How I Lost My Humanity Scrolling Social Media Feeds
And all the unorthodox strategies I used to free myself and become a real person again.
Sleeping and waking up scrolling a mobile screen has been my routine for years.
Stuck in a 9–5 job that I didn’t like, I couldn’t move to change my reality as I was spending the working hours of my day with… nothing.
Literally nothing.
The Mental Blackout
After spending hours browsing Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube and others, at the end of the day I couldn’t remember anything I had seen there — and that had consumed 4–5 hours of my day!
Only then did I discover that continuous media consumption can cause a blackout in your mind.
And since my memory was being affected, I couldn’t even recognize that I was addicted. For me, my days were going by normally, I just lacked time.
I didn’t lack time.
I was being consumed with something that was simply being erased from my head.
Quick break. Dear reader, have you also had this feeling of forgetting what happened in your day after using many social networks? I’m particularly interested in hearing your testimonial, please leave it in the comments if you feel comfortable.
A Side Hustle That Failed and the Mesmerizing Entertainment
I’ve already told my experience trying to become a content creator on Instagram.
Within a year, three times I started and stopped posting because I was swallowed up by the network. I just couldn’t be consistent.
Finding good posts and good profiles was a tedious task, which made me have to scroll through videos of people cutting objects, half-naked women and adults performing childish dances.
Even though my background interests didn’t demonstrate closeness to any of that, the algorithm tried to push me shallow entertainment all the time.
It took me five times longer to produce anything as I had to swim against a tide of idiotic content.
Even with strictly professional intent, I wasted a lot of time scrolling through the feed watching irrelevant and forgettable stuff.
The End of the Morning Routine
It’s very convenient to check the first updates of the day and the engagement of our posts first thing in the morning. After all, we slept and woke up with our phones right next to us.
It took me a while to understand the massive trap of scrolling the phone first thing in the morning.
It was the recipe for the failure of a whole day because there I was already wasting 1–2 hours in the very beginning of it.
Besides not fulfilling my obligations, I was starting my regular job already anxious and stressed.
And my problem was the same as so many others. Excessive exposure to social media.
On average, people spend ~2.5 hours on social media.
But mind you: this is a global average.
Heavy users like me (and maybe you) can easily spend five to six hours there, especially if you work with them.
How I Opened My Eyes
I have to admit that it took me to recognize my addiction. After all, everyone around me was addicted too, so everything seemed pretty normal.
Only when I started to feel like I was going to be unhappy for the rest of my life did things start to change.
I accessed my Instagram usage stats: 3.5-hour daily average! In only one medium.
The amount of content I created was negligible compared to the number of hours I spent there.
This caused me a mixed feeling of anger and… joy!
For anyone who was having memory lapses, I now knew exactly what was killing me.
So I automatically developed an extreme dislike for scrolling on social media.
Even when I get distracted and start, my brain has created a trigger that makes me self-hate when I’m in this stupor.
This is my cue for me to stop immediately (and almost hurl the phone against the wall).
It’s like I lost my humanity by letting myself be mesmerized by the feeds.
What I Did Instead
Only then could I act to get back to being a real person.
If you also see yourself in this scenario, here are some things I did to recover my productivity and my willingness to be useful.
I Created a Mental Trigger
As I mentioned I developed a kind of anger that shows up in the first wasted minutes. It’s an internal feeling, with myself, that makes me want to fight the addiction.
This seems to be a psychological consequence of what I was going through, and I don’t know if anyone can develop this practice. It just popped inside of me and maybe it’s worth it for other people to at least try to create a similar trigger.
After all, it is a vital waste of time. It is worthy to revolt against this kind of weakness.
I Admitted Being Mentally Exhausted
One of the biggest problems with all of this was being tired and not understanding why.
The time I spent on social media was being erased from my memory. Everything seemed normal, but my tiredness and stress were abnormal.
Recognizing that something was wrong was my first step, only then could I be clear about what was causing it.
I Took Shower As the First Activity of the Day
Inside all of us lives an idiot.
This idiot shows up every morning when he wakes up when there is a dominant activity in our limbic system. The limbic system is the place in our brain where there are quick-access and quick-forget memories.
It’s thanks to the limbic system that we put two socks on the same foot, brush our teeth with shaving cream, answer the remote thinking we’re on the phone.
And it is precisely this idiot who takes the cell phone while in bed, before doing anything.
On the other hand, there is good news: within all of us lives a genius.
But the genius is in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for long-term attention and activities.
And if the idiot wakes up before the genius, it is necessary to take drastic action: water!
When taking a shower, especially if you turn on the cold water (hard reality), you give your brain a healthy jolt so that it works — and you can make the rational decision to do something productive rather than throw your morning in the trash.
I Confessed My Addiction Out Loud
As a Catholic, as soon as I realized I was taking a toll on my life by overexposing myself to the screen, I began confessing this sin weekly.
Even if you’re not religious or have another religion, admitting out loud that you’re addicted to social media is a tremendous relief.
Speaking out loud about what you have been doing wrong activates other sensory areas in your body that help you take action to stop this behavior.
I Planned My Day the Night Before
Every night I started writing down on paper everything I was supposed to do for the next day.
This helped me not only to get away from my cell phone before bed but to fix in my mind what I should do and with what priority.
Drifting the web wasn’t one of them.
Knowing what to do is the first step in getting the step right, and having it written down by hand makes all the difference.
Conclusion
No one wants to waste their most productive hours on something that isn’t in high demand.
Every day we have the power and willpower to do extremely important things, especially to cultivate long-term habits.
But it takes a little body and brain training to extract our potential.
Above all, you must acknowledge your tiredness and build a positive attitude from it.
Understanding that it is possible to change and fight for the success of one day is an attitude of self-charity.
