The Death of Daydreaming

Only recently, like in the last year, have I found my phone just sucking me in. I am mindlessly browsing whatever (TikTok, Xiao Hong Shu, Reddit) and then suddenly my time has slipped away. The thing is, I'm not young by any means. I figured I was aged out of the risk that the phone could devour my time but I was so mistaken in thinking that way. Compared to how I felt my time went and was spent when I was younger (pre-internet days) this feels awful and draining and so damn easy to slip into. Feels like life is on pause yet time is still slipping away as fast as ever.

Doom-scrolling and short-form videos seem to not discriminate by age. I know lots of middle-aged to elderly people who can sit on their phones and scroll for hours on end every day.

My boomer relatives seem especially susceptible to this. As our local community ties atrophy, I find many old folks with less social contact tend to turn to social media to compensate.

I also wonder if the aging brain is particularly vulnerable to some of the darker patterns these platforms employ? It certainly seems like it from the small number of data points I've seen.