Doomscrolling Diaries

Hi, my name is Anna Djikas and I suffer from phone addiction. I am not in denial but am rather painfully aware of this addiction. I try to tell myself that I am using my phone with a purpose like staying connected with friends that did not live in the same state as myself or finding new healthy dinner recipes but often this is not entirely true. I shamefully doomscroll getting caught up in all the new trends and sounds of TikTok and then before I know it 30 minutes have gone by of me staring at my phone laughing rather than doing something productive. 


Image Source: Reddit 


When teaching my AP Seminar students about perspectives and stakeholders, I start with a mini lesson that asks students to reflect on if they believe they are addicted to their phone. They then take a quiz from the New York Time's that determines if they are in love with their phone. They are then asked if their perspective has changed in the end. Many start with denial that they are in love with their phone but by the end of the activity eventually admit their addiction.

This week I decided to look into my own phone addiction. According to Elmore, the average teen spends 9 hours a day or 63 hours a week on digital media. This is more hours spent than the 8 hour work day. I was fearful that my daily screen time would be just as bad as the teenagers! However, my daily average of screen time this past week was 4 hours and 57 minutes. This would mean I spend roughly 35 hours a week on my phone. Oh, the things I could do with an extra 35 productive hours in the week. I could read multiple entire books or learn how the play the guitar! Instead, the doomscrolling and need for instant gratification took over. The most interesting feature of this screen time tracker was how many times you pick up your phone in a day. I picked up my phone on average 165 times a day. The most pickups was on Sunday with 247! Maybe I should attack a weight to my phone so I can at least tone my arms when I pick up my phone lol. My most used apps were messages and TikTok which was no surprise. My third most used app was my clock app because I have been timing my students presentations this past week so I think that was just a weekly fluke. I receive an average of 230 notifications on my phone which is probably why I pick it up so much. I think disabling some of my notifications from these apps would help me use it less. I do not need to be notified every time Sephora is having a sale! How do I fix my addiction? There is a feature where you can set app limits to limit the amount of time spent on each app. While I do think that would be helpful, will I actually set these limits? Probably not because I am certainly not in recovery yet. Back to doomscrolling I go! 

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