These were suggestions picked up from Reddit and various Medium Blogs. Suggestions and recommendations I wanted to disseminate within my readership.
It is a part of my continuing desire to conquer and curb my smart phone usage and expand on available time toward things I want to focus and develop on. Like fitness, finance, diet and writing.
For nearly two out of the last three years, I’ve been a dormant consumer of all social media. Sure, this is not to deny that I have am dealing with my share of screen consumption. I’ve developed a compulsive habit of doomscrolling on reddit and youtube. And lately, LinkedIn even. Sometimes it crosses all perceptible boundaries and I consume my social media feed as if there was no tomorrow. Almost as if there was an zombie apocalypse and the entire human race would perish away and all I had in my power was to confine myself within my blue screen and consume as much screentime as possible.
Luckily for me, I’ve previously abandoned legacy social media applications like Instagram and Facebook. Briefly, I sparingly used some Dating apps to meet interesting women, who, shortly after learning my social media handicap chose to abandon any further connect. I wonder why.
As I’ve said, I’ve remained largely unapologetic about my lack of social media presence. And this abandonment of social media, has interestingly served as a useful filter to befriend friends who are capable of keeping up a conversation without finding a compulsive need to scroll through their phones.
What’s amusing is nearly every single person I’ve met who’s opined on my lack of social media presence has one of three things to say.
“Bro, how can you live without Instagram, what do you do without Social Media!”
“Bro, I’ve been meaning to do this myself. But I can’t! I feel as if my hands are tied“
“Hey I’ve quit IG myself and never looked back! Best feeling ever.”
It is usually people of the first kind I am least relatable to. The second kind I am most deeply empathetic to. And the third kind, as if kindling a fire, a friendship worth taking further.
Given this spectrum of polarities, it is likewise to assume that I am an apologist for radical abandonment of all Social Media at all costs. No, I am not saying that. All I am against is how the algorithms encoded within applications like Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat which have primed us to remain stuck on our phones for long. I disagree with big-tech companies, knowing full well how these technologies are encoded with and laced with a motive to keep addicted to our devices.
I’ve also been a direct victim of relationships being broken apart and people instigating quarrels with their loved ones over pointless comparisons with people they view on the Internet. Honestly, what’s the worse to come if I am not participating in your social media. I’ve already faced the worse that social media has dealt me to.
I think I’ve also reached a certain threshold of online consumption, judging by my depleting capacity for staying in one place and focusing on one task for long. Especially the kind I am repulsed by regularly. Like studying math or reading a book for an hour stretch. This point was certainly an intervention. Where I began more mindful consuming instead.
I also noticed, after turning 18, roughly at the same time when I gained possession of my first smart-phone, was when I began losing a sense of ownership to my attention.
I gauged, with all these observations, that our brains derive a marginal utility from any “more” novel content and we become subject to finding more novel content and the vicious cycle continues. But this search becomes more rigorous and that’s where we begin losing perception of actual reality.
The main problem, I recognised between ages 19-21, was my abject lack of awareness that I was in fact dealing with this issue at all for a long time. Social media addiction is an issue. Being stuck to our blue screens is an issue. So far as even carrying our devices when we are pottying in the washroom.
I hope this was a useful rant over your own relationship with social media. It’s worth pondering how we could change our brains to think differently about this. And while you are still tuned to this blog, consider using some of these useful methods to dumb down your mobile phone.
Superb chinnu, nuvvu rasinadi correct ,we loose concentration on reading books or on anything , cheppali ante blue screen ki banisa la avthunnam