Words Zahra K. // Header Credits @AlifsMurt.
I love Instagram and the thrill of looking at pictures, with the full knowledge that social media is addictive and creepy. That we are all living in some kind of a controlled bubble, where all of our online activity is simulated and our behaviour offline is, more often than not, a repercussion of it, is no news. I have struggled with Instagram addiction and have constantly tried to manage my screen time, and take regular digital detoxes, for a while now.
With practice I learnt to take a break, and also trained myself for delayed gratification by not immediately responding to a notification bell.
I would regularly comb my Instagram feed. The rule? Follow accounts that add value & meaning to my present life scenario. Only to realise later that it wasn’t enough.
The entire rigmarole seemed useless and inefficient after I watched ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix. I was bummed to know that Social Media addiction wasn’t an unintended consequence, but rather a well-planned objective. I wasn’t to be blamed entirely for being glued to my phone, procrastinating, feeling low, and having unreasonable meltdowns.
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“If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product.”
The Social Dilemma
My love was true but I felt conned, exploited and a tad heartbroken. Being sold at a price, exposed to & engaged with sponsored advertisements all at the cost of my attention and time, didn’t go down well with me.
Apart from the fact that I found social media thrilling, as an occupational hazard I need to spend a lot of time on Instagram. Post, interact, track, research, repeat. The documentary allowed me to make some concrete changes in the way I invested my time in this alliance. The awareness that my brain was constantly being stimulated with a barrage of information and temptations helped me gain more control over my Instagram behaviour. I became more cognisant about how I perceived content.
For instance, I now know that when I stare at a post/ad for more than 5-7 seconds, I run a risk of being lured for profit & fed with similar content more often. Like Pavlov’s, ahem¸ ‘subject’.
As immediate after effects of watching ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix – I stopped looking at Instagram, deleted apps and tried to stay away from social media as much as I could. Obviously, this wasn’t a solution!
Social Media is my l’amour, an integral part of my life and I cannot divorce it for cheating on me. The only way I could make the relationship work was to make some conscious changes in the way I accessed & consumed online content. I understood more about how the algorithm works and ways in which I could manipulate it for my benefit.
That being said, here are some changes I consciously made after watching the documentary:
- Turned off Post Notifications – allows me to stay away from unnecessary engagement.
- Decluttered more rigorously than I did before – I ask myself questions like: Do I need to follow this content creator? Do I need to get constant life updates of this person I only meet once a year? Do I need to buy more Ridas? Why am I being shown this Ad so often?
- Stopped the mindless scrolling propelled by 1 interesting post – When REELS was introduced, I often found myself in a rabbit hole of outfit change videos. I love them too much but it took away a good portion of my rest hours.
- Downtime – No phone after 9:00pm. I am still working on it. But I follow it at least 10 days in a month. It is a good start, no?
- Stopped checking my phone last thing before sleeping and first thing after waking up. The latter works better for me, since I feel more in control in the morning.
- Started choosing my own YouTube videos. It became exhausting after a bit. I find following a schedule in which the phone isn’t involved much easier than choosing YouTube videos every single time you open the app. I let the algorithms get the better of me here. Guilty!
- Work from Home sometimes means working all the time. It isn’t difficult to cross that line every now and then. So, I started allocating time slots for responding to messages on WhatsApp & Instagram.
This, for me, has worked the best so far.
The long and short of it all is that I realised that we are living in times where if we do not exercise self-control and manage our time well, we are doomed 😊.
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