Doomscrolling: The Plague of our Times
Twitter, or as it is now referred to as "X", is a social media platform that I use to share my blog posts to the world. It is also one of the premier platforms that is well known for Doomscrolling, a term used for browsing endlessly on the application by continually serving up new posts. This is perhaps one of the most insidious forms of mind control that is in existence to date, with the algorithm of the social media platform endlessly serving up content according to what you are clicking on and watching. I have noticed in myself lately unhealthy amounts of doomscrolling in my own browsing habits, and I am trying to leverage this awareness to break this horrible habit.
There was a time that I decided to not use Twitter at all and that seemed to be the best option, but because I want to leverage the platform to share my blog posts, it is much harder now to avoid using it. What I think I need to do instead is simply post my posts and then only monitor the platform for any engagement on my posts rather than engaging with other people's post. Even though this is not a way to grow a social media channel because engagement giving usually comes with engagement receiving, it is probably the best way to handle the doomscrolling plague of social media.
What is worse, the continuing prevalence of AI makes me unsure of what I am looking at. Is the content I am consuming actually real? Or is it just a bunch of AI communicating with each other and creating fake pieces of content to influence me one way or another. I am beginning to think AI is a much larger part of social networks than I once realized, and as such, I am less likely to care about social media as a whole as a result. As AI continues to advance, it will become harder and harder to distinguish what is real and what is fake. And while some of the content AI generates is entertaining, I still would much rather know for certain that what I am consuming is actually coming from a human rather than an AI bot.
The thing with doomscrolling is, it warps your world view, making things look much better or much worse than they really are, depending on what content you are consuming. This ultimately makes you think the best or the worst of things and does not really give you a clear judgement on a situation you may face IRL. The mantra that you can't always believe what you read on the internet is ever more important today than it ever was, especially as it relates to political commentary and internet drama. The fact that the twitter platform heavily incentives people to create content to garner the most engagement and clicks by paying them to do so further exacerbates the situation by bringing people with the most extreme views to the forefront.
I honestly believe that social media has ruined the minds of millions of people and has done more harm than good. I remember when Facebook first came out when I was in my freshman year of college and no one knew how to use it. Those days were the best days of social media, when everyone was just posting about their days without getting inundated with sponsored content and ads. Flash forward to today, and every single platform has one goal and one goal only, to sell you something or influence your views on a certain topic. It really makes you want to unplug and delete these networks from existence. I personally am watching the destruction of the world's social fabric in real time whenever I engage in Doomscrolling, because if it is impacting me negatively, then I know I am not the only one who is getting impacted by it.
Awareness is always the first step toward recovery, so I look forward to continually stopping myself from Doomscrolling and using social media platforms less and less as a hobby and simply stick to posting content and engaging with those who connect with it. Peace of mind is my top priority, and lately, that has not come at all from social media.
Until next time,
Blackboa