"I average around four hours of my day on my phone, checking emails, responding to texts, scrolling social media, and checking the weather. That's four hours I could be spending reading a book, writing an article, learning how to predict the weather, calling a loved one, and doing anything besides checking the time suck and brain rot that is social media sites and messaging apps."
"Every October, as average daylight dwindles and my energy levels deplete, this feeling of learned helplessness at the hands of technology comes to a head. I have no energy to get up from my bed. It takes me a while to build the courage to transit to the gym. What do I do instead? I sit on my bed and I scroll."
"Once I reach this point, I delete my social media apps. I try to put my phone in another room while I work, eat, and do chores around the house. I create a stricter schedule and force myself to leave the house more. Then, a week or two later, once I've returned to my natural, stable, ripen, not rotten, brain, I redownload all these apps. Perhaps it's just a few weeks or months, but the cy"
Digitization of work and social life has made screen addiction a common feature of daily living. Typical phone use ranges from three to eight hours, with individual use often around four hours spent on emails, texts, social media, and weather checks. Those hours replace activities like reading, writing, skill learning, and meaningful conversations. Seasonal low energy, especially in October, can trigger prolonged bed-bound scrolling through mixed content—financial advice, social milestones, reactionary posts, and distressing news. A recurring coping pattern involves deleting social media apps, imposing stricter schedules, and leaving the house, followed by redownloading apps after mental recovery, creating a cycle of relapse.
Read at ZDNET
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