I should get rid of my phone.
I tried an experiment recently.
I started avoiding my phone for a few months now. This simply meant leaving it on some surface somewhere in the house, and I would ignore it for the entire day. What did this accomplish? Nothing much, my day to day isn't completely affected, but I noticed that if I do have my phone, I would do either: doom scroll on Instagram or play Sudoku.
The latter isn't anything to write home about, people have been playing crosswords and this includes sudoku for decades. But doom-scrolling is worse.
My Instagram feed is either food recipes, workout videos, half naked women advertising gooners to their OnlyFans or the news. I hardly make the recipes I find, I only do one kind of workout, and I never bought anyone's OF because porn is free. And much like the former statement, the latter is the worse.
The internet is making it very difficult to have peace of mind.
The War in Gaza and Ukraine, the subsequent migrant crisis, which in turn empowers the rhetoric spouted by the populist and nationalist, which gives them more power to push their fascistic policies into government. Crisis creates the positive feedback loop that seeds hatred and discontent, which is sadly magnified by a faster information system, which is: The Internet.
People are very emotional. Facebook comments are filled with people taking things out of context, making unfounded assumptions, and just outright being terrible people.
When I see a post, for example, about flooding in the Philippines which impacted thousands of families to be homeless, I will be just disgusted by how some people celebrate the misfortune that has befallen their fellow person. Or when a young man is gunned down, people immediately label him as a criminal or drug addict.
We seldom take into consideration that the news is a window to the bigger picture, and that window is directed to only a part, and is affected by the bias of the person who pointed it there.
This is best demonstrated by the ever wonderful game: We Become What We Behold by Nick Case.
If you haven't played this game before, it simply shows how isolated moments depicted by the news impact society as a whole. And when the news is incentivized to make you react, to keep you watching, to keep you emotional and angry; then you will only be fed news that keep you watching, emotional and angry.
The internet as it is today is designed to make you glued to your screen, to make you “engage”, to comment, to like, to vote down, to share. But this means you have to be exposed to garbage, to slop, to things that feel necessary but in reality does not impact you in your day to day life.
The half naked girl dancing for 15 seconds will not enrich your life. The newest high protein salad will not make you lose weight. The news that worry you will not solve anything.
Einzelgänger made a great about this in his video last month.
So let's go back to my initial statement. The experiment I've been trying lately: I don't bring my phone to bed at night. For such a long time, I would normally scroll through my phone until I fall asleep. I keep telling myself that I need the noise, the distraction, to tire my head so that I would sleep faster.
What I found on the first night I stopped having my phone before bed was having the best sleep I've had in ages. I woke up normally and I had no neck pain. I tried this again, and instead of doom scrolling, I read a few chapters of my book of the week.
Removing the slop from my nights has calmed me down way better than going through them daily.
If not for the necessity of being connected to people, I would get rid of my phone all together. I can play sudoku elsewhere anyway. And I just might, maybe you should too.
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