If you’re anything like me, at some point in your life your morning routine may have looked something like this: Wake up, roll around in bed, contemplate your existence, think about hitting the snooze button, decide against it, then groggily grab your phone to begin the morning ritual of checking social media.
We’ve all done it. What starts as just checking your phone can turn into an hour (or more) of flipping between the same handful of apps—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat—over and over again, scroll-scroll-scrolling through the abyss of the internet while undercover AI keeps your eyes glued to the screen.
Suddenly it’s time to get up and start my day, but instead of starting it in a good mood, my head feels like a spinning washing machine of doom and gloom and disturbing information. (Which makes sense; I’d just spent the first hour of my waking consciousness feeding my brain the mental equivalent of fast food.)
And it’s not just a morning problem—anytime there’s a spare second in the day, most of us are checking our phones. We do it before bed, while eating meals, during movies, TV shows, car rides, bus rides, waiting in line, even when we’re hanging out with other people. Half the time, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
What used to be a place for funny memes and interesting information is now a minefield of content that makes you feel like everyone else has a better life, plus videos of police brutality, tweets about missing children, infographics on how the oceans and forests are being destroyed, volatile political discourse, and articles about how little time we have left to combat climate change.
