Pen's Blog

Cell Phones Being Bad? How Original. - Results

 Well, did anything actually change from this experience? It's been a month, and I can say for sure that I don't actually feel that different because of it. Now, I am what we call a HORRIBLE outlier. I am NOT normal. I'm straight up a freak of nature, mentally speaking. I have autism, adhd, general anxiety disorder, gender bullshit, and on top of all of that which I know is for sure happening, there's a 50/50 chance I have bipolar disorder I inherited from BOTH of my parents. I exhibit some of the symptoms, at least. So when I say "this experience didn't make me feel better", it's less "nothing changed" and more "my ambient mental state has not improved". I do think that lobotimizing my phone has been generally positive, but it's not the mental health revolution some people will try to tell you it is.

 My hypothesis was that the accessibility of social media on a phone as compared to a laptop or desktop computer made it significantly more damaging. So, I uninstalled a bunch of apps from my phone, but didn't quit social media entirely. My idea was that it was easier to waste time, since most of the things I'm not obligated to use my phone for that I do are distract myself with social media/youtube. There was also some bullshit about quality of free time, since reading a book is probably better for you than scrolling through nonsense on social media.

Early Experience

 People who say "you're straight up addicted to your screen it's an addiction" are edgelords. Now, that isn't to say I think they're entirely wrong. Just mostly. In the first three or so days after quitting, I would find myself sometimes just pathetically scrolling through the play store reading the description of random apps. It was pretty sad. There is a distinct habit that continuous phone use will form.
 Saying "phones are an addiction" is stupid and reductive. Is brushing your teeth an addiction? No. Phones are a maladaptive habit. I think comparing the mental attatchment someone forms with social media with actual chemical addiction to a drug is really glib and plays down how bad actual addiction is. I do have some trouble with going back to the habit, but not using social media on your phone is actually pretty easy in the grand scheme of things. It kinda sucks, but we persevere.

Later Experience

 Quitting social media on my phone has given me a fair chunk of mental energy that would otherwise be used on it. Unfortunately, I am an incredibly unwise individual, and this mental energy is not being used for good. It's being used for evil.
 The time I spent on my phone was time I wasn't really using for anything else, so now that it's free, there's not really anything I have to fill it. I've gotten back to carrying a book in my backpack, and I haven't done that in a long while. It's something I seem to naturally gravitate towards whenever I don't have another form of entertainment readily available. I also got back into sewing a little bit but I don't think that's related to the phone use. It didn't really change that much except now I'm more bored when I eat food and I spend less time just goofing about.

My Hypothesis Was Wrong

 So, it turns out, social media always sucks, it just sucks slightly more when it's readily available. Don't get me wrong; social media on phones is a horrible idea that nobody should have approved, but ALSO, algorithmic social media wasn't that great of an idea anyway. I used social media on my laptop through this entire experiment, so I was still getting all the bad mental health effects, I was just getting them at a lower dosage.
 I can't really quit social media entirely because if I'm alone with my thoughts for too long I begin to rapidly go insane. I never learned how to have maladaptive daydreams so this is main way I know how to disassociate. If I recognize that thing in the mirror as being part of myself instead of a discrete entitly I'll scream.
 Online I can be a preposterous nonsense woman instead of having to go through the mechanical rote movements of a life that is fundamentally not my own!

Interesting Findings

So, I know this has been mostly me implying that this did nothing. It did. I like reading, and I'm glad I have time to do it, even if I fit it in as filler between classes instead of as it's own thing. But what doesn't fit into this experiment is the other stuff that wasn't social media.
 In the original article I said I would uninstall my browser because I was scared I'd go back to social media through it. Don't do this. Returning to social media is a threat but it's really inconvinent to not be able to look something up on the fly. I love wikipedia too much for uninstalling firefox to be a good trade.
 So, about that disassociation rant earlier. Well, it seems that social media isn't the only way I do that, because I use music for it a LOT. Honestly, even if I chucked my phone, I think just having a CD player would still have me doing this. It's not the phone, it's the content, the phone is just a convinent middleman.

Should You Do This?

 Overall, on a scale from -4 to +4, I rate this a +1. If you think that rating system is confusing, -4 to -1 are negative experiences, 0 means that it's entirely neutral, and +1 to +4 are positive. So it's a positive experience, but a lower end positive experience. Not actually that life-changing, but doing it is better than not doing it. If phones really are an addiction like they say, then people probably get start using it heavily because their life circumstances are bad. I don't think I can fault anyone who has gained a dependence.