Mental Nourishment & The Empty Calories of Doomscrolling
“It is the magician’s bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
It's a New Year: a time in which many decide to take a blank slate approach to new habits. One can argue it’s never a bad time to take said approach, but this is certainly a popular time for it. I am working on furthering a resolution that I’ve started just after Thanksgiving. I’ve written about this subject in my first post, but while one may think that being cognizant of the problem is enough to avoid the problem, in this case, it was not. I suppose it was tantamount to Cookie Monster surrounding himself with free cookies and expecting not to go overboard. Hi! My name is George and I’m addicted to doomscrolling.
After Thanksgiving and after failing miserably at trying to limit getting sucked into the habit, I’ve decided to go cold turkey. No pun intended. I get it. It’s difficult to look away from a trainwreck, especially in slow motion. It’s also very tempting to get lost within the miasma that is the coverage of it all. Our news cycle can very much resemble a marathon of Jerry Springer episodes, followed by People’s Court, Maury, and WWE Wrestling. Oh the spectacle of it all! Do we want to engage in thoughtful dialogue giving the Fairness Doctrine another try? “No! Pick up a chair and tag me in,” seems to be the norm these days.
At a certain point you have to reclaim your time, your focus, and your energy. You can be either a spectator or a participant in your own existence. During this past month, the question in my mind, “What does tomorrow bring?” becomes “What can I bring for tomorrow?”
Our attention is very powerful. That’s why it is often quite coveted. Billboards, signs, flashing banner ads, social media, YouTube, Tik Tok are all vying for your attention. Even this post if I’m being honest about it. Ad revenue, voter rolls, sales, etc. are all end results of this attention-seeking strategy. As readers, viewers, consumers, voters, this attention can make us feel powerful and included. This is for me. These are my people.
As I’ve alluded to in the C.S. Lewis quote above, it’s not always particularly empowering. In the end, you were influenced to buy a product or to vote a certain way. Someone benefitted from that attention and it wasn’t necessarily you. By reclaiming your time and attention, you could take a walk, spend time with your child, call your mom, read a book, learn a skill, build a dream, or prepare a healthy meal.
Personally, I’ve been fairly productive with or without doomscrolling, but the worst part of it all was that much of the content was still occupying headspace long after walking away from the computer. As I’ve mentioned in my first post, my brain would just automatically go to work on many of these macro issues to the point that I would lose crucial mental bandwidth. If I am blind to what’s going on in the world, I can focus better and I can use that bandwidth for everything that’s immediately in front of me.
Also, there’s an emotional component. It takes its toll. It can be very depressing to be reminded of all that’s wrong with the world day in and day out. Not only did I quit doomscrolling, but I quit seeking out any news at all. My thought is that if it was a big enough story that would directly impact my life, I would have heard. I know that if some craziness happened in my community, my neighbors would be the first to tell me about it. If something happened nationally or internationally that was pertinent, I’d hear about it in a number of ways. I like to think of it as watching a sports game. You could get caught up in the play-by-play, the drama of tit-for-tat scoring, or you could walk away, do something else, and come back for the final score. All that nail-biting isn’t going to change the result of the game.
Many notable revelations were made possible once I cut out the noise. For one, I’ve noticed I was a lot less cynical. I began to look for content that was more inspiring and interesting outside of the subject of current events. Also, I began applying my mental bandwidth towards more of the immediate micro issues within my life. I’ve noticed more patterns, habits, and began listening to more of my intuition. It was quite a profound month for personal growth. I’ve come to a crossroads in life in which a personal assessment is needed. What path shall I proceed to take? This newly found mental clarity afforded me some interesting concepts. Like a Marie Kondo for the mind, I began to wonder “does this make me happy?” When you take that sort of inventory, you begin to count your blessings, assets, liabilities, and you feel quite rich indeed when these distractions aren’t renting so much space in your thoughts.
There’s so much unsolicited advice out there pulling us in so many directions—a cornucopia of opinions pouring from our computers and phones often making it difficult to recognize our own thoughts above the din. So, it’s imperative to tune them out so that you can finally find your own voice. Hot takes and scandals du jour may seem like tasty nuggets, but real mental nourishment comes from the clarity, creativity, and lived experience people share when they offer their own brand of hard-won insight. Who knows what potential we’re missing out on when we’re more worried about what others are bringing to the table as opposed to what we can bring to the table?
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