In Defense Of Scrolling
Stop scrolling and read this!
Like many of us, I suppose, I get a lot of grief — principally from my wife — about excessive scrolling on my phone. I have to admit that, work-related activities aside, it probably comes second only to breathing in and out in terms of what I do the most frequently during my average day. And I keep doing it, despite Apple informing me on a reglar basis as to how many hours and minutes of my precious free time I’ve been spending zipping my index finger up and down the screen of my iPhone. Even within the scrollathons themselves, ads pop up and tell me to stop scrolling, and in its place do this (download this productivity app!) or that (Take this test to see whether you have Adult ADHD!) right now. And yet continue to scroll I do.
Should I feel bad about it? Yes, if we accept the premise that it’s a waste of time, that it’s addictive (well, it sort of is), and that said time could be better spent, uh, I don’t know, volunteering at a food bank or learning to play the piano. But doing so would deprive me of something I really like to do. Which scrolling, to confirm, is.
I recognize that admitting this is socially risky. “I’m not really on social media” is the modern-day equivalent of that original spoken virtue signal of the would-be intellectual, “I don’t own a television.” But scrolling is not the same as living, sharing and validating your life via Facebook, or having LinkedIn automatically boast to everyone that you have reached the 15-year mark in your crushingly boring job. Scrolling, instead, is all about a near-obsessive need for input from the world.
So this begs the question: do I scroll because I really am addicted to the micro-hits of dopamine that scrolling produces? Or is it because I simply have nothing better to do when not toiling away in the salt mines? Hmm, good one. Well, who doesn’t like a squirt of dopamine now and then? And what, pray tell, is this alternative leisure activity that I can pursue in mere seconds at a time (even if they do add up, point conceded), and — the kicker — for free?
But that’s more of a rationale than a reason. And, to fulfil the promise of the title of this piece — and also, truth be told, to annoy my wife a little — I would like here to present an impassioned Defense Of Scrolling.
First of all, a bit of personal context: I have always been a random content snacker. Growing up, if there was nothing good on TV (which, from the ages of 10 to 16 growing up in Italy, there mostly wasn’t, given that there were only two television channels, both government-owned), I’d take out a volume of my family’s Collier’s Encyclopedia and just start turning pages from the beginning. I’d linger on the entries I found interesting or just cool (castles, crime, cavalry, Custer, cosmonauts, cannibalism…) and skip over the ones that seemed too boring to wade through (chemistry, Canada, canon law, constitutionalism). In high school, I was a regular visitor to the Periodicals section of the school library, flipping through anything I could get my hands on, from Time to the National Geographic to Popular Mechanics.
So when smartphones came out, I was the proverbial kid in a candy store. All of a sudden, thanks to content aggregator apps like Flipboard and Pocket, these snippets of news, information, history, trends, and glimpses into the lives of all sorts of people were coming to me, literally landing in the palm of my hand instead of me going around looking for them.
When the social media websites launched their own mobile apps, this added a plethora of lighter content — everything from news of high school reunions, slice-of-life updates from university pals, and hilarious memes to … yes, OK, funny videos of cats and dogs.
When Instagram and TikTok joined the party, a veritable tsunami of look-at-me photos, silly dances, political rants, and excerpts from rock concerts kept me captivated.
To complete the picture, I downloaded the Medium and Substack apps, and was suddenly granted access to an unimagined and limitless wealth of ideas, reflections, and personal stories. Hooked? Yes I was, yesiree.
But… but isn’t that bad? Well, given what I have just shared above, not from my perspective. In what ways do I find scrolling useful, interesting, informative, and — heaven forfend in these dour times— fun? To echo a certain Ms. Browning, let me count the ways. In no particular order:
Serendipity. Nothing can compare with scrolling, if we’re honest, for the sheer variety of absolutely random content hurtling towards you. And in that content, there are gems that you would never have come across any other way. Some of it inspired me to start creative writing again for the first time since college. So for one thing, your reading this is a direct product of what scrolling is all about.
Breadth. Just five minutes experiencing the vast range of topics, ideas, news, stories, views, photos, videos, anecdotes and more via scrolling makes you more fully realize the incredible breadth of the world and of the human race, and how tiny your piece of it is. Great for reminding yourself that you and your problems are not the center of the universe.
Inspiration. I find that once every 200 items or so when you scroll, there is something that kickstarts an idea, prompts a memory, or inspires you to do something, whether that’s adding a forgotten favorite song to a Spotify playlist, sharing an insightful item with a friend, researching a topic, or making a mental note to yourself that your neighbor still hasn’t returned that hedge trimmer he borrowed.
Trivia. I’ve always felt that trivia is not … trivial. Rather, I like to refer to it as “cocktail party knowledge”: nuggets of obscure information, factoids and details that elicit that treasured “How do you know that?” from complete strangers at social gatherings. Yes, it might translate into a personal body of knowledge a mile wide and an inch deep, but I’d rather chat over a Martini with a fellow content surfer than die a slow death trapped in a conversation with someone intent on trying to educate me, say, on the finer points of bond valuations.
Silliness. A lot of what spills over the digital transom while scrolling is silly, or course, but to me that’s part of its appeal. Silliness can be uplifting, just as it was when we were kids and the pulling of a face or the failed attempt to balance a tennis racket on your forehead could generate instant mirth. Through the silliness, too, you can often see the simple humanity of people — people perhaps in the grip of secret loneliness — just wanting to be noticed, to be seen. If a housewife wants to video herself dancing in her kitchen to music she enjoyed in clubs when she was younger, and share it with the world, more power to her say I.
Laughs. Laughter is good for the soul, and now that Hollywood has practically stopped making comedies, television sitcoms are disappearing, and there is no longer any genuine “com” to be found in today’s rom-coms, the scroll is the one place where I am sure to find something that actually makes me laugh out loud (when was the last time any form of traditional media entertainment had you laughing audibly?) at every session. The TikTok videos of phone pranks played by a certain radio station are particularly side-splitting, and can lift my spirits for hours.
Balance. The incredible amplitude of sources and creators funnelling content to the aggregator and social media apps is a great antidote to the modern, mind-narrowing phenomenon of echo chamber media. Being exposed to alternative viewpoints — even if it causes us to grind our teeth or yell at our phone screen like a crazy old man — makes us better thinkers and better citizens.
Gettin’ down with the kids. Even if you are one of the 17 people who still watch MTV, scrolling is a much better, more immediate and constantly self-updating window into what young people are doing and saying. The result of gleaning such insights provokes occasional leeriness by the wife, who can sometimes take my familiarity with Gen Z fads as possible evidence that I have been hanging around high schools in an unhealthy way.
Look, I could go on like this for another dozen paragraphs, but you get the drift. Scrolling has a lot of advantages that They Who Disdain Scrolling will never understand. No, of course it isn’t a substitute for reading books. On the contrary: while scrolling I often come across someone raving about some novel or non-fiction book I never read, and it prompts me to buy it. Whereby it takes me months to finish it, because I am too busy scrolling.
To conclude, here are some quick Q&A’s to press home my points:
Q: Isn’t there a lot of dross that cascades down the top of your screen?
A: Absolutely. But getting past it takes the fraction of a second involved in swiping upwards, unlike ads or boring content on television or radio. Dismissing mediocrity with the flick of a finger is empowering.
Q: Isn’t there a lot of clickbait?
A: I would say that there is less of it than those preposterous “revelations” at the bottom of the article page on even the most established news websites. In any case, these rare pieces of bait are as instantly recognizable as those emails from Nigerian princes requesting your assistance in moving their money out of the country, and easily shot past in an instant.
Q: But … isn’t scrolling addictive?
A: Here we go again. Yes, it can be addictive, a veritable rabbit hole where you only stop when it has gotten dark outside and the dog has been waiting in front of its empty bowl for the past two hours. But as addictions go, is it as destructive as drugs, drink, porn or gambling? No, no, no and no. And at least with scrolling, you come away with it possibly having learned something new.
Q: Isn’t it a time waster?
A: Yes of course it’s a time-waster. But you’ll find that often the people asking that question are the same ones that think nothing of watching four episodes of “The Rings Of Power” back-to-back, or sitting through five-set matches of televised Men’s tennis. Wasted time is in the eye of the bewaster.
Me, I’d rather spend that time hearing about how AI is going to make us all into digital serfs; silently disagreeing with a music expert’s list of the 10 best rock guitar solos of all time; attempting to memorize yet another set of instructions on how to make the perfect spaghetti cacio e pepe; and watching a two-minute compilation of «The fastest heavyweight boxing knockouts ever.» Pointless? Perhaps.
But then again, that is the whole point.
