Losing our minds, one swipe at a time.
You don’t even think about it anymore. Waiting in line, sitting on the toilet, lying in bed with the lights off. The hand moves without thought. Thumb pulls down, a feed reloads, something flashes. Something moves. Something loud, weird, clever, tragic, funny or disgusting. It’s all there. And then gone. The next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. It feels like nothing. Like air. But it’s not noting.
You use to be able to sit with yourself. Not comfortably, maybe, but still. Now there’s this constant pull to look away. Not from the world-though that too-but from your own mind. You scroll to get away from noise in your head, and yet that’s exactly what you’re feeding. I understand we live in a world where technology is a big deal. It helps with communication and easier information access, organization, navigation, banking and the list goes on. Anything and everything in the palm of our hands. But have you noticed the ways is has made things worse? It’s just a distraction, literally. Fast thoughts. Fast laughs. Fast news. Everything is trimmed down, sped up, edited, condensed. The world in quick bites, fed through a glowing rectangle.
Your brain learns to crave that speed. It wants frictionless input. It wants distraction that doesn’t ask anything from you. Just flick, glance, flick, glance. But when everything is this fast, nothing sticks. You find yourself rereading the same sentence four times. Rewatching videos you’ve already seen. You open the same app five times in ten minutes without realizing it. It’s not just a habit. It’s not even boredom. It’s something else, like your mind has forgotten to be still. Have you looked at how much time you have spent on your phone or just on each app alone? Cause your phone can show you that.
After doing a little research I found that most people spend anywhere from five to ten hours of time on their phones in one day. And I’ll use myself as an example because I can’t back this information up and not say I don’t also have an attachment to my phone when I speak on this topic. As of yesterday, I spent a total of three hours and twenty-two minutes on TikTok, roughly thirty-six minutes on Facebook, thirteen minutes on Instagram. Sure that doesn’t seem like a lot of time for one day, but it does add up. In the span of a week I spent sixteen hours and thirty-two minutes on TikTok, forty-seven minutes on Facebook and forty-four minutes on Instagram. Obviously not great but not bad either. Taking into consideration that I do work and have other things that go on in my life. Still, that’s no excuse but it’s something we all need to work on.
Have you also noticed how many car accidents have been happening recently? It’s almost every other day I see or hear about someone being injured, or have lost their life in a car accident due to distracted driving. Since this year isn’t over yet there aren’t any percentages out for 2025 but in 2023, 13% of car accidents were caused by distracted driving due to cellphone usage. 14% in 2024. I know that number doesn’t seem as high as you would think it would be, but when drunk driving has a 32% in 2024?! Those numbers are getting too close together for comfort. Can’t imagine what those numbers will be in coming years.
We weren’t always like this. There was a time where we could lie in the grass and space out without having a phone in our back pockets. A time where you could finish a whole book without looking to see if we got a text from anyone. That part didn’t vanish, it just got buried under a mountain of flashing noise. And the worst part? You feel it. You know it’s a problem. But late at night, when the screen is finally off and your thoughts come limping back. You feel this itch, not enough to really bother you. But, it’s like something got misplaced and your not sure what. It’s literal “brainrot.” Little pieces of your attention going dull. Day by day. Scroll by scroll.
