ENG 100, Paper 1. Tech Reflection. Oct, 2025
How Changing My Relationship with Social Media Made Everything Better.
I was addicted to social media. Fully addicted, and I hated it. For more than a decade—from installing the apps on my first smartphone until just after my 50th birthday—checking Facebook and Instagram was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night. And in between, there were a million scrolling, like-checking, attention-sucking moments. After over ten years of this, I became determined to change and committed myself to becoming a more mindful, deliberate technology user.
In the beginning, these apps were a useful and entertaining way to stay connected with my community. Likewise, posting photos and my thoughts was an enjoyable way to share creatively. I was completely devoted to Facebook and Instagram and long sang their praises, always encouraging others to join the fold. Over the years, though, the Meta algorithms chipped away at that community connection. Without me realizing it, these apps slowly became a habitual way to pass the time and stave off boredom. Then, as they really started to push the short-attention-span-grabbing, dopamine-rewarding stories and reels as the primary content, my daily activity took on a truly addictive dimension: ad after ad, reel after reel, endless scrolling. I lost more and more of myself to these flashy products and high-impact videos. Worst of all, I had zero control over this habit. I would routinely experience the hot flush of frustration and shame after I, once again, lost twenty to thirty minutes to this mindless content. And this would happen multiple times a day! Once this dependency firmly took hold, my social media use became something more—something bitter and yet unquenchable. I remember reading once that “all addictions are anesthetics,” and this certainly began to ring true for me. As my life, politics, and the world grew more complex and difficult to bear, my scrolling became the unconscious act of soothing my nervous mind and numbing anxiety. In the end, I was self-medicating.
My usage already had a chokehold on my attention and focus, and it was now the primary waste of my most limited resource: time. It was also becoming weirdly disorienting. I would “come to” in apps, not even realizing how I got there, and likewise would routinely lose track of which app I was actually in. All the content bled together in the most bewildering way. As I doomscrolled through huge chunks of my day, it slowly dawned on me that I no longer saw content produced by people I knew and cared about. Instead, there were movie clips, stand-up comics, self-help memes, and so much content that felt ripped straight from TikTok, as if I had accidentally signed up and subscribed to 1000 influencers in my sleep. It also became clear that fewer and fewer people were seeing my posted content. Over the last year or two of active use, the reactions my posts received dwindled to the low double, and sometimes even single digits. So much for creativity and connection. All I was left with was disconnection, disappointment, and regret.
I was thoroughly embarrassed that I had let things go this far without trying to course-correct. The only relief I had at this time came from my steadfast refusal to install any new social media apps. Each time a friend or family member shared content from a different platform, I would feel the tempting pull to explore this new source of enticing content, like the urge for one more cigarette during a stressful time, or the dangerous desire for one last drink at the end of the night. With all my unwitting exposure to these well-produced short videos, TikTok looked supremely alluring, but I knew matters would only feel much more out of hand if I gave in to this new flavor of my drug of choice. I resisted, but just barely.
By the time my big 5-0 came around, the stakes felt sufficiently high. I might have kept blundering along with no will to change, but suddenly, my child was approaching an age where they would expect a smartphone. I wanted to model measured and responsible usage, and so, a few weeks after my birthday, I tried my first experiment with “self-binding.” I had read about this practice in Dr. Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation. In her words, this was “a way to intentionally and willingly create barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice in order to mitigate compulsive overconsumption.” If the words “compulsive overconsumption” did not describe my social media activity, I’m not sure what did.
The first bind was simply moving the Facebook and Instagram icons to the last screen on my iPhone and dropping them into a folder. Instead of a quick tap on my phone’s home screen, I now had to swipe four times and tap down to reach either app. This slowed me down for a few weeks at best. Before I knew it, though, my pleasure-seeking brain learned the simple gestures to access the apps and, in a trance, my hands would perform them without me even realizing. I’d once again find myself in one app or the other, “reeling” away without even remembering how I got there.
After weeks of trying and failing to use simple willpower to limit my use, I made the difficult call to remove the apps from my phone. My accounts remained active, but the only way to access them was now through a browser on a proper computer. I spent a few days furiously yearning for that social media fix. I was overcome by a jittery and hungry energy that knew it would only be satiated by opening an app and letting my attention be whisked away. With the social media apps uninstalled from my phone, this nervous impulse in my fingers and behind my eyes had nowhere to go. I took more photos, fussed with other apps, texted more friends, anything to fill the gaping metaphorical hole left on my phone and in my life. I even ate more junk food, as if the dopamine I was jonesing for could be replaced by the savory, salty crunch of too many potato chips. In those early days, it really felt that the answer remained somewhere on my smartphone. It took a surprising amount of time to stop pulling my device out of my back pocket and frantically cycling through the apps left on the homescreen. Check email, check calendar, check reminders, check fitness, check messages, check email again, check calendar again—on and on, as if one of these apps might miraculously serve up a soothing video of a stand-up comic I’d never heard of or some other nonsense.
After this uncomfortable transition period, things thankfully settled down. My phone stayed in my pocket for longer and longer stretches, and I started to experience how things were different. I regained so much time—time that I could now spend reading and writing for pleasure, composing cards and letters to loved ones, and pouring myself into meditation and other self-care. And the most marvelous outcome of all? Time with the kid and showing them through my own behavior how the people right in front of you are more important than social media apps. What a relief. I felt proud too, almost as much as when I had quit smoking years before. People marveled that I had the self-possession to remove the apps from my phone. “I should do that,” they all said. I am not sure any of them ever did.
Meanwhile, my routines and my time kept opening up. The outcome that surprised me most was finally seeing how much the other apps on my phone were truly aiding me. I hadn’t made this connection before because it was buried under the shame of excessive social media use and loss of control. Once the frantic app cycling calmed down, I finally noticed how my calendar, reminders, and habit-tracking apps helped me manage time and stay focused on daily routines. Google Docs and Notes let me revisit existing writing and create new content even when I wasn’t at my desk. Direct messaging apps were the foundation of my communications with peers and family. Music filled my home and car around the clock. Google Maps was my steadfast copilot for almost every car trip. And best of all, the apps I used for guided meditations and self-care felt like a genuine balm to my overextended nervous system. Instead of checking out via the Meta platforms, the remaining apps were checking me back into my life in the most functional ways.
I was delighted to find this confirmed by the Tech Tracking assignment I recently completed in my ENG 100 class. For each instance of technology use logged, I also recorded a response to the prompt, “How were you feeling?” I shared the words: calm, glad, organized, engaged, productive, creative, and relaxed. I recorded the word “tired” twice, but those two entries were the only ones that could be construed as anything less than positive. How lovely.
When it came to my class’s Unplugged Digital Detox day, I didn’t fare as well. My professor encouraged us to see how long we could go without the use of any digital technology. Intentionally limiting access to these beneficial apps and features proved frustratingly challenging. Did I find myself feeling that familiar jittery urge to pull my phone out of my back pocket? I sure did. That antsiness in my fingers and the frustrated pressure behind my eyes? Yup. I managed to find moments of calm and productivity while engaged in detailed activities, such as cleaning, reading, writing, crafting, and while connected in conversation. In periods of transition or quiet, however, I found that I desperately wanted the assist of my phone or computer to determine my next move and stay on track with the flow of my day. I yearned for access to direct messaging apps to ping friends with questions or share my thoughts and feelings with them. Perhaps most annoying of all was the lack of music! And so, while I worked hard that day to limit my use, I was also gentle with myself and used my smartphone and computer when I felt I might benefit. Music was most certainly played.
In the end, I found that without access to technology, I felt practically, emotionally, even somatically unmoored—disconnected from my routine, community, and the calm that these supportive apps bring to my life. It was gratifying to see my Apple Screen Time stats drop from a daily average of about ten hours to four on my unplugged day. Even so, I only managed a single unbroken three-hour stretch tech-free. Two of these three hours were spent with a friend, catching up and sharing deep, therapeutic belly-laughs. After we parted ways, I spent my remaining tech-free hour editing a draft of a blog post I had printed out the night before. With an actual pencil on paper! Having words directly in front of my eyes and that pencil in my hand went a long way towards quelling the urge to wake up a device.
I’ll admit I was unsettled that I couldn’t complete the assignment the way I had expected to. I imagined I could go longer, and upon reflection discovered I was harboring the belief that the amount of time I could bear being tech-free somehow carried value or virtue. But does it? Do my phone and computer’s close ties to my past addictive behavior really negate their usefulness? My ambivalence toward unplugging reinforced my sense that technology can aid my neurodivergence, lifestyle, creativity, and relationships, and thank goodness for that.
I am grateful to have made these changes and tried these recent experiments. I’ve worked hard to improve my relationship with social media and technology, and that hard-won success has enriched my life. Even writing these words has reinforced my sense of accomplishment and reminded me how fortunate I am to have access to these accommodating apps. The way I now use technology feels balanced and supportive, rather than brain-hijacking and mindless. My reliance on and use of technology may border on dependence, and heaven help me if I were to lose access to these technologies, but this reliance feels reasonable and functional. This I can accept. A year and a half ago, I set out to become a more mindful and deliberate technology user, and I did not let myself down.
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