples lives at the seam. To look away feels like looking away from suffering, retreating back feels cowardly, and I find myself owed to absorb helplessness. My tea is completely forgotten as my eyes remain locked on a digital loop.
The loop continues, the glowing screen leads to a tunnel with years of history and conflicts confined into second long videos and captions with minimal words, all to be consumed at once. While this makes a crisis instantly visible, it strips away the information needed to properly understand. Our feeds don’t just display war zones in countries; with a single swipe, you can be dragged to problems only miles away.
You can be hit with a wind of US updates, videos of ICE raids pushing through neighborhoods, unverified claims from creators about immigration enforcement policies, or debates and claims made from leaders over military and foreign war. In the digital space, apps can treat verified videos with information or on-the-ground journalism the same as a manipulated clipped video from any account. Both fed into your eyes in the same fast-paced momentum.
This isn’t accidental. Your feed is studying how you react to videos. Algorithms track what you swipe and scroll at, analyze your responses to these types of media. When you encounter a video of a neighborhood or community being torn apart by raids, your instinct is to stop and listen. Leading the algorithm to accept it as engagement, almost tying you to the screen. Your For You Page will send another debate, opinion, videos of war torn countries, leaving you stuck in an infinite loop with no clear end in sight.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, an assistant professor at Harvard writes about the hours stuck in a loop of world issues, harmful policies, and human suffering. Leaving your heart racing and muscles tense. As these clips have no end, it gives your brain no chance to signal calm. Leaving your energy drained, problems miles away feeling as if they are right outside your door. Does self-preservation mean complete detachment? Forcing you to ignore social media’s ability to raise awareness and connect human stories? Choosing quiet feels like turning your back on the world, but choosing to look means surrendering to a sense of “impending doom.”
But you shouldn’t have to choose, to succumb to consuming our algorithms or completely withdrawing. Reclaiming your agency means creating a different approach to media consumption, and it might mean turning to more traditional methods of information. Leading you to not need to look away from our worlds problems to protect your piece, but choosing how, where, and when to look.
Media Literacy and Identifying Bias
Break the scroll with awareness. Practicing identifying emotional triggers that can lead you to pause the algorithm that tries to exploit emotion. True digital media literacy allows you to recognize when content creators are merely echoing unverified information or promoting emotionally charged misinformation just to capture engagement. Reclaiming agency needs a line drawn between what you can impact and any external noise online. Recognizing that absorbing endless, unfiltered news does not alter problems we see online, but allocating when and how you receive news allows you to manage your mental energy. You can control your attention, your local community actions, and your contributions; but you cannot control the flow of tragedy designed to keep you locked.
Return to Long-Form Content
I was reminded of the importance of long form and primary sources. Online, the slower pace of traditional news disappears. Imagine engaging with a nightly broadcast, opening a morning paper, or looking at text and written news on your phone. This is an act of interacting with structured format of information. Stories packed with limits, ones that are edited and fact-checked before it reaches our hands. No piece of news is without bias, but slowing down provides your mind time to process emotional, complicated problems. Social media forms a loop, one that is relentless, flooding the brain with policies arguments all at once. Instead of consuming clips on an app, look for a thought out analysis. Set your phone down and read a report, text that can slow your heart rate, provide you context, and allow you to be involved without destroying your own mental health.
Resisting Online Arguments and Late Night Scrolling
Maintaining digital wellness is an act of self care, but requires setting boundaries in your habits and routine. Resist the urge to argue, to participate in digital matches shifts your energy away from reacting in outrage and towards understanding. Remember that true engagement does not happen in the comment sections on a fleeting post. Self care also means setting aside blue light before going to sleep, which has many advantages, but waking up after a night of falling prey to a continuous cycle of clips leaves you with a quiet exhaustion. A lack of rest impacts patience, anxiety, and regulating our emotions, leading us to be unequipped to encounter heavy world events. With your brain hyper fixated on global problems and trauma instead of winding down, the sleep you do get is affected. Allow your nervous system time to return to calm, set aside your phone, eliminate late-night scrolling, and pick up something placid.
It’s impossible to drown out the outside world, and it’s important not to shut it out, but we need to remain strong enough to do our part. The clock on the wall ticks past the hour, my cup sits still on the nightstand, my tea cold, but the scent of chamomile still there. The folded laundry remains piled neatly on the chair, and the backpack stands still besides my prepared clothes. I press the power button, and put down my screen to re-enter my reality. The blue glow closed, leaving only the expanse of my room. Disconnecting from the loop, turning to an intentional presence in understanding our world. Maybe stepping away from the feed is not to choose apathy; but to recognize that participation relies on the mind, grounded, clear, and whole.