In recent weeks, I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to my phone in the evenings and it’s making me miserable.
Until the age of 14, I was on social media. Sharing my life on Instagram, counting my “streaks” on Snapchat, watching “BookTubers” on Youtube, even dutifully tracking my reading on Goodreads—I was an active participant in the social media machine.
Then, in middle school, something changed. I began to notice a disturbing pattern of increasing social media use among my friends. School lunches became a time when everyone retreated into their devices, scrolling on TikTok or Instagram with a sandwich in hand; conversations were interrupted by the vibrations of notifications, which compelled immediate responses. Even the topics of conversation veered into the online sphere: did you see what she posted? … I saw on TikTok that …
As my frustration with my friends increased, I discovered a collection of TedTalks on YouTube—of all places—about the detrimental effects of social media use, particularly on the teenage brain. In a feverish few days, I drafted a (terrible) six-page essay on “the dregs of social media” and eagerly shared my findings with my friends. (Needless to say, my friendships did not improve). Still, I maintained that I was somehow exempt from the apps’ influence. I could handle my social media use; I was not addicted, as I had by now come to see my friends. With this mindset, I could justify my continued online presence.
A few months passed. And then, one evening, after watching yet another TedTalk video, I abruptly decided that I no longer wanted Instagram. It was almost a challenge to myself. If I was proselytizing about the harmful effects of social media use, I may as well commit myself to the act. In the days after, I anticipated that I would miss the old, familiar icon on my home screen. But no: I barely registered its absence.
Snapchat was more difficult to part with. I was reluctant to lose my streak count, which was highest with a girl I’d never met—and yet I maintained that my relationship with the app was perfectly healthy. It took several more months for me to realize that I was more attached to Snapchat than I’d previously wanted to admit. I spent one weekend in an anxious spiral because I was without Wi-Fi and was therefore at risk of losing my streaks. Soon after, I deleted the app and never looked back.
By this time, I had also deleted Goodreads from my phone, determined as I was to rid myself of all sources of toxic comparison—be it in likes, streaks, or books. I only held onto YouTube because I reasoned that my BookTubers were a relatively innocuous form of entertainment. It was not until this past Christmas, when I realized I was being sucked in by TikTok videos masquerading as YouTube “shorts” with that fatal doom scroll, that I decided to delete YouTube, as I had done six years earlier with Instagram and Snapchat.
Still, even without social media, my brain manages to find new—though no less meaningless—sources of online entertainment. In high school, I instilled a rule that I must be off all screens by 8 or 8:30pm (unless my school work demanded otherwise) to give myself time to read before bed. It was not a perfect rule: I would often lose momentum and, for instance, binge-watch a TV show until I was bleary-eyed. I hold onto this rule to this day, and when I fall into that kind of cycle I’m usually able to trace it back to stress. When I want to silence my anxious brain, I’ll resort to the hollow noise of trashy TV, which has the allure of an easy remedy. But of course, the void is rarely filled by a screen and still I hopelessly chase the instant gratification that it promises.
In recent weeks, I’ve fallen back into this trap to the detriment of my health. Once the clock strikes 9:30 or 10pm, the blue light from my phone seems to settle in my brain and poison my night’s sleep. I will lie awake for hours, unable to fall asleep, and then awake before 7am with a dull headache and in significantly lower spirits than the night before. In a zombie-like haze, I will stumble through my day, impatient for the sky to darken so that I can start afresh the next day. Sometimes I manage to draw myself away from my phone and open my book; but more often than not, one night’s slippage will result in a sequence of disruption. At one point, I realized that I had felt more energized at 4am in the airport last month, with at most five hours of sleep, than after a night of eight or nine hours of screen-infected sleep.
But my usual diagnosis (i.e. stress) does not seem sufficient to account for my behaviour. With few impending assignments and several meaningful friendships, I feel happy and fulfilled. I can find only one explanation: I’m lacking a good book! As silly as that may sound, I realized this summer that when I’m reading a good book, there is absolutely nothing I’d rather be doing than reading it—including being on my phone. When I’m adrift in my reading, my whole world feels off-kilter, leading me to resort to empty sources of entertainment.
If you are feeling this way, or if you have ever felt this way, I encourage you to think about what kind of (offline) activity brings you joy and begin to implement it into your daily routine. I suspect you’ll find that you’re much happier (and certainly less sleep-deprived) when you’re doing something meaningful to unwind from your day. I recognize that consuming content is an easy form of entertainment—and sometimes that is all your brain can handle after a long day at work—but it is always more rewarding to do the harder thing.