Screentime hasn’t been great for my mental health, stealing the time I have for living and working, all the moreso with the impact of staring at a screen so much other than for work. In a previous article I’ve mentioned loafing on a couch for hours in the early 2000s watching pirated episodes of 1990s-era Star Trek, making more use of my university-issued laptop to waste time than on homework.
My awful ex, who I’ve also mentioned before, insisted on having a TV for videogames, anime, or to watch YouTube videos about videogames and/or anime. And if it wasn’t on the TV it was on her phone, sometimes while the TV was also on. That made any kind of parallel existence impossible by both boring me and disrupting my focus. I spent so much time on my computer trying to escape mentally that what little life I had ground even further to a halt. Social media became my community and isolation ensured that I forgot what little I understood about how to exist in community in real like; like so many people experienced, COVID only intensified this. Every connection I had from that point on started becoming parasocial, I became reactive, my ex emotionally abusing me fueled my paranoia, and without my own vehicle I found myself online even when I had a break from my ex.
As much as I come to hate her constant TV use, I found myself trapped in my computer. Futilely I’d play League of Legends on my computer to have something in common with her and to feel a false sense of accomplishment, but the social toxicity only fed into my growing reactivity. Across the internet, social media’s toxicity had started growing from niche abuse of socially-marginalized people to a constant barrage not just of hatred, but also a devolution into constant pointless arguments anchored no deeper than misunderstandings, disinformation, and a topical cycle of news and drama that never ended while never failing to generate further vitriol.
After breaking up with my ex, moving home, breaking up with my other ex, failing to reconnect with friends or meet anyone new, my phone became my sole source of consistent connection. Eventually I found myself watching Instagram Reels, YouTube, and even TikTok despite having sworn that I never would. Some nice conversations were had, I certainly learned so much, and I developed a massive crush on someone who has taught me more about myself and Judaism than anyone, yet I fell victim to the same addiction of endless videos that had so tormented me when my ex had insisted on doing the same.
So I started deleting my social media. I swore off phones and started writing a book about it. I fell off that path, then got back on it. I started rewriting the book from scratch, then fell off that path again, then started all over again. Despite that, hoping to see a glimpse of my far-off crush, I ended up spending whole weeks in bed scrolling on my phone after seeing what she said and then running out of data watching YouTube on the lowest resolution possible. I started losing sleep even after having learned to regulate myself through holistic practices that had helped me find peace and balance. Before long I began to get sucked back into that same pervasive toxicity and cycle of reactivity, I stopped growing and healing only to start reverting. Worst of all, I let myself become distracted from how meaningful and important a person my crush was, how much her wisdom had informed and motivated my own spiritual growth and healing, even as my desire for her began to sour into an unhealthy obsession and my hope curdled into yearning.
Then as if to upend me into an therapeutic ice bath and wake me up to the real world, my crush gently warned me before blocking me on TikTok like God covering Moshe in the cleft of a rock so his fragile human mind didn’t explode from seeing too much of the divine. Oh how I painfully began to realize how I’d lost I’d become after several days of utter shock. Shame set in. Then the reality check came from my aunt, that I’d been way “too much”, which for once was something I needed to hear. Since the depressed feeling of isolation had already set in, my aunt’s callout which helped me realize why I’d gotten so sick of people on YouTube even before this. For whatever it’s worth, a one-side connection with people on a screen might feel better than nothing yet it still contributes to isolation.
So I unfollowed everyone. Sitting with my own thoughts both in silence and poured into the written word, is solitary-yet-whole compared to giving my attention to a screen all day. I still have an epic crush on that spiritual gangsta of a Torah speaker and teacher, now I remember there’s more respect in giving her space and more reason for her to think well of me if I create more screenless time to keep growing and healing.
Related: A Quantum Kadish
I’ve started to fill my time with the work of writing again and it’s refreshing to reconnect with something so real. Stories that go where I write them to and not the app equivalent of vapidly endlessly channel-surfing. The infinite scroll is a treadmill to infinite exhaustion for our minds. As much as the premise of something such as a new Green Lantern TV show entices, as much as documentaries old and new fascinate me, as much as the processes for endless projects I might start without finishing beckon to me, I have a very real (and really long) list of tasks and countless articles to write for this very site. So I’m committing to using the screens for what they are: tools.
Otherwise I fear that my commodified attention only becomes an obstacle to my own freedom, a barrier to independence, and an enemy of the love and companionship I so desire. To step into the real world, I may not have killed my TV literally, yet I have chosen to take steps away from the screen and back towards engaging in analog life outside the infinitely turning digital bubble.
