For the past year or so, I've noticed myself using my phone less and less. Sure, I still use it for texting, and all of the NYT games, but I find myself going to it less and less. I can't say that this was intentional, but in the last few months in particular, my usage has sunk.
Keep in mind that I also haven't used notifications for anything other than text, my personal email, and up until recently, news headlines. I've actually never enabled notifications for social media, I don't have work email on my phone, and Slack is restricted to business hours. When the phone is sitting on my desk, it's not asking me to look at it. That obviously goes a long way toward reducing the time wasting.
I've talked about this before, that one of the core issues is that social media stopped being social a long time ago. The algorithm just feeds you a steady stream of pointless shit from advertisers, celebrities and randos that it thinks you will care about. The number of friends posting meaningful things makes for a very terrible signal to noise ratio. If that weren't enough, Facebook can't even get in-app notifications right, so when I post something or respond to them, I never know about it. That also means no dopamine stream from likes. I am using the socials more as a diary. I post photos to Instagram, which forwards to Facebook, and I'll share links of interesting to me things. I'm a writer, not much of a reader.
So when you take out the antisocial media, there isn't a lot left, other than the aforementioned games. I do Wordle, Strands, Connections and the crosswords every day. I use my web-based music app nightly. I read tech news at lunch, aggregated by Feedly. I do utilitarian things like adjust the temperature in the house or turn on lights. It's not that I don't find the device useful, it's that I just don't spend time doomscrolling anymore. It's boring.
I still find myself pulling out my phone in a moment of boredom, but what happens is that I open the 'Gram and scroll a little, see some cats or friend posts, algorithm willing, and a few minutes later I realize how little this is doing for me. I'm starting to realize how much cognitive overhead there is in doing it, and now I choose not to engage too much in it. I think watching others doomscroll, whether it be bored parents at Walt Disney World, or certain older adults in my life, and I think, shit, I don't want that. There are too many thing to be present for, and I say that as a work-from-home person with a fairly small real life social circle.
What I'm starting to see now is that I'm getting a lot of time back, and it moves slower. In some ways it also forces me to think about stuff that is uncomfortable, but that mental bandwidth used to be spent on mindless scrolling. I'll be honest, that's probably not great for my anxiety, but looking at the shit show dumpster fire of online culture was hardly helping my anxiety. There are other things I spend that time on now, including more writing (much of which I never post), reading, mostly technology and science stuff, lots of video games, and all of my usual hobby stuff.
I think I can genuinely say that I feel better, even though the net feels are likely on edge because I have a hard time letting go of injustices and slights that frankly are not easy to change. I spend a lot of time working on that with my therapist. But I'm surprised at how often I get the urge to pull out my phone, and I don't. The other night I was in line to get food at WDW, and it was busy, and I left it in my pocket (missing Diana's text in a different line, oops). It's funny what you observe, if drunken tourists are funny. But even little things like the tile work inside of the Morocco pavilion, or the chefs preparing food, or an overheard conversation about the cider flight at a different stand. There's so much life happening around you, and I promise it's more interesting than anything on a 6-inch screen. Also, WTF if you're at Disney. You can doomscroll at home, where it's cheaper.
If you think I have a judgmental tone about this, you are correct. I owe much of my success to the Internet and the devices that work on it. They're tools that enable a great many valuable things, and I don't want to discount that. But recent research shows that people are spending close to five hours per day looking at their phones, almost a third of their waking time, and of that time, more than a third is on social apps. That ratio is even higher for younger people and active older people. I just can't believe that all of that time spent isn't missing out on something else. The thing that makes it worse is that so many people don't apply critical thinking to what they see online, and I fear that our society is getting dumber, by choice.
So what are my stats? It's hard to get a read on notification counts, because I do have reminders for my work calendar (they're not reliable on the desktop), and I do allow Slack notifications during business hours (they can reach over a hundred some days). My daily unlocks appear to be in the high 30's most days, which is less than expected. Total screen time per day looks to average three hours, and the "winner" most days is NYT Games, accounting for an hour to 90 minutes most days. Feedly is a close second, as my gateway to tech news like ArsTechnica and The Verge, mostly, clocking in at an hour. My Facebook usage varies, and it looks like it counts time reading articles spawned from it, but today it was 12 minutes, and the most I can find is 50. Instagram appears similar, but without the spikes because I'm not reading news from it. Chrome is the next big one, and the sites I spend the most time on are my own.
I feel better using my phone less. Your mileage may vary, but give it a whirl.
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