(And what to fight for instead)
I’ve spent the last several years on a quest for a fuller, more meaningful life. Between caregiving and the inevitable deaths, the pandemic, years spent chasing the wrong dream, and the anxiety and depression wrought by all of that, I’ve missed out on a fair chunk of my life. Or at least it feels that way sometimes.
I retreated from life. Some of it was forced, as caregiving doesn’t leave a lot of time for a life. The pandemic made me nervous and anxious around others and it was (and is still sometimes) difficult to pull out of that spiral. Add in the realization that I achieved a dream that turned out to be more curse than blessing and it’s no wonder that I pulled into my shell and refused to come out.
I compounded the problem by developing an unhealthy addiction to screens. If life is scary and hard, screens can feel comforting and easy. Yet nothing can waste days of your life faster than mindless scrolling. What began as a way to distract and soothe myself became something that sucked away hours and days of my life, leaving me even more anxious and unfulfilled.
I know I’m not alone in this. I can’t drive or walk around a store without nearly crashing into people on their phones. I hear about the struggles of friends and family to find balance. Their personal relationships, hobbies and “real lives” are suffering because they spend all their time glued to a screen. If all this scrolling were productive it might feel better, but it rarely is. Usually it’s mindless doomscrolling or mind rotting nonsense that encourages you to waste money or become even more unhappy by comparing yourself to seemingly perfect people. In its worst form, it drowns you in conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation, making you even less likely to develop a full and meaningful life.
None of this is by accident. Social media in particular, but much of the internet in general, is designed to capture your attention in order to monetize it. These platforms have figured out how to hijack our brains’ desire for dopamine. Their algorithms keep us clicking and scrolling long beyond the point of sense. They don’t care if you waste your life when every click and minute spent scrolling puts money in their pockets.
I knew all of this and somehow I still got sucked in. It’s just so easy. Between the platforms’ desire to keep you engaged, and peer pressure to know the latest trends and memes, it’s all too easy to find yourself on that particular highway to hell. And like any addiction, when you realize you’ve gone around the bend, it’s all too difficult to get back.
I tried many strategies to break the cycle. Blocking apps on my devices. Screen time counters to make me aware of the problem (and to feel worse about it). Digital detoxes. Lock boxes for my phone. Timers. Replacing smart devices with dumb ones. And on and on. I was trying to fight my screen addiction by forcibly decreasing the amount of time I spent online. It didn’t work.
One day I got stupid lucky and stumbled on my answer. (Note that I’m not saying my advice will work for everyone. I’m not a doctor or therapist and, as I said, I only stumbled on this by dumb luck. You may not want to trust me.) Anyway, I had to spend most of a week at a campground with very limited internet. Speed was basically dial up (when it worked, which wasn’t often), and no streaming was allowed (or even possible). The TV in our camper could only pull in one channel on the antenna. I had to find other ways to spend my time.
At first it was difficult. I’d only packed one book and a small handful of card games. I kept reaching for the remote or the laptop. By day two we’d played the heck out of those few games, and I finished my book. Desperate, my partner and I swapped books, which made for an interesting experience. (Me reading a military thriller and him reading a cozy fantasy. But neither of us hated it!) We talked and took endless walks around the campground. A pad of paper led to, of all things, tac tac toe tournaments. We made friends with our neighbors and had a cookout. There wasn’t much around worth visiting, so we were pretty strapped for options. Somehow, though, we weren’t bored. We found ways to fill the void, just as we had when we were younger. (Growing up pre-internet did have some advantages.)
When we got back home and had the opportunity to connect to the internet, we pulled back. I said, “What if we don’t do this? What if we keep practicing this lifestyle?” Well, we knew we couldn’t keep things exactly the same as they had been on our trip. We both had to work, after all, and everything these days from paying bills to making appointments requires being online. But surely we could find ways to keep offline activities as part of our daily lives and reduce our non-essential scrolling?
And that was the brainstorm. Successfully breaking the screen addiction wasn’t about fighting the screen time, or breaking the habit. It wasn’t about a restrictive detox or shaming tracking app. It was about building a life around other activities. Instead of fighting to control my screen time, I needed to be fighting for the opportunity to do more offline every day. I needed to be carving out large blocks of time and filling them with offline activities.
This was actually easy. The first steps were to identify the chunks of free time in the week. Lunch, after work, before work, and weekends. Occasional holidays. Okay. Some of that time needed to be allocated to chores, exercise, cooking, hygiene, and sleep. All offline activities, so while not my favorite things to do, I couldn’t be mad at it.
But the rest of those blocks that used to be eaten up by scrolling were fair game. To help visualize this, I took a day planner and marked blocks of time as “appointments,” just like I would for work meetings or doctor’s appointments. I set aside time for the essential chores, cooking, sleep, etc. and then labeled everything else as “Free time.”
Next, I made a list of all the things I could do that are offline, and that I enjoy. Reading. Puzzles. Board games, either solo or with friends. Lego. Crochet. Learning new things. (Here I listed a few areas of study to get me started. French, drawing, art history, baking, meditation, etc.) Movies. (Yes, they are on a screen, but I made an exception for intentionally chosen movies or shows that I really want to see, in moderation, and mostly as an option for date night activities.) Social activities. (I’m on an ongoing hunt for clubs or neighborhood activities to join, as well as volunteer activities. Making this an appointment-worthy task has had great success in getting me out to try new things with new people.) You get the picture.
I filled in the appointment blocks with activities, and taped the activity list to the front cover of the planner. I’m free to swap activities at any time. If I penciled in time for Lego and it’s a nice day, I’m free to change and go to the park. This is a guide, not a prison. As time has gone by, I’m less reliant on the appointments. I’m more eager to do these other activities than to scroll. I find myself fighting to secure those blocks of time and keep them free of other stuff. If I’m tempted to scroll, I simply pull out the planner and read the list of all the activities I could choose and pick one to focus on.
I’m not perfect. There are still days where I’m simply tired and the scrolling begins. I’m more conscious of it now, though, and better able to break the grip. I ask myself, “Is this what I really want to do right now?” If the problem is that I’m legitimately tired, I just go to bed. Or at least try to meditate for a while. If the problem is that I’m bored, I gently remind myself to get up and choose another activity, even if it’s just to go walk down the street.
I’ve found the fight I want to pick these days, and it’s not fighting to decrease my screen time. My fight now is to increase the amount of time I spend doing other things. I came to realize that, as with most things in life, pursuing an offline life is a conscious choice I have to make, and I need to make it every day. I’m getting better at it, and my life is richer for it.