I do not dream of doomscrolling.

why I am retiring from my pastime of being chronically online

Earlier this year, I found myself on a park bench in Tokyo, overlooking a pond near the bay. I was on a trip to a country I had been longing to visit since I was 10 years old. I looked out at the water, the sky, the serene. In my journal I wrote:

I’ve run out of dreams.

This reflection has been haunting me ever since. And I’ve been trying to understand why.

Why has dreaming felt out of reach?

At what point did I subconsciously decide that my future only held enough room for practical ambitions and SMART goals?

Why did it have to take a trip to a foreign land to become reacquainted with my deeper desires (or lack thereof)?

After several sporadic sessions of deep pondering, it brings me great displeasure to admit… maybe it really is them damn phones.

Hear me out. I think that dreaming hasn’t felt like an interesting or worthwhile activity to engage in for a very long time. Don’t get me wrong, I stay in my journal. Yet my reflections are almost always based in the past, present or near future.

I think there is a certain level of imagination that dreams demand of us, which in turn requires the desire and ability to entertain distant realities.

But when would I ever be able to think about parallel and potential universes, when my disposable time is double booked with doomscrolling across my beloved blunt rotation of apps?

What do we give up when we trade slowness and boredom for instant dopamine hits? When we never allow our minds enough breathing room to wander and wonder?

Also, just to be clear, this isn’t a tirade against the internet. Far from it, actually. I look back with fondness on countless hours of my childhood spent surfing the web. Ah, the good ol’ days of going down countless Wikipedia rabbit holes and exploring different hashtags and subcultures on tumblr. But there has definitely been a major departure from the golden era when the internet felt like a fun social experiment providing an open world of endless possibilities to explore. There’s just something insidious about being beholden to algorithms designed to lure you into paying attention to what the ‘For You’ page decides is attention-worthy.

As life has been getting busier and busier, I feel pressured to see time not just as a luxury, but also as a currency. The result of this is that I’ve been thinking a lot more about my day-to-day habits, and the things that I spend my time doing (and not doing). With the introduction of features like Screen Time and the rise in ‘digital detox’ content, I’ve been feeling a lot more aware of the time I spend online, and what I get from this time in return. Turns out I don’t really get that much out of it anymore lol. But I do get a lot out of wandering aimlessly through parks, getting lost in a book, and hanging out with friends without any particular objective in mind other than to enjoy each other’s company.

I used to wear the identity of being ‘chronically online’ like a badge of honour. I do take pride in my exquisite curation of memery in my camera roll. These days, I think the opportunity cost of being out of touch with my passions and dreams doesn’t seem quite worth the satisfaction of knowing the latest insider jokes.

To go a step further, the ‘cost’ of spending excessive time online feels very real when understood through the sociological concept of digital labor:

When you remember that the ultimate goal of social media platforms is to profit from your data and track your engagement, it begs the question… who is serving whom?

Idk man, maybe touching grass is a radical act.