The harrowing tale of a Gen Z Social Media Addict.
Today is day one of a Seven Day Social Media "#Breaktheloop" Challenge. The challenge is in the title. Don't use social media for seven days, with the added benefit of creating one thing, something, on each of those seven days. I will now document the physiological and psychological effects on a Gen Z writer - of quitting Social Media "Cold Turkey" after prolonged and addictive use. Let this be a warning to all users of Social Media.
October 22nd, 2023
6:00pm - Started the #breaktheloop challenge. 8:00pm - My body has started experiencing mild convulsions. I find myself mechanically reaching for my phone, for as simple a reason as to look at the time. As if automatic, as soon as the phone is in my hand, I find myself having opened apps and searched for the Instagram Icon. Somehow, I only realize I have done this, after my thumb is already hovering over the empty icon space. My mental perception did not even register it as a conscious act. Upon realizing there is no app to open, a pang, a literal, pang, like a sudden hot flash, goes through my mind. Right there! Physiological withdrawal symptoms! Over supplied dopaminergic neurons are just begging for a hit. But no, no hit will come. In less, than two hours, the withdrawal symptoms have already started. How irate I am. God help my soul!
October 23rd, 2023
7:30pm - An entire day passed without opening any apps. I fear I am losing my mind. My head has been experiencing a constant throbbing sensation since I woke up. When I lay my head to sleep last night, I swear it was my imagination, but I could hear whispers in my room… soft as a cat's paws, and if I listened really hard, I could just make out a ghastly voice whispering, in the dead of night… "Look through your feed… look through your feed…"
When I went to the washroom, my being felt as empty as my bowel was after a successful number two. Time that was usually spent scrolling Instagram was filled with… nothing. Just silence. After that, it got a little easier, as the gym and work took my mind off of it. But throughout work, I constantly found myself opening my phone to scroll, or send a snap, but finding nothing there to satisfy me. I definitely felt a lull in my happiness. When I came home, I found I had nothing to do for the immediate two hours. Wow, it is shocking to realize how much time you actually waste on the apps. I used the time to clean the house a little and cook, and now as I sit writing this, I hear the whispers again in the distance. My phone is charging in the bedroom… Oh when will this madness end!
October 24th, 2023
6:45pm - Strange happenings today. I have stumbled upon a previously unrecorded phenomena. I am sure some weary souls out there have experienced it, but never recorded it. I call this phenomena "Ghost Scrolling". I define ghost scrolling as the compulsion or action an active or recovering social media addict feels/does in moments of phone usage, even in the absence of scrollable Social Media apps. Ghost scrolling (not to be confused with the mouse hardware glitch of the same name) is what I found myself doing in moments of seeming stupor. The funny thing was, because I had deleted all my social apps, I was aimlessly ghost scrolling on apps that didn't even make sense. From my Gmail (I am always on top of my emails, so nothing new there), my bank app (could be forgiven for this as money is always on the mind) and even at one point the Dominoes app (why God, why?).
What an irresistible feeling, what a treacherous moment when one realizes what one is doing. I recently heard on the news that 33 US States are suing Meta (Facebook) for the harm their platforms cause to youth. No amount of money or inquiry will reverse this addiction train… destination: depression!
October 25th, 2023
7:12pm - Is my mind playing tricks on me, am I hallucinating. My mind feels catatonic. Without the over-stimulus of the apps, normal waking life is starting to take on new, previously unseen elements. I am starting to see things in the air, that I have not seen, or chosen not to see before. I am starting to smell and taste more piquantly. Just today I enjoyed an ANW 'mama burger', of which I have had many, but this one seemed to be exploding with more flavor than usual. I have even started noticing other people's faces more, starting to see details I would have otherwise missed. While my waking hours are slowly changing, my sleep, interestingly, is being affected in a peculiar way. Previously, it would be a miracle if I had one dream in a month, as my nights were silently spent in dreamless bliss. Even if I was dreaming, when I arose, I couldn't remember a darn thing of it. Now I am starting to experience sleep paralysis.
For the past two days, I have dreamt that a small, scrunched figure is crouching on my chest. This figure has no face, instead of a face, it has a rotating screen of different apps. These dreams are so vivid that I often am convinced that I have awoken, but no, I trust that I have not. A perching daemon is a common trope of sleep paralysis - my partner has experienced it many times herself- but this is something that has never happened to me before… so why now?
October 26th, 2023
6:52am - You will notice that I am writing very early in the morning, I have most certainly just woke up. I had a horrible nightmare while I slept. The crouched figure was, as he is usually did, sitting on my chest. As I lay paralysed, my consciousness suddenly left my body, and was sucked into the screen/face of the daemon. I was suddenly flying above a factory line, where thousands and thousands of workers where assembling mobile devices, Suddenly, one of the screams and throws down his tools, and while screaming, dashes towards a nearby window. He hurls a unknown object through the window, and without hesitation, jumps out, screaming all the way down. The remainder of the worker's continue to work on their machines, not even batting an eye. Suddenly, I am taken to a different room where thousands of people are seated in cubicles, one of the people is me. I am looking at my own Social Media profile, and am writing code to myself. As I watch myself write more code into the computer and run it, my feed refreshes with new items, and I stare at it for a few seconds, chuckle, and continue writing code. I look into my own eyes, and see that they are devoid of life. The terrible look jolts me awake, and in order not to lose the memory of the dream, I grab my laptop and start typing…
What a peculiar nightmare… I can't make heads or tails of it…
8:44pm - Nothing spectacular happened today, I am dreading sleep though.
October 27th, 2023
6:14pm - the penultimate day of the challenge. God will this horror never end! My fingers, from lack of use, have started to atrophy and can no longer bend them properly, they remain in a permanent slightly curved, mostly straight position. Typing right now is a nightmare! My hunched neck and back, from constantly looking down at my phone, is starting to straighten, and is actually starting to bend backwards, as I have been unexplainably looking up at the sky a lot. For some reason, the sky looks incredibly beautiful these days. All in, my body is contorting in painful ways. I feel like a caterpillar about to become a butterfly. I have also started seeing the daemon from my sleep paralysis in my waking life. I think he is trying to kill me. I think the only way to stop him is to get back on the apps. I am starting to fear the social media companies have sent out their minions in pursuit of anyone foolish enough to #breaktheloop. Oh God will I make it one more day!? My heart is weak, but I must, I must fight through!
October 28th, 2023
7:03am -
Excerpt from todays edition of The New York Times: "Prominent writer L.S. Thomas was found dead in his apartment today. Reasons for his death are still under investigation. Sources tell us a note was found near his body, and a blog post he had been writing was visible on his computer. Sources have revealed that the note only said one thing -
"Social Media won."
~L.S. Thomas
Note - The following article is a satarical piece, and not to be taken literally.
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