Social Media Archives - The Art of Improvement

Excluding sleep, when was the last time you went a full hour without checking your phone?

Think about that urge you feel to pull out your phone. It can happen when there’s a brief gap in activities, when a TV show is not grabbing your attention, or even when a task becomes challenging – instead of working through it, you might feel a tendency to reach for your phone and scroll through social media.

Repeated attempts to flush your brain with dopamine are a means of short-term gratification. Washing away the outside world as tunnel vision sets in, covering your world with walls made of likes, shares, comments, reels, shorts, videos, and relentless refreshes. I’d wager you’re aware this is wasted energy and want to do something about it.

Do you ever find yourself sitting down to work on a project for your job, study for an important test, or even just get a simple chore done, but find yourself almost immediately scrolling through social media for hours at a time?

While plenty of fun, social media can, unfortunately, keep us from being our most productive selves. Social apps are designed to keep users on them for as long as possible. There’s always a new, funny, or interesting thing to look at. We’re always getting new likes, comments, and notifications demanding our attention. Social media gives us a quick hit of dopamine every time we use it, which is why we keep coming back, and why it’s easy to quit working on a difficult task that may be causing us anxiety, and instead return to social media, which helps us not think about our responsibilities.