Roger Brown, Period 1, 2/11/22

Roger Brown, Period 1, 2/11/22


At this current point in time, what specific goal(s) do you have for yourself? Why?

My main goal is to free myself from the all encompassing grasp of social media. Everyday, I feel as if the majority of my free time is spent scrolling through instagram, twitter, or youtube. This is a significant barrier to accomplishing anything that I would consider valuable to my life. Whether it would be spent on schoolwork or activities for my own personal enjoyment or enrichment, the time I have is significantly cut down by the minutes and hours sunk into mindless scrolling.

This isn’t to say that I shouldn't spend any time on anything that isn’t directly productive, everyone needs some downtime, but endless scrolling I think is objectively the worst way to spend downtime, since it's only a temporary distraction, a series of sounds and images meant to keep you barely off the edge of boredom, but very rarely offers anything of substance. The only reason I still gravitate towards it is because it is such an accessible and zero-effort distraction for whenever I feel the slightest bit of apprehension towards anything I might otherwise do.

It’s not even necessarily that I would not enjoy doing something else (although sometimes it is, like with homework), but that I don’t feel like affording the slightest bit of attention that it would require. Other activities that I might genuinely enjoy, such as playing a video game, reading a book, or watching a documentary, do necessarily require more attention that scrolling through social media, but I have become so accustomed to scrolling, which provides the barest form of entertainment without any required attention, that I often go towards that instead because it’s easier than affording attention elsewhere.


How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal? (or these goals?)

I try to be more conscious of when I go for my phone and how long I spend on it, since scrolling is such a mindless activity, it can be difficult to recognize when you start and how long you spend on it. When I do realize that I have been on social media for longer than I should be I immediately put down my phone, take a couple breaths, and continue with what I was doing before.


How does the world around you affect your perception of this goal? (or these goals?

It is pretty widely believed that excessive social media usage has a number of psychological detriments, such as sleep cycle interruption, attention span shortening, depression, anxiety, and addiction, many of which I have experienced to some extent at various times that have been caused or exacerbated by social media. This gives me more motivation and frequent reminders to curb my usage of social media, which is helpful since just being conscious of how much I use it and how it affects me is very important since much of the issue is not even being aware of it.