Imagine waking up to the most perfect morning in Gainesville you could imagine. The sunlight is creeping in through your window—it’s not painfully bright, but you’re also not wondering if you were sentenced to living in a cave the night before. The AC in your room feels cold enough that you actually consider wearing jeans to campus, but not so cold that you’re making yourself a burrito with your blanket. You reach over to grab your phone and check for any important texts or refresh your Outlook inbox for the 500th time that week, and decide to get on Instagram for just five minutes to see what’s new in the world. Next thing you know, your stomach is grumbling and you realize that you practically skipped breakfast from how long you were on Instagram for. Then, you feel guilty about how much time you wasted aimlessly scrolling and how much you could’ve done instead.
To all of the women relating a little too much to this scenario, I would like to welcome you to being hopelessly devoted to dopamine. Sometimes it’s hard to realize that there is a problem until you become intentionally metacognitive about your daily actions, but this is a habit I’m sure many others are too familiar with. It starts the first time you allow yourself to scroll on social media without a time limit, until you eventually find yourself reaching for your phone at the first sign of boredom. Waiting for the bus? TikTok. Taking a lunch break in between classes? Instagram. Finding yourself lost during lecture? New York Times games until you complete them, and then back to TikTok. The worst part is that we’re validating our own addictions. Allowing ourselves to be constantly fed media whenever we’re not being productive is extremely counterintuitive for our productivity. We’re constantly stimulating our brains, so of course any time that there is no work being done, your brain desperately craves some type of media to consume. And of course, social media is the best way to feed into this hunger. It’s fast-paced, super accessible, entertaining and often a way to connect with others around campus. But it also eats away at your curiosity, wonder and awe. We no longer stop and smell the roses, nor do we allow ourselves to get lost every now and then to enjoy a new and unexpected experience. We’ve lost the joy in little acts, and it seems like the threshold to feel genuinely excited is now almost impossible to reach.
Constant exposure to social media also desensitizes us to groundbreaking news around the world. It’s scarily easy for us to scroll past heartbreaking stories without feeling anything. Ironically, we’ve lost community from platforms that are supposed to connect us more with each other. Have you noticed that the quality of the media that we consume has decreased? It feels like the shows we watch are now shorter, YouTube videos must be watched at 2x speed, songs can no longer be more than three minutes long and we have stopped reading books entirely. We no longer give ourselves the space to feel challenged by the uncomfortable and search for dopamine to fill a void instead of just feeling something for once.Â
Now, as hypocrisy’s number one hater, I’m not here to tell you that we should completely eradicate all forms of social media to break up with our addiction. However, I do want to introduce some ideas that could help you find the whimsy in life without getting FOMO from a lack of social media. Before I give you the little changes that work for me, I want to remind you of something that makes this whole process easier: we were not meant to be in constant communication with one another. You don’t owe somebody an immediate response and you don’t need to post the end of the third quarter if the football game hasn’t ended yet. Give yourself the time and space you need to breathe, and those who truly care for you will respect that and double-text/call you if they really do need to talk to you.
The biggest piece of advice that I could give you is to disable notifications from social media. Out of sight, out of mind is occasionally such a powerful method (unfortunately) as you don’t feel the urge to check something that isn’t there. You should also listen to music more often if you don’t already. Try listening to full albums while doing homework or traveling across campus. It gives you the feeling of committing to a longer form of media and still gives you the satisfaction of having something on in the background without hindering your productivity. If you’re feeling really bold, I highly recommend listening to any Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd album. Their songs are extremely long, but for a good reason. If music isn’t your jam, watch a long show. I’m talking seven seasons long, with 22 episodes per season that are each an hour long (hello, Gilmore Girls).Â
Also, think of social media as a scrapbook instead of a way to keep in contact with people. It’s a beautiful way to showcase your life and highlight your best memories with your favorite people. But just like looking at a scrapbook, if you look at it for too long it makes you feel like you’re not doing enough in your day-to-day life. This feeling then easily manifests into a spiral, which makes you hyper fixate on minor details of your social media page and fuels your need to perfect it as much as possible. Finally, if you built your algorithm brick by brick and have the funniest videos ever on your FYP, like I do, I completely understand why you would want to spend time scrolling. Use this desire as a reward. Once you’ve completed a homework assignment, give yourself fifteen minutes to watch the dumbest humor that only you and maybe some of your friends would understand. Eventually you’ll learn that giving yourself a designated time to scroll keeps the desire away.
As stupid as this might sound, I promise you that once you break-up with this addiction, you’ll start to appreciate the smallest parts of life. The little girl that was once absolutely fascinated by her surroundings will thank you.