JULIA GREGORY

I asked ten people I know if they could make it through a five-day digital detox. The rules were simple: spend five consecutive days abstaining from your most-used digital platform. Only three of them said they could.

So, last week, I spent five days detoxing from TikTok in the pursuit to understand my relationship with social media, scrolling, and deep focus. 

The Experiment

Before I began this experiment, I needed to collect baseline data. My daily average time spent on TikTok was 1 hour and 37 minutes a day. That’s far too much time to be mindlessly scrolling everyday.

When the detox began I was dreading it. I couldn’t imagine the last time I went even just one day without scrolling on TikTok. 

By the first morning I had already relapsed. I instinctively opened TikTok for my routine morning scroll before I had even fully woken up. It took 46 seconds to realize what I was doing and I panickedly turned my phone off. 

As the days passed, my absence from TikTok felt easier to manage.

Feeling Present

As I detoxed, I began to notice the world around me more clearly.

Everyone was always on their phone.

Waiting in line, scrolling. Eating lunch with friends, scrolling. Walking to their car, scrolling. Eyes were constantly glued to phones. If an elephant had passed by, making no noise, no one would notice. 

I’m not oblivious to the world around me. I know we’re experiencing a collective digital addiction that is killing our ability to socialize, create, and think, core parts of our humanity. I just didn’t realize how much I fed into it.

I’m not immune to the muscle-memory tendencies to pick up my phone and scroll. There were countless times I reached for my phone simply because I was bored, waiting, or had nothing else to do.

What Are We Losing from Constant Scrolling?

So what does that say about us?

Our society values fast, dynamic, endless content in a constant stream tailored perfectly to our interests. We’ve become accustomed to having the next photo, video, or story to consume at every second that boredom feels uncomfortable. 

Liz Leatrice, author of The Year Is 2063, and You Were Never Interesting, reminds us: “You have a portal in your pocket full of apps that are designed within an inch of their lives to take the best of you – your attention, your ability to focus, your time.” 

We are wasting away our lives  TikTok experiment made me realize.

That means I’ve lost, on average, 1 hour and 37 minutes of every day to scrolling.

That’s:

• 97 minutes every day
• 48.5 hours every month
• 590 hours a year
• 24.5 days a year

That’s horrifying.

Nearly an entire month of every year I’ve spent watching 15 second videos that I can’t even remember the next day. 

The worst part is that I wasn’t actively choosing to give TikTok that much of my time, I got pulled in and couldn’t escape.

Reclaiming Our Attention

A key argument in Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus, is that it’s not necessarily our fault, a theme I keep returning to. The minds running Silicon Valley are hijacking our attention for profit. These companies intentionally design apps, campaigns, and features to keep you looking for what’s next. “It’s not your fault you can’t focus. It’s by design. Your distraction is their fuel.”

Your inability to put down the phone isn’t simply because you aren’t disciplined. Social media is designed to capture your attention, and with each scroll of a finger, a Silicon Valley designer gets another dollar in their pocket.

It’s Never Too Late

Being one in one billion leads us to believe there’s nothing we can do to change.

But what these digital designers don’t want you to know is that you can reclaim your focus.

It starts by implementing just one change.

Set screen-time restrictions or reminders that prompt you to think about how you are choosing to spend your free time. Do a digital detox for a day, a week, or a month. Practice screen-less hobbies, something that requires you to think and use your hands.

In the end, my detox wasn’t perfect. I slipped up, I redirected free time to Instagram, and I continued to struggle with focusing and reclaiming my attention. What I took away from this experience is I implemented a change. I became more mindful of when and how I was using social media. 

Liz Leatrice said, “Your feed was so full of people living lives so full you never stopped to consider yours.”

I want to start living again and not pass through my own life. 

When you stop watching everyone else’s lives you start living your own.