Productive Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling (short-form content) is a major timesuck for thousands of people. But more than that, it's making people's attention spans decrease, which negatively impacts learning, and the ability to read books and write long narratives. The worst part? It's not their fault! These apps are engineered to be maximally addictive. And humans have evolved to have addictive personalities for survival. For example, when food was scarce, us humans adapted to receive a reward chemical in our brains when we ate extra fatty foods, which are the most calorie-dense.

I don't know what evolutionary advantage we are hanging onto when we doomscroll, but most people can't control it. I know that I can't. Luckily, our phones typically have a built-in wellness app (or you can download one for free if not) which limits the amount of time you can spend on selected apps.

If you're repulsed at the idea - then you're probably addicted too.

Flashback

I try to avoid any doomscrolling apps. I used to have Reddit, Instagram, and SnapChat *shudders* but have long deleted all of those. Now my main issue is YouTube Shorts. Of course, I would never voluntarily install YouTube Shorts on my phone. However, I have YouTube installed, by default, and sort of by necessity. I could delete it, like I did to Pokemon Go, but sometimes you just need to look up a quick video on how to fix or make something and you don't want the hassle of setting up your computer.

The problem? YouTube Shorts is now embedded directly in YouTube. And not just that, but whenever you open the app, it doesn't even open the homepage anymore! It opens a random shortform video! After it plays, it just scrolls to the next one. Don't let me tell you how many times I got burned because of that. YouTube's app design is so nasty.

Flash-forward

To tie this back to my wellness app, I set a 1-hour time limit on YouTube. At the beginning, I hit that limit almost every day, usually by watching shorts until my timer ran out before bed. But slowly and steadily, I've tapered off. One nice feature of my wellness app is that it shows a little timer icon next to the app - so I know every time I even open it, my time is ticking. So lately I've avoided opening it in order to "save" my time for when I need it most. And, it's working!

4 weeks ago, I averaged 1 hour per day on just YouTube alone. 3 weeks ago, I was at 47 minutes per day. 2 weeks ago, 45 minutes. Last week saw a major improvement at only 25 minutes per day! And this week, I'm on track to even improving that by only watching 23 minutes per day on average! Of course, that number could change.

Conclusion

Obviously, I'm just one person out of thousands who sort-of got out of the hole. Many people might not be so lucky. And I want to stress - it's not their fault. They're literally just addicted to something that has been normalized by society. (Hey, like coffee!) But going back to the issue of short-form content impacting people's learning and reading ability, one thing that I would find interesting is educational short-form content. I wonder of today's generation would learn better with this technology, or if it would all go in one ear and out the other. Alternatively, if short-form content became "boring" and educational, maybe it would stop being so gosh darn addictive.