There is no doubt that technological advances and the ascent of social media have transformed the way we receive, process and interact with information – and changed how we relate to other humans. Never before have we had such a wealth of information at our fingertips: an ever-rising tide of articles, blogs, influencers, ads, acquaintances, current news, fake news, listicles, social justice movements, cat pics, dog pics, memes and livestreams threaten to drown us on any given day. Welcome to the internet, we hate it here.
Social media applications have generously started tracking screen-time analytics to show you how much of your day is spent staring into the abyss of your phone screen. I don’t like to use these functions because I already know the answer to ‘How much time do you spend online?’ is ‘Too much’. My attention span has been reduced to what feels like mere seconds. I couldn’t possibly commit to watching a film because that would be pledging two hours of my attention to a single thing! But will I happily let forty minute episodes run back-to-back while I pick up my phone and scroll endlessly, switching back and forth between four or five different apps? Yes, yes I will. Splitting your attention between television and social media really just means your attention is nowhere. My brain humming along and pretending to take it all in is really just an excuse to take nothing in.
While social media can be an incredible tool to connect people – to broaden people’s ability to relate to others, to provide a voice and platform to those who have traditionally been denied the opportunity – it can also be a toxic cesspool where the worst parts of humanity are on display. These things coexist in online spaces uneasily. There is no part of the internet (that I know of) that is untouched by trolling, hate speech, ignorance or even plain old negativity. And so consuming content becomes an alternating roulette of anxiety or positive reinforcement.
In this current global climate there is a lot to stay on top of… The Black Lives Matter movement has finally gained the traction it always deserved. Protests continue across most of the United States, and further rallies are planned in Australia as the nation begins to wake up to its ongoing history of colonization, incarceration, and violence. And of course, Coronavirus has more or less taken life as we knew it to a standstill, bringing to our attention structural issues that can no longer be ignored. Women and gender non-conforming folks are still fighting for equality on all fronts, for basic safety and rights.
We are caught between the need to stay updated as the world descends into chaos, and the urge to look away. But it is our moral responsibility to stay informed, to stay angry, to stay active, isn’t it? And yet, endlessly treading the water of current events is exhausting. Consuming other people’s thoughts and feelings about these current events can be equally traumatic. Indeed, the addictive and anxiety-inducing nature of social media is so pervasive that it has coined a new term: doomscrolling. When doomscrolling, we spend a significant portion of our time looking at negative things online, being worried about them, and then falling into a grim outlook in which we continue to scroll and notice more horrible things, participating in a cycle of consumption with detriment to our mental health. On a particularly bad day, it can feel like all of us are just angrily shouting into the void, and the void doesn’t care.
Social media is a difficult beast to place boundaries on. You can enforce certain standards for your own personal pages (although many individuals with large platforms struggle to maintain a safe space online), but you have little control over the content you come in contact with. Of course the algorithm is supposed to show you more of what you like and interact with, but this is a deeply flawed premise. Instead, you can place limits only on the amount of time and energy you allow social media to take up in your life. This is a difficult line to walk, especially for those of us in isolation who have little else to do than obsessively check the tally of new cases each day. Or for those whose job it is to literally be online, engaged, and informed: journalists in particular suffer from doomscrolling habits.
If you’re reading this hoping for a solution, you’re out of luck (sorry). I don’t think the anxiety and restlessness produced by spending so much time online is going away any time soon. Instead, I think we must figure out how to listen to ourselves, to be better to ourselves and recognise our needs. Human beings were not designed to take in and emotionally process the various suffering of almost eight billion people. It’s okay to shrink your bubble sometimes, it doesn’t need to be globe-sized at all times. Limit your social media consumption. Learn to recognise the signs that you are reaching your maximum capacity to hold space for other voices. This is the real-life self care that is hard to self-enforce, but which will become increasingly critical as we develop strategies to better survive the state of the world.
Now, get off your phone. Doomscroll over.
Lori Franklin is currently studying a Master of Publishing and Communications at the University of Melbourne. She is enthusiastic about feminism, coffee and cats.