Mindless Scrolling and Social Media - Why Time and Attention Are Our Most Valuable Assets
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Yurui’s Summary
Mindless Scrolling and Social Media
Nearly everyone I know has a huge dependency on technology; we use it every single day for so many things. I think we should be more mindful of how we spend our time, and what we’re interacting with on social media.
Behavioural advertising is so influential; the best psychologists in the world create algorithms designed to reel you into social media. The blame is on us, as well, though. The antidote to mindless scrolling is mindful scrolling. Being aware of how you’re spending your time.
Social media is an 'imagined reality'. I find that there’s not as much value in experiencing a reality that isn’t our current reality. Why would you level yourself up in a game if you could level yourself up in real life?
We tend to care so much more about our self-projected image on social media. I think that sometimes we need to strip things back to first principles, and actually identify what we use social media for.
Only the most controversial content is able to gain popularity on social media. It could even be argued that these massive tech companies control the world. Why? They control the algorithms, which controls the content that people consume. Your view of the world is controlled by a machine.
Young adults have the potential to change the world and solve its greatest problems. However, the majority of us fall into unhealthy instant gratification: especially hedonism, social media, and fast food. If we seize our potential (effective altruism being a great movement moving towards this), we can do amazing things together.
Social media has caused us to be more shallow thinkers. We are getting too comfortable and we aren't open-minded enough; social media/porn/fast food breeds comfort and a sense of instant dopamine.
I hope my blog attracts people that try to think deeply. I guess the main takeaway from this article, on a personal level, is to be mindful with how you spend your time, and really be conscious of the things you’re doing with your time.
After all, Nicolo Machiavelli’s argument in “The Prince” was that good, Christian ethics often don’t go hand in hand with political leadership; something that I think can be extended to power and control in a commercial sense.
Time and Attention, Our Most Valuable Assets
You’ll be a completely different person in 5 years time; experiences shape ideology.
It’s useless to have a plan for the future because of this. Everything in life is dynamic; the only constant is change.
Do everything with conviction. Take a risk, have a hypothesis, and test things out. Throw shit at the wall and see what sticks.
Your time and attention are your most valuable assets; your time alive is finite. Why would you upgrade a character in a game when you could upgrade yourself in real life?
Live every day for yourself, be mindful of how you’re spending your time, and make the most of the limited time you have on this Earth. Appreciate the moment.
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Nearly everyone I know has a huge dependency on technology - myself included. How many hours do we spend on our phones and laptops, whether it be consuming content through social media, podcasts, or articles, responding to text messages and emails, using productivity tools, checking daily schedules, setting alarms, tracking activity, doing online shopping, organising our time, or journaling and recording our lives? I could go on and on, but for the sake of both your time and mine, I won’t.
It’s hard to imagine life without technology, but the ethics behind the gadgets we use are often overlooked. Specifically, as you can judge from the title, today I want to bring to fore some of the underlying ethical and personal implications of BigTech companies that have created the technology that we use every single day: the creation of social media.
Mindless Scrolling
Hot take: social media is perhaps our worst invention.
The ethics behind social media are perhaps the most worrying, in a pragmatic sense, for young adults that are in the prime of our lives for learning and living.
Despite this, the first thing that many of us do in the morning is reach out for our phone, check our messages, and get caught up in scrolling the latest Instagram stories and TikTok trends in an honestly addictive fashion. Can we cop the blame, though? Partially. Behavioural advertising refers to the technique that the best psychologists in the world use, when they work with massive tech companies like Meta and Alphabet to curate content and interfaces that are designed to reel us in based on our internet browsing activities. These designs keep us on their platform, scrolling and consuming the algorithm’s tailored content mindlessly for hours on end.
But the blame’s on us as well. Or is it? How many times have you been waiting for the bus, and have hopped on Instagram to check if you need to reply to any messages or check out the latest news because you’re bored? How many times have you told yourself “I’ll just scroll for a few videos”? Does this sound familiar?
Personally, sometimes I get home and my brain just needs a break. I hop on my bed, satiate myself mentally and physically, and end up scrolling for nearly 30 minutes. In hindsight, I’ve learnt next to nothing from that time on my bed, and honestly, I often ask myself: “Where did the time go?” Mindless scrolling on social media is one of my worst habits, and I’ve tried to manage my environment in a few ways. My phone is in greyscale (black and white), and I have a blaring Screen Time widget on my home screen that tells me how much time I’ve spent on my phone each day. Self-awareness is the first step towards meaningful change.
Once you are mindful and conscious of how you spend your time, your desire to quit mindless scrolling will be greater than your desire to scroll endlessly.
What’s the solution then?
I think the antidote to mindless scrolling (scrolling without consideration for the implications of what you’re actually doing, if you could be doing anything better, or if you’re spending too much time scrolling) is mindful scrolling. Simply put, this just means being conscious of how you’re spending your time. It’s perfectly fine to scroll for 5-10 minutes, especially if you know what you’re consuming, how much time you’re spending on your phone, and if you’re satisfied with spending your time this way.
Be conscious of your brain's impulses, and what you actually gain from social media, what value it brings into your life; if you still want to scroll, it means your desire to scroll is greater than your desire to quit. If your desire to quit is greater, well, it’s time to consider uninstalling social media or being even more conscious of your behaviours.
Further, social media, in my opinion, exists as an 'imagined reality'. I have this whole thing against escapism and ‘imagined realities’; perhaps it’s just my worldview, but I find that there’s not as much value in experiencing a reality that isn’t our current reality. Of course, reading books, watching videos, playing games, all have the power to transport us into another reality to learn new insights, but we have to be mindful of how we spend our time. Why would you level yourself up in a game if you could level yourself up in real life?
“Never forget that watching isn’t living. The hours you spend watching other people live is a type of sedation. And although great insights can be reached from consuming media, the characters you are bonding with are works of fiction. And if you aren't careful you will be on your deathbed with a bunch of memories of adventures that never happened with people that never existed.”
Ironically, I saw this quote on a video made by @santaphilosophy on Instagram. I think it really calls us to be mindful with how we consume content. We’ve got to know what we spend our time on, live in the moment, and finding happiness with our own circumstances.
We also tend to care so much more about our self-projected image on social media; how we come off to people, what everyone else is doing, how many followers we have, if anyone’s seen our stories. I think that sometimes we need to strip things back to first principles, and actually identify what we use social media for.
At its roots, I use Instagram for messaging my friends, keeping in touch with people I know that I can’t give my phone number to (ie people outside of Australia), and to promote my blog (you have to start somewhere lol). There’s so much baggage that comes with using social media though, and I think that using an app like iMessage or Discord (not in servers, though), can replicate many of the same features. However, as long as you are mindful with how you use your technology, I think all will be well.
Content Control
Besides, only the most controversial content is able to gain popularity on social media; people interact with insane, ridiculous things, and hence, the algorithm causes the rest of us audiences to consume only polarised versions of reality, only furthering the divide in intellectual debates. Often, reality is portrayed in an exceptionally extremist fashion, and our perception is skewed. Don’t even get me started on misinformation that exists online - social media can be a host of deepfakes, unverified facts, and frankly quite ridiculous statements.
It could even be argued that these massive tech companies control the world. Why? They control the algorithms, which controls the content that people consume. Your view of the world is controlled by a machine. It was Carl Jung who said that “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.” Once people are implanted with potentially falsified versions of reality, there’s a chance that we will band together to control governments, and the direction with which the world is moving towards.
How can we not consider how we can take action against companies operating social media? I think we’ve all seen the memes of senators asking BigTech CEOs/Founders like Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai questions about their operations; data collection and storage, and COVID misinformation have been astronomically important topics. Further, the European Union’s debate and implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016-2018 must have been incredible to have witnessed; tech companies and policy makers justifying themselves, and their subsequent influence on legislation worldwide must have had immense impact.
Thinking Deeper
I think that young adults have the potential to change the world and solve its greatest problems. However, the majority of us fall into unhealthy instant gratification: especially hedonism, social media, and fast food. If we seize our potential (effective altruism being a great movement moving towards this), we can do amazing things together.
Social media has caused us to be more shallow thinkers. We are getting too comfortable and we aren't open-minded enough; social media/porn/fast food breeds comfort and a sense of instant dopamine. This makes us way too comfortable, and when humans get comfortable, they don't want to change. They don't want to better themselves and they lose their agency. They lose their ambition and curiosity, and are happy to live in their own imagined realities.
But if they take it upon themselves to break free of that comfort and become open-minded, curious, and ambitious learners, they'll start thinking deeper about life. And that's the rabbit hole that the right people need to jump down into. If you want to be a shallow thinker floating around day by day, that's fine with me. But if you want to be a great thinker and got sucked in by instant dopamine, that's not okay. Personally, I want to surround myself with like-minded people who are different enough to provide nuanced perspectives.
I hope my blog attracts people try to think deeply. I guess the main takeaway from this article, on a personal level, is to be mindful with how you spend your time, and really be conscious of the things you’re doing with your time. Do I advocate for complete abstinence from social media? No. I think social media has inherent value, and particular qualities that have made the world a better, more interconnected place. However, in an ethical sense, I don’t know if we can say that BigTech companies are ticking all the boxes.
After all, Nicolo Machiavelli’s argument in “The Prince” was that good, Christian ethics often don’t go hand in hand with political leadership; something that I think can be extended to power and control in a commercial sense.
Yurui
Time and Attention, Our Most Valuable Assets
June 19th, 2023
Around half a year ago, I got on a call with Jason Yu, a Software Engineer working at Atlassian, asking how to tackle the decision of choosing a career, and asking for advice with regard to working in tech and entrepreneurship. I was introduced to him by an alumnus of my high school who I was chatting with, who also works at a Big Tech company. Jason founded a startup in uni called VidUp and told some great stories about his experience building. Highlights of included winning the Peter Farrell Cup (a startup competition) in 2021 and being the president of UNSW’s Google Developer Student Club.
Even though it’s been such a long time since we last chat, I hold dear the words of wisdom he provided. He said the seemingly obvious fact that humans were dynamic, and that we change so much throughout time as we gain more and more unique experiences. He said that I’ll be a completely different person coming out of university in 5 years time. And at first, I didn’t believe him. I thought that what he was saying was quite far-fetched and pretty hard to believe. I didn’t tell him this, instead thanking him for his time and promising to keep in touch later on (which I did!)
As I started writing up my takeaways from our hour and a half long conversation, I realised that he was right. A student in Year 12, I brought my thoughts back five years in time to Year 7. I thought back to how I spent my time, how I viewed the world, and what sort of person I was. Needless to say, the difference was absolutely night and day. I’ve (hopefully) matured immensely, discovered my passions, and realised how I love spending my time every day. I came to the conclusion that, yeah, I will be completely different after university. And I was shocked at how much I’ve changed, learnt, and grown over time.
I guess this was a sort of epiphany for me. A realisation, one of my most important learnings over the past few years. The knowledge that it’s pretty much useless to have a strict plan for the future, specifically for what I’m going to make out of my career. That’s not to say it’s not important to think about what sort of life I want to live, and what I hold as my core, guiding values as I try to make my way through life. It’s merely a reminder that it’s not worth it to micromanage plans for the future.
Because humans are truly dynamic creatures. Every day, we have this completely unique set of experiences that we remember that contribute to this huge mass which we call our identities. Every single moment teaches us something.
We wake up as one person, and go to sleep as another.
Why is this important? We need to realise that our most important asset is not our money, not our skills, and not our knowledge. It is our time and attention. Every moment has so much potential, and I think that truly matters due to the fact that we are all going to die one day.
Right now is the best time to learn. Right now is the best time to hustle. Right now is the best time to take action. We need to spend our time wisely and seize every moment.
For everything you ever do, do it with conviction. Have a meaning and purpose behind your actions. Take a risk, test a hypothesis, and refine it. Then do it all again. Become a better person. You'll get lost otherwise.
Our time is finite. We make choices every single second about what we want to spend our time on.
Imagine this scenario: fast forward to 70 years in the future. You’re on your deathbed and about to die. That’s it - only death awaits you. Then, an angel comes down to Earth and says that you can go back to this very moment in the present, and live life all again. How would you view life differently? The issues of the day which seem huge and neverending suddenly fall away into minor hindrances.
I think that imagined realities are also a ‘waste of time’. Take gaming, for example. Why would you want to escape your own reality of life, and enter this imagined fantasy world of gaming? We escape into imagined realities when we don’t want to live in our current reality. We get no genuine benefit from gaming, when we could be leveling ourselves up in real life as opposed to in a game. Similarly, for social media, if you consume content and hone in on imagined realities, you’ll blink a few times, and realise that on your deathbed, you’ll only have memories of a life you didn’t actually live. Every minute spent not living the way you want to is a minute wasted. Choose a path in life, or a path will choose you.
Confucius says that we have two lives. One begins when we are born and the other begins when we realise we only have one life.
Your time and attention are finite resources. This is literally all that we have. Spoiler alert: we die at the end.
We can’t change that! But we can change how we perceive the world, and the direction in which we take our lives. They say life flashes before our eyes before we die. It truly does.
I’d like to think that a life goal of mine is to be on my deathbed with as minimal regrets as possible. Of course, that’s impossible to do. The worst feeling in life though, is saying to yourself “oh, l wish I did this back then! But I can’t change it now, so I have to live with it.”
I actually taught myself how to play guitar after an older teacher was having a conversation with me. He asked if I played an instrument, and I replied ‘no sir, I don’t’. He said that his biggest regret in life was not learning an instrument as a kid; mind you, this was a pretty old, wise guy. He said that ‘you can’t do it all, Yurui. You can’t do it all.’ It was then that I realised that this was something that I’ve always wanted to do, and that I’d regret it if I didn’t do it now. Also, creating this blog (two months ago now), I told myself that I’d do it after the HSC! But I realised that I’d regret it later on if I didn’t do it now. And here we are, I guess! No regrets :))) I’ve met some really cool, both like-minded and dissimilar people through my blog. I’m pretty proud of myself.
I live every day for myself, mindful with how I’m spending my time, and what direction my life is going in. Regularly introspecting and reflecting in my journal on how I’ve lived each day, and how I can make it even better means that I can tap into self-awareness; the first step to meaningful change.
We all die at the end. Your time and attention are your greatest assets. Live each moment to the fullest. Make the most of the limited time that you have.
Life is too short to not live one you’re proud of.
Yurui
