The Post-Scroll Guilt Phenomenon: Being Conscious of Absent Minded Content Consumption
Most of us spend a large amount of time consuming content, whether we know it or not. In the UK, the average screen time is 5 hours a day. On TikTok, the platform that has reinvented the meaning of content entirely, users spend an average of 46 minutes per day on the app, watching upwards of 180 videos per day. In a world that is overwhelming without the need for self-induced overstimulation, social media has got us in a chokehold.
The rise of new earth spirituality in the West has brought with it new understandings of how external factors shape our internal wellbeing and happiness. Whether you view sex to be an exchange of energies, or believe that you attract what you put out, or have ever saged your space, you likely recognise that our energy is not just something dependent on a good night’s sleep but a whole host of things. But what about content?
Recently when scrolling, I’ve started to find myself asking, why am I doing this? Due to the easy and passive nature of scrolling, we often don’t question our impulsive pull towards the feed. But more and more, I’ve been experiencing what I now call post-scroll clarity. The best way I can describe it is a sudden wave of low-mood, guilt and anxiety that comes after a long scrolling session. From feeling guilty about the time I’ve just spent scrolling content I’ll have forgotten about by tomorrow, to subconsciously comparing myself to those strangers I’ve engaged with on the explore page, to feeling I should be working overtime to keep up with those achieving things I admire.
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It’s not that content is inherently bad. Creating content often sparks creativity and joy, and consuming it offers a form of entertainment and information. But what I’m talking about is the relentless scrolling, the mindless tapping, the throwing your phone at a wall after getting lost in a scroll for 30 minutes after you picked up your phone to do something important.
From vlogs, to what I eat in a day, to hauls and outfit of the days, content created by influencers has taken over. Influencing is still a relatively new career, only emerging as a viable source of income in the past 10 years, but what really is their role? For the most part, influencers have been seized by brands as a way of promoting overconsumption in a more ‘authentic’ package. Evading marketing teams and big budgets, brands use influencers as a way of promoting their products to a potential consumer (us) almost invisibly. This isn’t an advert, it’s a lifestyle baby!
Whilst our awareness of the environmental impact of overconsumption and a general interrogation of capitalism’s unethical foundations has become more mainstream since movements like Occupy, Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion, our inability to see it evolving in front of our own eyes can cause cognitive dissonance. If I’m adamantly anti fast fashion, why do I find myself spending hours consuming content produced for fast fashion brands? It’s safe to say an influencer industry worth more than 16.4 billion dollars is not to be underestimated.
Of course, it’s an ongoing process of unlearning behavioural habits that our platforms have been designed to produce. A recent study of college students found that they can only now focus on any task for 65 seconds. Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention calls this an institutionalised culture of interruption. Social media feeds are not only distracting us, they’re dominating us.
“our apps treat our reactions and experiences as raw data to be extracted, and with negativity bias online being proven, it’s vital we protect our energy with practical measures.”
This can make us feel like to divest from consuming digital content is an impossible task, and that scrolling is an unexplainable part of being anything younger than a boomer. It’s not as easy as a social media detox, but that’s certainly a step in the right direction. In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport writes that the void that modern capitalism is leaving in our personal lives would be unbearable, if unmet with the digital noise we can access from our phones. “It’s now easy to fill the gaps between work and caring for your family by pulling out a smartphone or tablet, and numbing yourself with mindless swiping and tapping.” Not only this, but our apps treat our reactions and experiences as raw data to be extracted, and with negativity bias online being proven, it’s vital we protect our energy with practical measures.
It’s because of the sheer scale of Big Tech, that being conscious about content consumption is an act of defiance in itself. Interrogating our involvement in a digital world that fights for every inch of our attention and emotion can have a huge impact on our wellbeing and the world around us. When sending 65 emails emits the equivalent CO2 as driving a car 1km, you have to ask yourself, how much energy (literally) you want to expend in the digital world.
The recent loss of my sister has provoked me to reflect on how I’m spending my time and what I want to do in my life. It’s also made me think about what regrets I don’t want to have. When I’m near the end of my life, I doubt I’ll look back and say “I wish I had consumed more content.” It’ll likely be the opposite - I wish I looked up at the sky instead of it through a screen, I wish I had looked my friend in the eye when we had that conversation, I wish I had spent more time feeling things offline instead of online.
Luckily, I’m still at a point where I can change the trajectory of my life. Deleting TikTok won’t do that, but it’s a start towards decentring the role that the digital sphere plays in my life, in exchange for things beyond it.
Words: Adele Walton
