As a healed doomscroller, I don’t remember when exactly I became addicted, but I do recall why.
Like many people used to be when they were younger, I was an avid reader back in my childhood years. Turkish writer İpek Ongun was my holy grail, then she was replaced by Sabahattin Ali and Reșat Nuri Güntekin as I grew older. I slowly mastered English and extended my scope with international writers like Franz Kafka and Jane Austen. At the time, reading was an activity to heal my boredom; it allowed me to dissociate, and I still recall times when I read for so long that I felt dumbfounded when I came back to reality.
As school got harder and I grew more aware of the world around me — along with the problems, tensions and aggressions that surrounded me — I felt my motivation to read shrink. Most of the time, my foggy brain would dissociate, but not in the way I used to experience. Instead of delving into the world the book was inviting me to, I was orbiting my worries and anxieties, and, at that point, reading a book felt like too much.
This was when I acknowledged how much effort I required to focus on a single piece of paper, which I’d never felt before. At times like this, watching short cartoon episodes from Phineas and Ferb or joining my dad in watching an action movie felt easier.
Later, I became a middle schooler, and my parents decided that it was time for my first phone. Getting a cellphone with access to Instagram and Musical.ly was revolutionary; it brought the television from the living room to wherever I was. Even better, I no longer had to challenge my attention span and could exhaust my little brain even less with 15- to 60-second videos where people danced to Renegade or lip-synced to Hit the Quan.
So, I looked forward to coming back home to grab my phone, lay sideways on the sofa and scroll. Scroll. Like. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Like. Screenshot. Share to Snapchat. Scroll... It was even better if my mom let me take my phone to school because I could do the same in class by hiding my phone under the desk instead of listening to my teacher explain literary devices or integrals.
While I kept using doomscrolling as an escape mechanism for any type of work I even slightly didn’t feel like doing, I found myself taking 25-minute-long breaks for every five minutes I spent doing work (is this still considered Pomodoro?). I felt disconnected from reality, as I could not comprehend whether I spent just a few minutes or several hours scrolling through TikTok. Whenever I checked my screen time, I was confronted by all the time I threw away. With those hours wasted on meaningless apps that forced me to keep scrolling, I not only missed out on opportunities to do more work but also felt my ability to focus slowly deteriorate. I still think about how many more books I could have read, movies I could have watched and assignments I could have spent more effort on if — and only if — I had never downloaded these apps.
Two months ago, I decided that I had enough. A fault confessed is half redressed; adamant to gain as much of my precious time back, I installed a screen time limiting app that allowed me to log into these apps only five times a day for seven-minute intervals. Whenever I got the urge to click on the colorful Instagram logo on my home screen, I was met with a question instead: “Is this a good time?”
The first few times this happened, I lifted my head from the screen and checked where I was. In a lecture hall in the middle of class. Right across a friend whom I hadn’t seen in months. At the dinner table with my parents. On the sofa sitting next to my grandma drinking tea. Outside walking my dog around the neighborhood. No, this was not a good time.
I was surprised by how quickly I got used to not having Instagram or TikTok right under my hands. While I had expected myself to use these apps to the limit, this was not the case at all; I felt the need to log into these apps less and less every day. I just checked and found out that I used Instagram for a total of 16 minutes yesterday (for TikTok, only 5 minutes).
Today is the 64th day I haven’t spent doomscrolling, and, if I hadn’t decided to break this unhealthy habit two months ago, I would have lost around 420 hours to meaningless scrolling. With these 420 hours, I engaged with my studies to the fullest, performed critical reading with no distractions, took the best naps, prepared the desserts on my to-bake list, had long gratitude walks and connected with people through quality conversations.
If you feel like you lose control while scrolling and can’t get past the desire to “watch one more video,” please take my advice and limit your screen time — by utilizing an app, like I have, if necessary. I promise you that you can do so much more with those hours.
Buse Koldas is a sophomore from Istanbul, Turkey majoring in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She is the Voices Editor for The News-Letter.
