When you decide to read a book or watch a movie, you are making a conscious decision to engage in a very specific activity. Perhaps you even know exactly what kind of experience you are going for—murder mystery, space opera, slice of life. You choose to experience something and then you do what is necessary to gain that experience.
You don’t do that when scrolling a social media feed.
I often find myself puzzled these days when someone says they use social media for entertainment. I don’t think social media is entertaining. I think it is way closer to torture than it is to entertainment.
Jia Tolentino, in her essay The I in Internet, says, “…social media is mostly unsatisfying.” She was referring to the ways in which we are psychologically manipulated to keep scrolling our feeds.
The doomscrolling mind has no idea what it is going to encounter next. It is not choosing to go for a particular experience. It is swiping up in hopes of finding something entertaining. You don’t spend time on social feeds because you are entertained. You do so because you hope to find entertainment. The quest for entertainment is not entertainment. It is torture with a faint glimmer of hope thrown in so you wouldn’t give up trying.
Every once in a while, you find something interesting. But becaise your hand and your mind has been trained to never stop looking, you don’t linger on it or think about it or stop to make it the foundation of a new creation. You wander on into the desolation of the feed once more, in hopes that you will find something else to watch.
The single reel or post is not the point of social media, the quest for the ideal reel or post is. The corporations that are monetising your attention and time benefit as long as you are on that quest. They need you to keep trying. They need you to never stop.
So stop.
Take a breath.
Think of something you want to do or read or watch. Don’t let it stop at being a vague feeling of wanting something. Make it the name of a movie you love, or a book you left half-read because you got distracted by your phone.
Now go do it.
Great entertainment is memorable and edifying. It stays with you after you are done with it. It can live with you for long years, changing your life every time you think about it or relive it. There is a difference between experiencing it and experiencing the unending quest for it.