I don't bring my phone with me into the toilet anymore
20something diaries; breaking up w my phone & thoughts on selling calm to a neurotic society
From my notes:
23 July - i had to delete tiktok and insta because i had spent two depression riddled days scrolling to death; the first two days were a breath of fresh air as I finally got my head above water.
(link here to week by week notes on the matter)
pssstt… this may be too long to read on email - consider reading on your browser or downloading the Substack app
Over three weeks on from quitting cold-turkey, I feel clean.
Literally and figuratively; because extricating myself from the bowels of doomscroll hell meant weaning myself off of my phone dependency too. I don’t bring my phone with me into the toilet anymore … is this what life is like sans digital accompaniment?
I had resolved to reconsider my relationship with social media three weeks into the detox, because that’s how long it takes to break a habit. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to quit forever, only to get to a good enough mental place, where I can have a casual relationship with these apps.
It’s complicated because love social media to be honest. Brainrot internet humour is going to be weaved into humanity’s cultural tapestry as one of our generations’ defining contributions. Sociologists will look back at us and understand that though the world was burning at our hands, we were not going to let anything stop us from having a brat summer. I’m pretty okay with that, sad and embarrassing as that may be.
If nothing else, it is hilarious. Hello? Mesopotamia (now Iraq) gave life to modern civilisation itself. Meanwhile, we just make memes. I love it, I’m here for it. I am a product of the internet, I may never be able to take anything seriously ever, and I am okay with that.
Back to my point - as much elite meme literacy and humour as the internet and social media has added to my life, it has taken away from other areas in equal measure too: my attention span, healthy functioning of my nervous system, my sense of self, my money.
So, more than three weeks into the detox now, the scrolling and phone habit nearly broken, and I have not re-downloaded. Very briefly, the main reasons:
I am still addicted. I have to call a spade a spade: my compulsive phone and social media consumption was an addiction. It may take three weeks to break a habit, but addiction is a different story. I used insta messages several times to make plans with some friends. Even though I was strict with not scrolling, I found that in the following days I formed a short-lived habit of just checking insta messages via browser upon waking up. Slope still far too slippery.
My nervous system is finally starting to go back into balance. Around the beginning of my fourth week clean, I began to feel calm. First thing in the morning, just calm. No anxious need to check the time, to look at my notifications. There is no more false sense of urgency (anxiety). I had stopped relying on social media for emotional regulation and social connection, my world is no longer bursting with red notification bubbles popping up everywhere telling my brain it needed to check this immediately, all the time.
I have so much more time now, time that is expansive and free. When I spent hours a day scrolling, time always felt so constricted; like it was in short supply somehow, slipping through my fingers like sand. I was always in a hurry, always nervous that I didn’t have enough time, even though we all have the same number of hours in a day. And I have the same hours in a day now as I did then. But I am no longer rushing from activity to activity, teeth gritted for my next dopamine hit, emulating the sensation of scrolling from post to post, mind trained to look forward to the next thing, over and over. Hit after hit.
(Oh my God i was a bloody dope fiend !)
So I’m happy where I am at for now. No real decision on when or if I will go back, but I’ll keep you posted.
Selling calm to a neurotic society
Are we the most anxious we have ever been?
As I was basking in my newfound dope (social media)-free glow of calm and peace, I saw this funny add for home security cameras.
It has all the right markers of serenity: Leafy, healthy plants being tended to by a pretty, smiling Sandra who is waving at you from your phone screen, while you bask in the sun and sea, presumably off on some idyllic mediterranean coast.
Hm, record scratch, you’re not on FaceTime having a pleasant chat with a friend, actually. You’re actively monitoring your next door neighbour Sandra, whom you probably barely know, but who was kind enough to agree to keep your plants alive all the same. You were well fine with letting her take time out of her day to help you, you even give her the keys to your house; but you’re not going to give her the decency of, you know, not being monitored like a potential criminal 👍
‘Inner peace’, Ring claims to bring its customers. It feels a bit more like: Ring, helping you feed the little voice in your head that has lost all trust in human decency and cannot actually go on holiday without staying red alert on what might be happening in your empty house back home.
Do you feel the clashing messaging too?
This ad very aptly captures our present state of mind. We all desperately seek rest, but we are desperately, desperately anxious. Our technology makes a real effort to alleviate our symptoms (security cameras to calm your worst, imaginary fears) but really only further enables and exacerbates the illness (we are a neurotic paranoid anxious suspicious lonely, SAD people who need to control everything).
… hm, sorry to generalise and to send out a negative sentiment.
I think we could do with a bit more letting go, and trusting that the world isn’t as awful as our worst selves try to make us believe. There is good out there, life has a way of figuring itself out, and you will always be okay.
What I’ve been up to
Now to turn the surveillance cameras back on to myself for the internet … some excerpts from my days of dillying and dallying
Further reading by better writers on topics adjacent to this essay:
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
On Photography by Susan Sontag
[to watch] The Social Dilemma on Netflix
Little did I know that I’d casually open your post and find our lil chat on Notes 💞 Girl, I am glad you’re getting your sun!! Keep doing it, it helps a lot. And suddenly you don’t care about that phone as much ⚔️
I need to do this so badly. Honestly, what is stopping me is that I will lose my drafts and memories but I think the real question is do I want to hold onto the past or move onto something better for my future?