The Death of Daydreaming

Before smartphones and the Internet, I almost always had a paperback book to read. Bus rides were either me talking to friends (rare, since our schedule didn't match often), reading a book, or uncomfortably fighting the urge to doze off.

While, yes, social media gives us a more pronounced dopamine hit-and-crave cycle, we've always had means of escape at our fingertips.

It's worth comparing and contrasting. What changed and what stayed the same?

A smartphone and a book are, by and large, different modes of escape with different impacts on the escapee. Scrolling through social media is a far cry from focusing on a single subject for an extended period of time, which is what reading a book does.

Both are forms of escape. That can be escaping common boredom to pass the time, or it can be escaping bad feelings or a bad life situation. Also, I'm not convinced that a compelling fiction book that's struck a chord is actually a meaningfully different dopamine drip than scrolling Instagram.

Changed: the ease of switching when restlessness kicks in. I have the Kindle app on my phone with several partially-read books in it. I can also pull up a browser tab at any moment. It takes some degree of effort to stay on-task in a single book, and it's probably analogous to meditation.

Same: escapism.

You could always read a book on your phone.

With digital pursuits it's easy to fall into FOMO anxiety cycles. The classic "stuck on the Netflix menu" conundrum. When you pay attention to it, you realize you're just kind of trying to minmax the ratio of enjoyment to boredom in one's escapism, which can't be a healthy way to treat leisure.

Totally! But then you've got to make sure all notifications are turned off from every app that might hit you up - not just silenced, but so that they don't even appear over top of the book. And then, of course, there's the temptation to swipe over to a different app that's right there.

A book, however, is just a book.