If you’ve taken a look at our previous article on the same topic, you will know that it explores the effects of the internet on our life, drawing parallels from the tech giants of this world to George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother. With everything accessible at an instant through our smartphones – which function now as everything but a phone, we have the power of knowledge right at our fingertips. But instead of being empowered, we find ourselves losing focus and attentiveness, with an increased need for instant gratification and validation. This article is how I realized how the internet is affecting my life and what actions I took and will continue to take to remediate that.
Referring back to the part 1 of this article, Divyaj mentions the book, “The age of Surveillance capitalism”. This book reflects upon the capitalization of our behavior by the aforementioned tech giants. I recently read the book by Johann Hari, “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention” which is along the same lines. Stolen Focus primarily focuses on how our attention span has reduced due to social media, why social media is designed the way it is to capture our attention, and how we can get our focus back. While he did not have a definite solution that will fix this problem, he succeeded in making me horrified and realize how much I have let social media control my life and reduce my attention span. Notice how I said “let”, as if it’s all in my hands. This is actually one of the topics that Johann alludes to in his book – that the design of social media is such that it makes you crave for those “likes”, “hearts”, “reacts”, slowly making you an addict for those small hits of dopamine, while all the time you believe that it is in your hands to control this behavior. He says that although taking matters into your own hands is an option to explore, it is not necessarily the ultimate solution. After all, you can relapse, forego all self-control, and get back into your previous habits as if nothing changed.
I was a heavy user of Instagram until a few months back. Not that I posted too much, but I definitely craved instant gratification, such as scrolling through reels, looking at posts/stories posted by people, and constantly looking at my own posts, narcissistically, to get validation from others that they liked what I posted. And even while speaking with my own peers, we would talk in terms of taking pictures in order to post on instagram, strategic photos and videos meant just for “the ‘gram”, and even posting at certain times so that it would get the most views, therefore most likes. It all seems harmless, right? Well it is, until you spend hours and hours on this until it’s the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see before you sleep.
Taking a note of this, I set a screen lock timer on Instagram in order to cut back – only 30 minutes a day was I allowed. Well, I still craved something to look at as a distraction while I was waiting in line for something, bored at a friend’s house, or just wanted to look at my phone to “appear busy”. In came TikTok – which took out the personal aspect of Instagram and the validation, but just as bad with the tailored recommendations of short videos designed to suck you in and keep you glued to the screen. My phone screen time started exponentially increasing since I did decrease time on Instagram but basically replaced it with TikTok.
One fine day, after I wasted 2 hours just watching pointless videos, I decided to delete everything. I deleted TikTok, signed out of Facebook and Instagram, enabled two-factor authentication everywhere so that even if I get tempted, I’ll think twice before logging in. I got into reading books, starting out with fiction for easy reads, and then moving on to non-fiction. It’s really tough to get back into reading once you get used to pictures and short video clips. After my brain hurt for a while, I slowly built back my reading tolerance. Now, I can read for a much longer time than I used to be able to, without feeling drained or getting distracted by the apps waiting to be opened on my phone. This state, the state of being fully involved in the activity you are doing just for the sake of the activity, is termed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi as the “flow state”. This state leads to a feeling of happiness, fulfillment and higher levels of productivity and creativity in a person.
Every activity I do, is for me and me only. While I do sometimes miss out on updates from the rest of the world, I do believe that if I am meant to know something, the people who are close to me and who also consider me close will inform me without my having to discover it online. Now that the source of my compelling urge to showcase and display all that I have done has been removed, I can immerse myself completely in any activity I put my mind to without worrying that the results of them might not be “good” enough to be validated for.
The internet is definitely a beautiful source of information. But its ability to change our thought process, influence our decisions and even modify our behavior is what is terrifying. Until there can be a change implemented on a greater level, it is up to us as consumers to take it in our own hands and stop it.
Just An Oeuvre 