You’re Scrolling Your Life Away

The peaks and valleys I faced while quitting social media.

Two hours and twenty-five minutes.

According to Forbes, that’s how much time the average American spends scrolling on social media each and every day.

Nearly ten percent of your time is spent mindlessly perusing and getting nowhere because of it.

Cheap dopamine is the mighty hand that has your productivity, motivation, and discipline in a chokehold.

It’s getting to the point where people are praised if they don’t have Instagram, or haven’t sent a Tweet in a few weeks.

Since that statement is so crazy to me, let me say it again:

If you aren’t somebody who uses social media regularly, you’re automatically seen as somebody with self-control and discipline.

That’s how common the overuse of smartphones and social media has become.

I’ve been seeing the effects of these things for years now — and I’m sure you have too.

People’s memories are getting worse, attention spans are decreasing, and conversations couldn't be more boring.

We are literally a society in decline, all because of devices that are meant to improve our quality of life.

Why do I even care?

Because I’m somebody who was a part of the aforementioned group, and I felt the negative effects more than I could’ve imagined.

My mental health fell through the floor, my relationships failed, and I had no motivation to do anything meaningful with my life.

I seriously thought that there was something wrong with me. Surely overuse of my iPhone couldn’t be the cause of all this turmoil in my life.

I believed that statement to my core — until I deleted my social media accounts.

It wasn’t instant, but I started to feel less stress and anxiety as each day passed.

Panic attacks that used to come multiple times a day started to come fewer and far in between.

My motivation came back, and I wanted to start hanging out with my friends and family again.

All of these positive things, and the only change I made was spending less time on my phone.

Now, I’m not saying that spending less time on your phone is the end-all cure for mental health problems.

I’m simply saying that for my specific situation, it helped a bunch.

I never would've thought that such a simple fix would have such great positive effects on my life.

That’s why I can’t advocate enough the importance of cutting back your time spent on social media.

It will be hard at first. Nothing worth having ever comes easy.

I do promise, though, that the more and more you resist, the better you’ll feel.

Till next time.