When I was eleven, i got my first phone. I remember it being the LG L20, I could access my schoolagenda and text my classmates on whatsapp, but that was about it. It helped my through out my days and that was fine.
This was in 2015, which was the time of the Justin Beiber ‘Purpose’ era, the white and gold (or blue and black if u want) and the taylor swift ‘bad blood’ video. But for me, this is the time where I found out about apps like Musical.ly, Instagram and Facebook.
10 whole years I’ve spend my life on my phone, now I am going to find out if I am really addicted or if my social media usage is just a habbit for me?
When i first downloaded Musical.ly in 2015, a year after it was realised, I didn’t think to much of it.
It was seen as ‘cringe’ to be on the app, let alone even post on the app. So I acted like it didn’t matter to me that much. But at the same time I was still invested in the app. It was new, I could spent hours on the app watching the most random video’s from people all over the world. At the time video’s couldn’t be longer than 15 secondes, so it felt really easy to watch stuff on there. And so I did.
I dont think I want to know how much time I have spent on the app. Even now, 10 years later, I still spent a lot of time on there. Something I am not that proud of, ofcourse, but for the sake of the research I will confess to. I use the, now called TikTok, app mulitiple hours a DAY. I am 21 now and saying this out loud brings a lot of shame with it for me. But this is not weird. Atleast not for 21 year olds now a days.
All my friends scroll all day long. Not only on TikTok, but also Instagram and YouTube has jumped on the trend of short form video’s a few years ago. Our brains are now programmed to consume short form content. We doomscroll multiple hours a day and afterwards feel bad that we let the time slip out of our hands.
All this while scrolling doesn’t make us feel good. We get depressed from scrolling, so we try to help this feeling by scrolling where we see more video’s that make us depressed and we get even more depressed. We are in a endless depression doomscroll. But it’s just seen as normal now. Because it is easy to scroll your feelings away.
In 2 weeks, I will track my own scrolling habbits for a week. Analysing ever single video that I am seeing on TikTok and Instagram and categorizing it afterwards. It will be intense and very confronting but I think it is a good way to see what I am really doing with my time and how it affects my life.
I know it affects my life and me, but why does it happen. Even while writing this I have the urge to whip out my phone and start scrolling. But why does this happen?
Is this what addiction is? Or have I just created a habbit that is so deeply rooted in my life that I just can’t seem to escape from it?