How to Stop Scrolling the Day Away
It’s Your Attention- Give Sparingly
“How to Reduce Screen Time”, “Break the Grip of Social Media”, “Use Your Time Wisely”… there are countless articles full of suggestions for limiting your exposure to the screen and what lies behind it. I have been helped by many of them, and have tried with some success to implement suggestions I find there.
Most helpful to me, however, has been the book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport.
For one thing, it affirmed some positive habits I already have regarding the tiny computer I carry everywhere, and it also gave me some fresh perspective on how much control my smartphone has over me, control that I freely give. Thankfully, it’s not a hopeless endeavor to have agency over your digital consumption, and it does not have to be painful. I won’t summarize the book here, but I do wish to share some insights that might be helpful to you if you are looking to be more intentional with your time and attention in the digital world.
Respond, Don’t React
I found one of the most empowering of Newport’s ideas to be “Move past reacting to information created by other people.” This is immensely helpful, especially when we unpack it.
First, when we “react” rather than “respond” to a post or an ad, there is a knee-jerk quality that makes our heart race and perhaps gives us a feeling of urgency, and often that is the goal of the post. But when we respond, we choose how to feel.
And don’t forget, as Newport writes, this information has been “created by other people”- when we immediately react to something we read on Instagram or Facebook, or pop off to someone on Twitter, we have given someone else power over our attention, and even our emotions.
Remembering to move past this, to mindfully respond by ignoring the post or taking a few hours before responding- if responding at all- gives us free will over our attention, our emotions, and our time.
In other words, we can’t be bought. And if we can, at least we are not cheap, because we have given thought to whether a response is worth it.
A Nice Place to Visit
Newport’s suggestion to “Drop in to extract value” — as he says the members of an informal group he calls “the attention resistance” do — reinforced for me that to use a platform wisely, we must be intentional. I have never had email notifications on my phone, and only briefly had one news app send updates. I have always had all notifications for social media turned off; it has always made sense to me to “drop in and extract” whatever I needed from an app or website at the time.
I have never felt compelled to know the minute someone tagged me on Facebook or “liked” something I posted on Instagram. Whenever I’ve had an app that notified me randomly to weigh or take more steps, I silenced notifications. As I read about “dropping in and extracting value”, I patted myself on the back, but then realized…I might “drop in” on my own terms, but I stay on the platform’s terms.
If we remind ourselves to merely drop in and extract, we can use Instagram to see what our college-aged kid is up to or to check on a favorite author’s latest release date. Use Twitter to check the progress of your high school football team, or to see live tweets of The Bachelorette.
Be intentional and specific when you “drop in” and don’t linger for long, extracting only what you need. In this way, you make social media, or whatever application you are using, work for you, and not the other way around. You use it. It doesn’t use you.
What About FOMO?
With so much communication happening on our phones, not just through texts and emails, but also through social media apps, FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is a real concern for many people — including me.
Newport addresses FOMO specifically: “The sugar high of convenience is fleeting, and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly, but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists.”
As I read, I began to understand more fully that, by choosing to scroll as if hypnotized, I was allowing someone else to claim my time and my attention- and they make money from it! It is not just about wasting time, it’s about giving time to total strangers, and the companies they work for- time I cannot retrieve once gone.
As for texting and email, I have to ask myself, “Who really needs an immediate answer to a text?” Unless it’s for work, or the hopelessly lost pizza delivery guy, or my son with a flat tire (and heck, he can call Triple-A), the answer is, no one. The world has continued to spin during the times I’ve not had service or have been unable to access my phone for whatever reason.
Think about this, too: do you run to the mailbox as soon as the postal worker drops off your mail? No. You retrieve your mail when it is convenient for you. Same with email. Check it, delete the fluff, and answer the important ones at a time that is convenient for you.
Bottom line
I will be revisiting Digital Minimalism again and again, I am sure, as I work toward balancing the conveniences my smartphone offers (GPS is gold- I have never been a great map reader) with the quality of my life. As Goethe said, “Nothing is worth more than this day.” Choosing how I spend “this day”, and with whom, seems to be worth the effort.
