This month I did an experiment.

Over the past few months, I鈥檝e noticed that I鈥檝e been disappearing into my phone for longer and longer periods, endlessly scrolling Instagram and Reddit (I don鈥檛 have Facebook) and it wasn鈥檛 doing me any good. I鈥檇 be scrolling while doing chores around the house, during the small amount of time I have off with my wife and even right before bed I鈥檇 be crouched over by the charger flipping past dumb videos. It was pretty bad.

I wanted to do something about it.

The first thing I did was turn on a time limit for those apps on my phone. I wanted to limit myself to one hour per day per app. I also removed the apps from my home screen, and made it harder to find them on my phone. That worked for about a week. Then I realized how easy it was to ignore the limits I set for myself and I realized I was back up to like two hours per day on each app.

At the same time, I set out to unfollow the same amount of accounts as that day鈥檚 date. So on Jan. 1 I unfollowed one account. On Jan. 14 I unfollowed 14 accounts. Like that. Based on my poor math, that鈥檚 about 496 accounts. The idea was that most of the 2,000 accounts I followed were either big companies, influencers or other businesses and not real people.

Essentially, Instagram was acting like a big advertising platform and I was just consenting to get 2,000 corporate advertisements every day.

The other type of content I was getting was political. I followed a lot of news, non-governmental organizations and activists. The thing was, being bombarded with content showing how many things were wrong with the world wasn鈥檛 helping my mental health.

I either wasn鈥檛 getting any actual meaningful interaction out of it, or I was being overwhelmed by how bad the world was. I felt hollow as I scrolled. When I first had the idea, I got a bit ahead of myself an unfollowed one big batch. In all, I鈥檒l unfollow about a quarter of the accounts with which I started. It鈥檒l hopefully make a big difference.

Now, I mentioned putting a time limit on my apps, but said that it was really easy to ignore. I had to find another solution. Now I know just downloading another app is just a techno-fix, and that鈥檚 another conversation, but that鈥檚 what I ended up doing.

I found an app that redirects the user to a calming pause screen, asks the user 鈥渋s this important?鈥� and basically disrupts the brain鈥檚 neural pathway that makes it so easy to get sucked into scrolling on apps.

Instead of getting the instant gratification from social media, I鈥檓 given the chance to take a deep breath, reevaluate and change my mind 鈥� and therefore my behaviour.

I like it. It鈥檚 helped a lot.

I鈥檒l be starting this year following over 500 fewer companies on social media, and severely limiting how much I use it.

A digital detox can help all of us. Next time you scroll, ask yourself if you鈥檙e actually happy doing it. There are ways to take back some of your attention and get some of your life back.

marc.kitteringham@campbellrivermirror.com
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