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I have noticed that my screen time has been increasing. I hadn’t been aware of that until my phone told me so.

I have been spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos. I quite enjoyed myself at first. But slowly, my screen time was increasing, and my enjoyment was decreasing. That is not a good way to spend my time, and the trend line was predicting a bad outcome.

Time for a behaviour change.

First, I tried watching the same sort of videos but restricting my total time. For example, on odd days I’d watch my YouTube videos, and on even-numbered days I’d avoid them entirely. I found myself rejoicing if the month I was in ended in an odd date because I knew I was getting 2 consecutive odd days.

This was not going well! And I struggled to keep to the plan.

I was aware of the term doomscrolling. I was guilty. I’d be watching videos with headlines like “bombshell announcement,” “masterstroke,” “humiliated,” “brutal,” “disaster,” “meltdown,” “breaking news,” and on and on.

I came to understand that these headlines were doing what they were intended to do – that is, get me to click, then encourage me to stay watching to the end for the big connection to the headline. It was rarely worth the wait.

I had to do more than limit my time. I could speed up the replay speed so I could watch the same number of videos, put on closed captions, and read fast to keep up.

I was still doomscrolling, just more efficiently. I need to change my behaviour further.

I started to avoid videos that shouted at me in CAPS to get my attention. I checked how old the video was. If it was a day or so old, and I hadn’t heard about the story anywhere else, I didn’t watch the video. Breaking news that was more than an hour old warranted a skip. Even in the fast-moving time we are in, we didn’t have 24-hour stories of breaking news of note-worthy importance.

I started branching out into a broad range of topics that caught my interest and curiosity. Behind the scenes of movie sets known as BTS, and science explained in language I could almost understand. I’m still struggling with what quantum computers and quantum batteries are about.

It has been a slow process of withdrawal. Sometimes it was filled with denial, joy, awe, guilt, frustration, and help with new tasks I was undertaking at home.

I suspect it will be a long process requiring constant vigilance. Recently, I have noticed my doomscrolling has been reduced dramatically. I have now caught myself smiling, smirking, and even laughing out loud. I’ve started reading a hardcover book I bought a while ago, ‘Other Worlds-stories.’ One of these stories is about a talking horse. I was amazed that I enjoyed it so much.

Please give this a bit of a think. Is there anything you might call an addiction in your life? It may be an addiction you want to keep or try to end.

Please comment by sending me an email with your bit of a think. I am curious about your thoughts.

Photo by AI request: “Create an image 1020×750 pixels depicting a computer screen with “Doomscrolling” in CAPS, and a viewer holding his head in his hands in despair.”

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