Absentminded Scrolling

02 Mar, 2024

I have a really bad problem with procrastination. For some reason, even tasks I generally enjoy doing suddenly give me a deep, primordial fear the instant they're placed on a "to-do" list, whether literal or mental. The obvious solution would just to not write down everything I need to do in a list and just trust myself that I'll remember to do it, but unfortunately, I also suffer from a serious case of bad-memory-itis, meaning anything I don't write down will be forgotten within the minute. So I open a list, write down what I have to do, and then stare longingly at the list with increasing anxiety as I proceed to never do any of it.

Hearing this, it should come as no surprise that I procrastinate like a motherfucker even on incredibly basic tasks. I get stuff done eventually, sure, but not before discovering 6 other tasks I forgot to do, starting them, not finishing, remembering I was doing something else, and then hurriedly looking for an excuse not to do the original task¹. As put by a stand-up artist I like: "I decide to adopt a cat just to not have to do my homework."

This would be bad enough on its own, but you may notice a little "problem" with this cycle I have: it's not fully self sustaining. To avoid doing something productive, I do something else that's productive. Eventually I'm bound to run out of stuff to do and, gasp, actually finish my tasks? We can't have that. There must be a way to waste my time unproductively! Some sort of, pray tell, low-effort-to-start and low-effort-to-maintain activity! One which contributes nothing of value to society and which burns the precious few hours I have on God's Green Earth!

As if to answer my misguided prayers, a sweet Siren's Song began to emanate from my pocket. A song promising me some of that long-wanted dopamine with none of the effort involved in the awful misery of cleaning my dishes. "Simply open the app, and scroll down! Look at pictures! It's so easy," it would promise, "even a child could do it!" Oh, save me from my sorrows you beautiful rectangle of LEDs! Embrace me in your cold, metallic arms as I lay in bed, worsening my posture and mental health, for 4 long hours that I'll never get back. Surely, the only regret I'll have on my deathbed is that I didn't spend enough time arguing with people about politics on the comment sections of Rick and Morty clips.

I wish I could say that this problem is exclusively unique to me, but as many of you know, this is so ubiquitous to the point that it's a revenue source. These sites aren't run by malicious villains, twirling their curly mustaches while secretly planning how to take over the world by making its populace docile and weak². They're simply corporations, and as a corporation, they want us to use their product. The more we use The Product, the more they can shove ads in our face, convince us to spend money, and drag more of our unsuspecting friends into the torment vortex, giving them even more money and views. Regardless of intent, the effect they have on me, us, and mankind as a whole is decidedly bad.

A few weeks back I was at a family dinner, spacing out, and somewhat absentmindedly playing with my phone. I'd pull it out, look at something I didn't even consciously manage to parse, and put it back in my pocket. I'd repeat this action a few more times with seemingly no actual goal, until my dad looked at me and chuckled. "You know, [Lucio], you sorta remind me of how I used to be with the cigarettes back in the day, yknow? Just pulling it out when there's nothing else to do, even if you don't really wanna do it. It's instinctive more than conscious, a way to... not have to deal with what's going on."

Oh wow this really is an addiction. I really need to stop using this fucking thing.

Unfortunately, The Demonic LED Rectangle is essential to modern life so I can't just toss it in the bin and start working on myself as if it never existed. It's not like everything on it was equally at fault either - I wasn't opening my phone absentmindedly to read the news or practice my german, now was I? So I've decided to start limiting my screentime on the specific apps I was spending the most time on: Youtube, Instagram, and Tumblr. Collectively I was burning around four hours of each day on these shits, so I put a time limit of around an hour per day on them.

An hour a day sounds like plenty, but man I am already feeling the withdrawal symptoms. Until now, I used to wake up and procrastinate on getting out of bed by scrolling through my feed for a bit.³ But today I woke up, and realized "huh. I shouldn't open social media and waste my time doing nothing. I should get out of bed and shower so I can actually do stuff today."

So, naturally, I opened my phone. After a few seconds I realized I didn't have much to do on it, so I closed it.

I looked up at the ceiling for a bit.

I opened the phone again, and didn't get past the lock screen before instinctively hitting the close button because, as I said, I have nothing to actually do on it.

I looked up again.

This repeated for about 10 minutes before I managed to drag myself out of the sheets and into the shower.

I don't really have any specific note to end this on, just - wow holy shit have we normalized social media addiction. And I do mean addiction; the amount of time people spend on this is unhealthy, and facebook wouldn't have the cash it does if this issue wasn't larger than just myself. Dear reader, if you, too, resonate with the grievances I laid out in this post: start limiting yourself. Most phones come with an in-built time-limiting function for apps, and there's plenty of browser extensions that do the same. These sites promise joy, but if that joy ever actually arrived, you'd stop scrolling. It's a carrot on a stick that makes you go deeper and deeper into the automated recommendation abyss.

Break free. Go do stuff that actually satisfies you.

Speaking of, I should probably go work on that final I was procrastinating on by writing this blogpost.

#internet #personal life #tech