Well, how do most of us start our day? Just at the moment we open our eyes, we grab our phone, check the notifications , then open facebook to wish birthday to someone, or just to follow up what is going in someone else’s life and then bam! We get stuck! Stuck in the endless flow of posts and videos! And we get lost in sea of triggering and intriguing videos and step out of the bed already exhausted.
Same goes for the bedtime scrolls, endless scroll to lull the mind to sleep, but instead a whole lot of dis-array and scattered thoughts gobble up the mind and we end up drained.
Why does this happen?
Can we get out of this pattern?
Can we stop being slaves to our screens?
In coming times with even faster technology and AI programming keeping records of all that we like dislike enjoy or engage in , it is going to be more difficult to break this cycle and truly live our lives.
All of this happens because we love instant gratification and refuse to get out of our comfort zones. We all have developed this habit of scrolling with a continuous practice of doing it every day and developed this into a habit, and therefore it will need continuous conscious effort. It will take time, but we can at least try doing the following:
1. Conscious actions
We can try being mindful with our actions and do everything with just giving it a 5 seconds of thought we can direct our thoughts to act for us in a way they bring in self motivation instead of boredom. For example , if I give myself a target of making the bed within first 5minutes of opening my eyes, it would force me to get out of the bed and make the bed, and once I am out of the bed my mind will signal me to brush my teeth and follow up with the routine.
2. Gratitude
Being grateful for every single day, and appreciating life for even the tiniest thing we have in life our food, life, health, can help us stay motivated and help us stay away from mindless scrolling. Gratitude can bring hope for a better future and help stay motivated and keep the boredom at bay.
3. Mindful living
Keeping a calm mind and being conscious about our thoughts can help us a get deal to keep a check on our actions and thereby reduce action reaction behavior. We all live in a world where we are reaction driven, every action is based on impulse and reacting to it at the speed of light.
If we make conscious effort to pause and reflect on our actions even for a second we would easily be making a strong move towards action taking and not procrastinating.
4. Turn off notification
The ping of social media notification gives a sense of exhilaration, researchers have found that the brain perceives such sounds as reward releases small amount of dopamine. And once we start checking it, we get trapped. This is all due to dopamine (a hormone that gives us instant shot of pleasure, it is also called the ‘feel good’ hormone.
When I first came to know about dopamine being a part of social media addiction too, I was dazed. Be it any drug abuse or any feel good indulgence we humans engage in, this one hormone shows up to make us feel good temporarily, and once we are saturated with enough dopamine kicks we fall back into boredom and start feeling worthless. Like everyone I too struggle with this scrolling addiction, which is however under much control now. I started making conscious effort to stop giving my brain dopamine kicks it used to derive from social media scrolling. And once we are saturated we don’t feel like doing anything. Anything that is perceived to be hard or challenging or even tasks which require slightest effort or motivation. [ link: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Valentina-Bassareo/publication/6624736_Di_Chiara_G_Bassareo_V_Reward_system_and_addiction_what_dopamine_does_and_doesn%27t_do_Curr_Opin_Pharmacol_7_69-76/links/59dc876aa6fdcc1ec8a6fb7a/Di-Chiara-G-Bassareo-V-Reward-system-and-addiction-what-dopamine-does-and-doesnt-do-Curr-Opin-Pharmacol-7-69-76.pdf ]
5. Motivation, effort and reward
Mindless scrolling disrupts this whole neurobiological pathway of motivation-reward and free will. When the brain gets bursts of dopamine spikes before completing any task, the motivation to do that task dies out. In 2018 ‘The Guardian’ published an article “Has dopamine got us hooked on tech?” they have discussed in details how “Silicon Valley is keen to exploit the brain chemical credited with keeping us tapping on apps and social media”
We keep on procrastinating because it keeps on giving us dopamine kicks and we end up with lack of motivation to do even the things we once loved doing, be it painting, dancing singing or even writing. It creates a sense of doubt and dejection at the end just the way substance drugs would do.
The only way to escape this “Hook” in the technology driven era is to be mindful of our actions and not let apps hijack our talent or passion (Scrolling social media, is never one’s passion, I would not believe, even if you swear on it, just like me, most of us just hooked and the pulley of social media keeps dragging us down into the dark where we end up unmotivated and dejected.