For this assignment, there is no use of generative AI
Introduction
To provide some context for my findings, it is generally difficult for me to sit and focus without routine. I am generally a pretty online person and often have the issue of going to do something on my phone, getting distracted, and forgetting why I even grabbed it in the first place. With that, there have been a number of events within the past month or so that I would say have definitely swayed a lot of my online activity. An example of this would be registration for fall classes. I noticed pretty early on how with registration around the corner, my attention during work time often flipped to courses for next semester, and I also found myself checking the registrar website multiple times to “double-triple check” my schedule was how I left it. This would lead to me also looking at degree works and seeing what attributes I needed for next semester (despite already having a schedule). All in all, I made a total of 4 different plans with multiple options to ensure that during registration I would have a backup. This is all to provide context for the rest of this post and also to provide some reasoning as to how and why I do certain things online.
Messaging
Aside from a few isolated incidents (i.e., events such as registration and day to-day-homework), I spend most of my time online on my phone. While I do use my computer from time to time, I feel it is much more effective to share how my attention has shifted online from my phone as opposed to my computer. I am a pretty big texter. Whenever I do homework, I feel like I need to check my phone about five times before I am actually able to focus. I also leave my phone on “do not disturb” (DND), so it makes me feel that I need to check it more often so that I don’t miss anything. When I inevitably do sit down to do work, I use a third-party timer app on my phone. Because of this, ads will run when I start and end the timer. I found that throughout my data, interacting with these ads (whether to close or silence them) became an easy gateway for me to check my messages and text people on my phone, ultimately distracting from the work I was trying to get done using the timer.
Many of these same ideas also go for my email on my computer. With the sheer amount of emails my school account gets daily, I feel that I need to constantly be on top of things to ensure I don’t get overwhelmed by a messy inbox. When I saw I had an email notification in another tab, it would distract me from potentially productive work, and I would start to peruse the messages sent that day. While I do think that email having a blinking notification at the top of tabs certainly allows for distraction, I also believe that there is something to say for me agreeing to attend to my messages, especially ones pertaining to clubs I am in, while finding myself forced to attend to certain aspects of my homework.
Social Media
I think especially when talking about attention in a contemporary context, the conversation seems to always come back to social media. I have within the past month cut scrolling social media (i.e., Tiktok and Instagram Reels) out of my routine. Though not entirely encompassing my digital attention, I think this change shifted my focus in a lot of ways, and I think that comparing where my attention was and how my attitude as a whole has changed towards it is interesting to look at.
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What really scared me (and ultimately prompted me to act) was that scrolling almost became a habit. When I would go onto Instagram to talk to my friends or engage with their posts, I would just instinctively go to Reels and start scrolling. I realized that I almost had a dependancy on constant entertainment and needed to learn to be more okay with just being quiet and alone.
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The screen usage, especially in the breakdown of what apps are being used the most, Instagram certainly fell off as one of my most-used applications. Right before I stopped, I averaged around 7 hours on Instagram a day. Shortly after I stopped using Reels, it makes a swift drop to not even being in my top 3 used applications.
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I quickly replaced what would have been time to doom scroll with more productive means such as working, cleaning, hobbies, or even just lying down silently. I started this shift over my spring break so I was able to pick up many activities like painting or walks to fill time.
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I really love nature, so (as I mentioned before), I became increasingly comfortable with quiet and silence. On my walks to class, I like to look at the ground in front of me and notice things such as the leaves, bugs, and flowers surrounding the path. I think this is fitting, especially in our conversations on Thoreau, as he mentions all throughout Walden the importance of nature and being deliberate in our way of life.
Conclusion
This blog post is not to demonize social media, nor is it meant to “prove” anything wrong with digital spaces like Instagram. I am rather, using this blog post as a personal account of why I stopped using scrolling social media, and my own perception of the changes around me. Though I choose not to go on Instagram Reels, I still have a private account where I look at and engage with my friends’ posts. I have definitely found that by cutting out certain aspects of Instagram (i.e., Reels), I find myself going on it less, and I am able to shift my attention to more tangible and productive tasks with ease. With this, it is ultimately my goal that I can shift my focus to being more productive and stop engaging with the things that distract me from living a full and content life. Whether it be senseless advertisements or worrying about unimportant dates and deadlines, a lot of my online attention can still be summed up as unmotivated. And with that, I don’t necessarily believe mindlessness online is an inherently bad thing either. We gravitate towards certain parts of the internet for a reason; however, it is important to pay attention to why those things catch our interest and assess how it may impact other aspects of our lives.