some things I have found myself doing instead of scrolling instagram

my attention span rivals the memory of a goldfish

1. open instagram and realise it has been blocked

   1. either by the native iphone time limit, of which my roommate has the code (I get 35 minutes a day),

   2. or by the brick I recently got and have been trying out

   3. either way, the automatic shortcut turns the black and white colour filter on instagram every single time, meaning that I can’t see anything on instagram in colour

2. close the app in defeat and sit with my fingers hovering over my phone screen

3. decide to open and scroll linkedin but from a safari browser because I don’t have the app downloaded

4. roll my eyes when I see that yet another person has dropped out of college to pursue an AI startup or got into YC or moved to san francisco (not passing judgement but it’s the equivalent of slop on linkedin at this point)

5. navigate over to youtube (also in my browser because I don’t have the app) and start watching youtube shorts

   1. I falsely believed that deleting the apps would make these platforms harder to navigate to and therefore reduce the time I spend on them. so far, I have been wrong

6. get mesmerised by someone cleaning their airbnb or mowing a lawn or going mushroom foraging or talking about the sociology of consumption

7. close the browser because I had a wtf-am-i-doing-with-my-time moment

8. open substack because it doesn’t really count as scrolling, it’s ~intellectual~

9. get stuck scrolling notes

10. tell myself to either read an article or get off of substack

11. open an article that looks interesting but only read a bit of it because my attention span seems to be mangled

12. close the app (but not the article because I’ll definitely return to it later, of course)

13. think about other social media apps I could probably scroll on

14. find myself back on the safari browser but now typing in facebook.com and scrolling through my newsfeed. it’s currently populated with posts from public groups I am not in but the algorithm thinks I would be interested in (it is right)

15. get really caught up reading 327 facebook comments and replies under a post about hiking in my local area

16. have another wtf moment and close the browser again

17. open strava and start scrolling to see if anyone I know did something cool in the past 24 hours

18. go to my own profile and scrutinize my most recent activity: elevation stats, heart rate, cadence (if it was a run), other photos I could upload, and comments

19. maybe get sucked into seeing what specific friends have been up to recently

20. open spotify and see what ridiculous name spotify has given my daylist

21. check my recent listening stats to see if noah kahan and the great divide are still my top artists/albums (he is and it is)

22. realise I can proudly tell people that I don’t rot and scroll on instagram or tiktok because I have strict time limits and color filters but I am still a slave to the dopamine-bread-crumb-algorithm in different ways

23. close spotify

24. lock my phone

25. stand up from the toilet.

thank you for reading my messy thoughts — the ‘still warm’ takes on society, social media, and navigating adulthood.

if you’re interested in personal wellness, that’s housed here

& see my visual content about being in my 20s on instagram ⭐️

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