this is how you claim back your life

| personal experiences & tips to consume social media more mindfully

Am back with the results of yet another experiment I did, i.e. deleting IG for a week, yeah I know that’s not a LOT but its still a big deal to people like me who are chronically on their phone. Consuming content that gives you the instant boost of dopamine, such as scrolling reels or tiktoks, is a surefire way to fry your dopamine receptors.

Am pretty sure a lot of us tend to feel this urge to just occupy ourselves with something all the time, mostly to escape our stress-filled lives. We also do bed-time procrastination, where we just doomscroll on our phones in order to give ourselves that “me-time” that we couldn’t get the whole day. But maybe consuming endless amount of content, (& lets be honest) most of which is just brain-rot, isn’t the best way to utilise our free-time, perhaps the dopamine-inducing notifications & the curated algorithms are to blame. However, I think it’s all just a habit loop, and in order to really break yourself out of it, you gotta rearrange the system aka your mindset.

So after deleting Instagram from my phone, my top 5 priorities were set, i.e my fitness & health, my studies, my hobbies, my relationships and my other creative ambitions. I even vlogged this whole week for my youtube, and I think that was one of the most productive weeks of my life, truly. Some of the things I did during this no-insta-week were:

1. played Genshin Impact on my ipad after 3 years

2. wrote 2 article drafts

3. watched anime with my friends online

4. studied a LOT

5. cooked

6. recorded for yt

7. went out with my fam

8. had deep conversations with people who truly get me

9. journaled

10. audited the first half of my 2025, what worked & what didn’t work

11. watched video essays & great podcasts on yt

12. read 10 chapters of The Midnight Library

    & so many other things that genuinely recharged my soul.

Now, onto what matters the most, how to consume social media a bit more mindfully & in a disciplined way.

So, I had an epiphany on my 5th day of the no-IG-week, that I should just schedule phone check-ins, i.e. just checking my phone during those specified times in the day, for eg. the schedule that’s working the best for me rn is, checking my phone at an interval of 4 hours, so 8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm and 12 am, this has definitely given me a sense of control over how I use my phone along with how often do I actually need to check it.

Another thing am trying to implement is, whenever I wanna scroll tiktok or IG, I just turn on the 10 minutes timer, and allow myself to scroll as much as I want, a better way to do this is when you consume 10-15 minutes of the content that actually benefits you in some or the other way, be it educational, motivational, vlog-style, memes or just random edits of your fav show. The main purpose is to just not let yourself get consumed by the endless amount of brain-rot, that exists in the world, and instead, use all your precious attention-span and brain capacity to fulfilling your own dreams, by doing the things you genuinely want to do, and in-turn embody the identity of the person you’re trying to become.

I genuinely hate how Instagram makes me feel so anxious, almost as if overstimulation, FOMO, and bed-rotting were packed into one app. Social media can genuinely get so draining sometimes, be it because of the creators you follow, the hours you waste scrolling, the capitalism induced overconsumption that’s fed to us on a daily basis, the unrealistic beauty standards, the infinite number of highly-curated aesthetics, it all truly drains our mortal soul that was meant to create art and interact with other human beings.

Most of the depressive episodes are often triggered by either of the above mentioned reasons and what I genuinely hate is, to see myself and the people I know struggle for their lives just because of an app, a device, an algorithm, just because we couldn’t control our instant-gratification seeking brain. One such instance is, when you feel as if you’re gonna miss out on everything happening around the world, if you put your phone away for an hour, and I think we just need to reaffirm to ourselves that “its okay, am not missing out on anything, the reels, the posts, the tiktoks, they’re not going anywhere, I can always check back-in later.”

Perhaps its also because we don’t really schedule-in all the other delayed-gratification activities that provide us with real dopamine, such as gaming (to an extent), reading, writing, cooking, cleaning, meeting up with a friend, drawing, journaling, singing, dancing your heart out, going for nature-walks, watching movies that inspire us, and so many other things that naturally give you that serotonin boost. Like why did we stop going out & instead of admiring nature, we just rot away in our rooms?

Take this as a sign to either delete that app that’s been draining away your will to live, or just start mindfully consuming social media, in a more disciplined way sweetheart. And please give yourself the freedom, to try out the hobbies that you’ve been wanting to since ages, instead of doomscrolling the content, you’ll probably forget about in the next hour.

Thank you sm for reading, I really hope this was helpful, even if just a bit.

remember, you’re loved.

xoxo

Shreya