I am sincerely under the impression that my brain is (hopefully only temporarily) ruined thanks to TikTok and Instagram Reels. Short-form video platforms like these are unfortunately where I spend most of my online leisure time, something that has really shifted since I was younger. In high school they weren’t too much of a problem in my life, I spent a couple minutes scrolling then went off to my next thing. That though, was before I got hooked on doomscrolling, the act of getting stuck in a perpetual motion of mindlessly scrolling through social media. Maybe I didn’t actually get hooked on doomscrolling, doomscrolling just got hooked on me. Regardless of how it happened, I now have the attention span of a cold chicken tender from the Caf, all because my brain got addicted to scrolling through short videos.

Someone please explain to me exactly why I can easily spend 45 minutes doomscrolling, but I can no longer watch a 15 minute Youtube video without either putting in two times speed or skipping through it—what the heck? The crazy part is, half the time my “for you page” is just filled with segments of Youtube videos anyway. Moreover, I religiously go searching on that given platform for the next part of the video when I could be on Youtube watching literally the same, whole video far more easily—what the heck? What makes my brain abandon its common sense and think, “let’s do this the hard way?” 

There has to be something dopamine related about the scrolling bit of doomscrolling, a hit that I have become so addicted to that I can’t even read a book properly. No, I think I know what it is. My brain justifies doomscrolling because it allows me to take in more information in less time. Just kidding, it’s hardly information, but my brain likes to think that way. My Youtube subscriptions are heavily curated and genuinely could help me learn new things. My “for you page” on the other hand, what is the algorithm even thinking? Maybe the algorithm does know me better than I do though, because without fail, if I happen to get on TikTok right before I go to bed it throws me the Turkish barber ASMR videos that lull me to sleep ever so quickly. I said “if I happen to,” that is a lie, this happens almost every night. Why do I do this to myself?

Movies have gotten to be just as bad as Youtube videos at this point. Unless it is a really good movie that I am looking forward to watching, you better believe I hop on Reels when I get bored. For why? I like watching movies, I want to be a cultured person that has seen all of the great movies of this generation and those prior, but I won’t be if I get stuck doomscrolling when watching them. Thank goodness TikTok is testing 30 and 60 minute videos on the platform, so I can maybe uncondition myself from the doomscroll. It will be a long process: the longer the videos that are on TikTok, the less I scroll, the easier it will be to go back to Youtube and watching movies straight through. It’s a perfect plan. Actually maybe stopping cold turkey would be better, and theoretically if the government bans TikTok that would be a really great excuse to break free from this curse that haunts me before bed.