Scrollin’, Scrollin’ , Scrollin’

Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/young-women-sitting-in-an-armchair-at-home-and-looking-at-their-phones-6555467/

My apologies to the writer of the old Rawhide television show theme for yet another bad rewrite of his song. For those who’ve never heard of Rawhide, it was one of Clint Eastwood’s first starring roles, so… it’s pretty old (actually from before my time, but I saw some reruns as a kid), but the catchy tune has been used by advertisers and others in one form or another for decades!

You may have already guessed that this article is about scrolling through social media, whether it be on your phone or any other internet-connected device.

Have you ever found yourself scrolling through Twitter/X, Instagram, TikTok, or any other social media feed and wondered why you were doing it? I mean, you scroll and scroll and scroll, and it’s not even interesting or fun, you’re just doing it for no apparent reason.

Well, you’re not insane (probably… at least not yet!).

The social media site algorithms are designed to get you to do that continuous scrolling. The social media honchos want you to stay on their sites for as long as possible and view as many ads (tailored to your needs, interests, and anything you might have said out loud in proximity to any electronic “smart” device) as possible.

So, the sites use a system of random, intermittent rewards to essentially give us a mental state akin to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

The way it works is when you see something that’s exciting or interesting to you, there’s a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in your brain that stimulates the pleasure centers and drives you to seek more of that exciting, interesting stuff. That being the case, why would the social media sites not just give you a constant stream of the stuff that you’re into?

Well, when the dopamine system is constantly stimulated, the effect starts to wear off and fatigue and ambivalence starts to set in. You being fatigued and ambivalent is not a good thing for advertisers trying to sell you stuff.

To keep your brain active and engaged, the stimulation not only has to be intermittent to avoid fatigue, but it has to be random and unpredictable to keep you in pursuit of it.

So you scroll and keep scrolling and keep being served ads to try to get you to buy stuff.

In the overall scheme of things, there’s probably worse crimes against humanity that have been perpetrated by advertisers. The Head-On (“apply directly to the forehead!”) and Sham-Wow ads come to mind as examples. But as psychologically manipulative as the social media algorithms might be, they wouldn’t be that horrible if all they did was induce you to waste a bunch of time, and possibly buy stuff you didn’t need.

But that’s not all they do.

The big problem with this stuff is that it really starts to screw with your dopamine pathways and can adversely affect your health.

Although there are physical health issues, such as sore necks and headaches from staring at phones and computer screens, mental health is where the big impact tends to be. That repeated bump and slump in your dopamine levels from social media scrolling can reset your normal baseline to where you need a big hit of dopamine to be interested and focused on things outside of social media (in other words, your real life). It’s believed that this contributes significantly to depression and anxiety.

Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has compared compulsive social media scrolling with a dog that continually digs in a corner for hours, seemingly searching for something.

For most of us, if we saw an animal like that, we’d probably think, “How sad!” and then we’d quickly turn back to the phone and get that scrollin’ finger going again!

So what’s the cure for this insidious disease?

Well, you could just... stop scrolling and never look at social media again.

Yeah, I know, that’s just crazy talk!

But short of going cold turkey on your hot feeds, you can do some half-measures that will likely improve your mood, as well as give you a surprising amoung of extra time to do enjoyable or relaxing things.

One simple method is to set a timer for however long you think is reasonable to scroll through your social media feeds. When the timer goes off (you may be surprised how fast your chosen duration seems to run out), you close the app or website and do something else. You can do it!

It may also be useful to choose long-form media over short-form. Being selective and choosing individual pieces of in-depth content that require your focus for several minutes at a time is generally preferable to looking at short-form content for a minute or less per piece and then quickly resuming the quest for more.

Another thing that helps is turning off the notifications from your social media apps. If you’re not getting constant reminders that there’s new stuff to scroll through, you might forget about it for a little while and ultimately spend less time looking at it.

One last relatively easy step is to get picky about what social media apps you have easy access to in the form of phone apps. If you trim multiple apps down to just one or two on your phone, there’s less to get caught up in.

Cutting back on your social media scrolling might not seem that useful, but I suggest you give it a try for at least a week (it takes a little time for your baseline dopamine levels to normalize). See how it goes. If it doesn’t make a difference in your mood, your energy, and/or your productivity, you can always go back to what you were doing before.

After all, how much are you likely to miss in just a week?

And if that question alone gave you a nervous twitch, it’s a good sign that you really need to consider doing some social media “fasting!”

Until next time…

George F. Best, D.C.