We all know how addictive social media sites are designed to be, with dreaded “algorithms” working overtime to keep our thumbs flicking upwards and our attentions trained on our screens. The fact that they’re constantly at our fingertips, on devices which are unavoidably integrated into our lives as students and functional citizens, can make them difficult to escape.
Back in December, particularly once the structure of university ended for the holidays, I found myself getting sucked into cycles of scrolling for hours on end – closing one social media app and opening another, then getting bored of that and going to another, then back to the first one – to a point where I felt nauseated by how long I was spending on these sites, consuming what I can only describe as “brainrot”. Sure, some of it is educational or informative; but even so, it’s still forced into an attention-grabbing format, interspersed among countless memes, skits, vox-pops, and podcast excerpts. Even when content was informative or educational, a lot of it was about global doom, which left me feeling powerless and upset. Sometimes to protect our mental health, we really need a step back from the connectedness of social media, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
Enough was enough. In one fell swoop, I uninstalled X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I have since reinstalled some of these apps for the purpose of networking and messaging friends and family, but I generally uninstall them again after a couple of hours, maybe a day or two at a push. Alternatively, I access them on my laptop, something that has to be a much more conscious action compared to mindlessly opening the apps out of habit. This is a method I call “fasting” from social media – only having the apps installed for short periods really requires you to be conscious about whether you actually need to use them, and having them gone most of the time breaks the habit of opening the apps in every spare minute.
As a student, this has improved my day-to-day routines. My scrolling has shifted to BBC News, LinkedIn, and BlueSky (a rather wholesome X alternative, which I use for current affairs and political connectedness). I find I have more time for the entertainment I actually want to watch. I feel that I text people back more quickly, and spend less time “bed rotting”. Overall, I’m much more mindful of my time and maintaining control over it.
My motivation for writing this blog is to inspire anyone who feels similarly to how I did. It’s easy to feel pessimistic about being able to escape the addiction to the dopamine gained from amusing, ten-second videos. But to turn a popular phrase: touch grass! We’re not far from heading into spring: the days will be longer and sunnier, and at the same time, assignments will be due as we move through term two. Perhaps there’s no better time than now to escape the cycle of doom-scrolling, and exercise the “fasting” method of social media avoidance. Allow yourself to use it every now and then to stay connected, in the way it was originally intended; but make sure that you control your use of these sites, and not the dreaded “algorithm”.
You never know: it might just help your grades, your sanity, and your life.