Technology: The Online World

As a Zoomer, I was practically raised by the internet. I watched YouTube instead of TV, played video games instead of sports, hung out with friends on Skype instead of in person. Tech has always been an integral part of my life. But, sometimes, I’ve felt that it’s an addiction.

I was an early adopter of Instagram. Back then, so few people used the app that my sister and I thought it was just a way to put filters on photos. When more people started using it, it became a game for us of how many followers and likes we could get. It was fun at first. I had a meme account and my sister had a fashion account. We followed as many people as we could in the hopes that they’d follow us back. We’d do shout-out for shout-outs with people that were playing the same game we were.

I got hundreds of followers. My sister, who committed more time to it, got thousands. Eventually though, I realized that the app was consuming us—my sister more than me. So I stopped playing, and just kept my own personal account. But when I looked around, I realized that everyone was now playing the same game, just more subtly and on their personal accounts. And it was no longer just a playful pastime—it was about real-life status. So, in protest, I deleted the app.

All my life I’ve played games, I love them. When I was little I took Monopoly as life or death, and most of the time I won. I still remember the first time I popped 

 one into my Xbox, or when I created my first character in 

. Those kinds of games—and not the ones we played on Instagram—were the ones I was more susceptible to falling into. I didn’t know what I was doing when I first loaded up 

, but I wanted to learn and get good, so I spent all my time working on it. Nobody was talking about it as an addiction back in those days—I was just a kid spending too much time playing video games. I wasn’t doing my homework, but I didn’t see it as a problem. In fact, I began to see the homework as the problem for getting in the way of my game time.

It was only in recent years that I’ve looked up from my video games, and realized how much of my life they took up. I admit now that I was addicted. Right now I'm just about one year clean.

I still love watching YouTube videos though. I’ve been watching since “The Gummy Bear Song” and Nigahiga. In middle school, I introduced my science class to an online science show called 

. In recent years, I’ve been trying to watch more stuff like 

 and less stuff like “The Gummy Bear Song.” I watch podcasts with scientists, lectures, video essays and even the occasional comedy video. Some days, when I’m not working, I can watch YouTube for eight hours or more. I’m not really sure if this sort of excess can be considered studying, or if it’s just indulgence in disguise.

Which prompts the question: What is addiction? Are you addicted to work if you opt in for overtime whenever you have the chance? When work inevitably becomes more optional, as automation and AI take humans’ place in the workforce, what will people do with their time? It seems likely to me that people will start going on social media more, playing more games and watching more videos. Are these things bad, or natural leisure-time activities, or both? What will people do to find meaning in the growing metaverse?

Finding Real-Life Talents Can Keep You Happy in a Virtual World

Personally, I’ve wanted to be a writer for a long time. I had a speech impediment as a kid, so I’d write to better articulate myself. I found my voice on the keyboard. I think I got pretty good at it, but you don’t get much encouragement when you tell your academic family that you want to be a writer. This article is the very first time I’m being paid to write, and it feels incredibly fulfilling. I’m finally being paid to do what I love.

Being a young man living on my own, I often eat out for meals. I’m a regular at the McDonald’s near my apartment. At this particular McDonald’s, there’s a man in tattered clothes, who offers to draw portraits for ten bucks while you're waiting in line. You can tell he doesn’t have much. But, a few pencils, a pad, and the opportunity to make a buck were enough to keep him going. He wasn’t homeless, or a beggar, or any of that demeaning shit: He was a starving artist, and he retained his dignity. I got my portrait done by him, and since then whenever I see him I always give him a few bucks. This was someone with a talent who just wanted to find a way to get paid for it, in whatever small way he could.

In the future, when our entire lives are lived online, I hope people can experience that feeling. Honing a skill, and utilizing it to get paid—feeling useful, in however small a way. That’s what meaning is to me, and I hope that will still be available in our increasingly technological society.

A young man explains how he tries to healthily navigate the online ecosystem.

I'm Addicted to the Digital World

At some point around mid-June 2021, I became unhealthily obsessed with Bo Burnham’s 

, to the irritation of everyone around me.

“He’s perfectly captured the spirit of mid-pandemic culture and mixed it with the most intimate aspects of millennialhood,” I’d lament pretentiously at parties, my friends desperately trying to derail the conversation. Those I did manage to harass into watching the seminal comedy special usually concluded that it was just OK, leaving me instead to get into arguments on Reddit about what “All Eyes on Me” really meant and write overly thirsty blog posts about Bo’s sexy, tiny shorts in “White Woman’s Instagram.”

I couldn’t fathom why my IRL friends didn’t resonate with 

 the way that my TikTok FYP and I did. Looking back a year later, it’s painfully obvious. I was obsessed with 

 because, like Bo, I had spent a lifetime plugged into the metaphorical matrix of the internet. From sneakily playing Miniclip games on school computers as a preteen to coding colorful Myspace layouts during my adolescence, the internet played a crucial role in my upbringing. I spent most of my free time online and viewed the internet as a sprawling playground—a realm beyond the confines of reality where I could endlessly connect and create. It also served as a safe space for me as a neurodivergent person, allowing me to express the facets of myself that I felt ashamed of in reality. 

My Work as an Internet Culture Writer Got Me Addicted to Social Media

It was for these reasons that I started writing about internet culture as an adult, and it was my inability to switch off that allowed me to stay up to date with social media trends and discover niche online communities. As I supplemented my career as a freelance content writer with internet culture features for well-known magazines, I felt a sense of pride that my chronically online behavior was finally paying off. It felt good to always know what was going on and to be designated the de facto digital expert when conversation turned to NFTs, influencers and TikTok trends.

Underneath this sparkling exterior, though, I was deeply unwell. By 2022, my obsession with social media was taking a serious toll on my mental health and well-being. I’d start each day with a piercing pang of anxiety that would not subside until I had picked up my phone and checked Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Most mornings, I’d see other, more successful journalists tweeting their articles about a trend I saw a few days ago but hadn’t got round to pitching yet (because I was busy watching video essays on YouTube, of course). Instead of recognizing that there was not a finite number of things to write about, I would internalize this lack of productivity as a failure and example of my own worthlessness. Then, beginning the cycle anew, I would scour TikTok for trends and, before I knew it, find myself sucked into the algorithm's abyss as a never-ending conveyor belt of content promised to soothe me and distract me from my problems. 

Work wasn’t the only sphere of my life affected by my online obsession. From sharing my daily Wordle score at dawn to debriefing during Netflix originals at dusk, I eschewed real life relationships for WhatsApp conversations. “How has your day been?” I’d text no less than five mates before it had even hit 9:00 a.m.

Most of my friends had initially seen my internet idiosyncrasies as endearing, but they began to berate me as my virtual clinginess seeped into their office hours. I’d sext dating app matches voraciously but chicken out and cancel when they wanted to meet; how could I be as coy and coquettish in person as I was over intermittent voice notes? My love language itself shifted from physical touch and quality time to the dopamine hit I’d get when my phone lit up. Nothing could beat that ecstasy-like surge of pleasure sending warm, pulsating waves through my body.

For a long time, I thought all of this was healthy and normal, but eventually, something clicked. I wish I could say there was a singular moment where I gained sentience and realized I was dealing with a form of addiction, but in reality, it was more like an expertly-crafted highlights reel. A friendship breakup. A supportive home environment. The decision to start, and commit to, therapy.

I Worked to Break the Dependence I Had on My Phone

The beating heart of my recovery plan was undoubtedly a trip to stay with my dad in a remote part of the country, where I traded falling down online rabbit holes for climbing hills, navigating forests and searching for shells on rippling sandy beaches. This physical distance from both my phone and my home city allowed me to accept that the world would move and respire without me, imbuing me with the courage to unwire myself from the network of group chats and online communities that had kept me tethered to my sofa.

I soon noticed that the black void of my phone screen was a perfect physical manifestation of the emptiness I felt within me, something that I had spent years desperately trying to fill with social interaction and distraction in any way possible. Like many addicts, I had been burying my problems with low self-esteem, previous trauma and a dysfunctional attachment style in an endless sea of open tabs that I refused to close. Only by addressing and resolving these issues could I break the cycle and start anew. So I got to work, identified my biggest issues and began the healing process.

A few months later, I have now dramatically reshaped the relationship I have with my phone. I no longer check my notifications as soon as I open my eyes, instead making sure I’ve fed myself and my cat and planned out the bulk of my day on paper first. I mute most notifications when I’m working, and I have banned myself from using WhatsApp web on my laptop entirely. I fill my breaks and evenings with wholesome activities like hanging out with housemates and reading in the garden, and I can now watch entire movies without stealing glances at my phone. I’m not yet at the stage where I can wash up without needing a podcast in the background, but I think that one’s on ADHD.

When healing from any addiction, it’s common to enter a period of identity crisis, as you must consciously unthread your unhealthy behaviors from your personality and sense of self. The internet served as a constant throughout my life, so letting go of the unhealthy dynamics we shared has meant accepting that I’m no longer the selflessly dependable person available on Messenger at any moment. Instead, I try to focus on my positive offline characteristics that serve similar functions: being trustworthy, being a good listener, giving the best hugs.

Recovering From Social Media Addiction Has Me Reexamining My Career Path

As an internet culture journalist, I’ve also had to reevaluate my career and accept that the trajectory I foresaw for myself is in many ways incompatible with my recovery. These days, I often open Twitter on my lunch break and am confronted with a wall of jargon I don’t understand. While sometimes this makes me feel like a casualty of the 

, it has also allowed me to broaden the scope of my work and experiment with other forms of writing, such as the much-maligned personal essay.

I also hold out hope that the way in which we use the internet and social media will drastically change in the next decade regardless. A not-insignificant portion of my social circle is already ditching daily Instagram story updates for monthly mass dumps of misshapen pictures in a move that feels more authentic to the old style of the internet, where logging off and going outside was not only accepted but encouraged.

Speaking of going outside, Bo Burnham recently released the outtakes to 

 on YouTube. Watching them felt like entering a time capsule both for the pandemic and my old self—reflecting on a period of history that is now rooted firmly in the past. Crucially though, I was still able to resonate and connect with everything Bo presented and have had the (impeccable) Drake parody stuck in my head for weeks. It was the perfect reminder that the internet and its glittering web of networks and pathways will always be there to welcome me home.

When I realized just how deep my internet dependence ran, I sacrificed my online expertise for real-life experiences. 

Healing My Social Media Addiction

My social media apps were nothing more than a distraction for me. I used to come back home from college, open up my Instagram and then scroll away the negativity and stress I had gathered during the day. I looked up things that fascinated me: dresses, food, cooking videos, celebrities, the usual stuff. I wasn’t really consuming all that information for any specific purpose, and so I wasn’t really gaining anything from that either.

But when the pandemic began in early 2020, and we isolated ourselves from the outer world, my only link to it came via social media. The apps gave me a semblance of a connection with my friends and the latest news on what was going on outside. And because of this, it became harder to pull myself away from all the scrolling, especially with all the free time I had on my hands. It was like I was glued to my cellphone.

It wasn’t long before all that screen time began to have adverse effects. It's clearly common social media culture to show only the best part of one’s life and everyone, from my closest friends to the most famous celebrities, was doing this. I contrasted people’s posts with my own life.

Social Media Made Other People’s Lives Look Inherently More Interesting

It became increasingly difficult to look at posts showing people making the most of their time in isolation. Someone was going through loads of books. Another person was trying out amazing recipes in the kitchen. Another was doing movie marathons with their family. Another had opened an online small business which had really taken off.

I could do all that stuff, too, and I did some of it. But, somehow, what I saw on social media always seemed better than what my own life had to offer me. This made me guilty to no end. My parents worked hard to provide me with the life I had, and I was letting Instagram sideline it.

I sat on it for a while, and I realized what the problem was. It was my perspective. I looked at people’s posts and immediately made a list of differences their life had from mine. My go-to response was to make a contrast, and that automatically made me feel as if I was missing out on something.

It seems sort of cliched now, but what I decided then was to simply change my perspective. I began reading the captions with more detail than I gave to the pictures. I began to remind myself constantly that these people who seemed better off than me were going through the same things. The difference was how they dealt with it. They were obviously using their time to do something productive or keep the stress at bay by engaging in activities. Along the way, though, the social media trend also changed slightly. People began showing the not-so-good side of their lives—the struggles, the tears, the pain, the loss. That really changed the way I felt whenever I opened my Instagram. I saw whatever people put on display, but instead of making comparisons or contrasts, I focused on the thought. I looked at the spirit, at the inspiration. I figured out that people were maneuvering through the pandemic based on certain perspectives. And I could do the same thing.

I started watching inspirational videos—people talking about their journeys, about the effort they put into getting somewhere. None of what they had was given to them ready-made. They worked for it, and if I wanted that, I could work for it, too.

How I Shifted My Perspective About Instagram

I worked on becoming more resilient, on having a proper routine, on not giving up if I failed some days but trying again. I began to exercise. I began studying a course at edX. I began to bake—a lot! On my phone, I read quotes and stories that fired me up into doing something—anything—with my time. I followed creative writing pages and began to participate in their activities, like live poetry recitals. I began to write more poetry, short stories and personal narratives.

None of this was achieved overnight. It took a lot of conscious effort and reminding that everything I saw on my social media apps wasn’t perfect, and it most certainly didn’t come easy. I realized that most people share those things not to boast but to let others feel inspired and to tell them that it’s not impossible to do what they’ve done. And that’s how I changed the way I viewed social media.

This has now become a habit. Every time I open up my Instagram, it’s with a purpose. I scroll as if I’m looking for something—a tutorial, a motivational video or even a small piece of poetry. After I’ve come across two or three of these, I stop using my phone because now I’ve got just enough to keep me going for another few hours. And that’s how it works for me. 

I’ve Learned to Limit My Scrolling, but It’s Not Easy

I have to keep using my phone for official messages, or to check the insights on my official posts, and along with that, I use my personal account to catch some piece of advice or encouragement. The best part is I never run out. There’s a huge amount of information out there in the world, and we can see so many different journeys and points of view, if we were to be slightly more open.

It takes a good amount of effort to steer yourself off a course and on to a new one, but I’ve found that nine out of ten times, it’s worth it. Facebook, Instagram and other social apps are resources. It’s up to us to decide whether we use them to lead us toward a meaningful goal—or away from it.

Throughout lockdown, I got stuck into a loop of scrolling that distorted my worldview and self-worth. Then I flipped a switch.