My own personal hell is exactly how I’ve spent so many of my days up until this point: the sky clear, the neighborhood kids shouting outside of my window, the world dotted with things to be found, and though I have no straitjacket on, I feel strapped to the bed. I can’t think clearly of my present, only of the next video in line, in perpetual anticipation of a fulfillment that never comes. Maybe there will be a dopamine hit so delicious that I am jolted into becoming the person I’m supposed to be. I know this is a flawed line of thinking, but could you imagine? What if all of your consumption finally satiated you? Of course the feeling of being full never hits, the phone and all of its offerings like processed food for the mind, and I am stuck substituting temporary fixes for the answers to my hunger. 

I hope someday, social media can be purely a hub of inspiration, a place for me to look when I need a push in the right direction. As of right now, the only way I feel that I can wrangle my addiction to short-form content is by cutting myself off entirely, which means losing the benefits of apps like Tik Tok and Instagram. Without social media, it is significantly harder to be in the cultural loop. Without social media, I am no longer privy to the references that make up so much of young peoples’ vocabularies, and it takes reaching out to know what is going on in the lives of those I don’t talk to regularly. For all that social media takes from my life, there is also so much it could add, if only my brain and my body could agree on when enough is enough. 

Now the question is how to fill the time that was previously occupied by hours worth of content consumption. In truth, I thought deleting the apps that kept me still would make me better, but I still feel paralyzed. I am Esther Greenwood in the Bell Jar, sitting passively at the base of the fig tree. I had hoped it would be as easy as deleting the apps and then rediscovering all I used to love: playing guitar, writing music, drawing, collaging, reading. Maybe I’d even get a start on all the things I want to love: gardening, cooking, making clothes, running. What a sweet deal that would be—all of my promise fulfilled in exchange for my phone. But creativity didn’t take up where my phone left off; boredom did. 

In bed, at red lights, on the toilet, during particularly slow shifts, instead of little hits of dopamine, I feel nothing. I look through my camera roll to try and produce a similar effect, but I’m thumbing through my own experiences, already familiar to me; of course it doesn’t feel the same. 

What I’ve discovered is that the biggest difference between being on my phone and off of it is now I can no longer pretend that by holding someone else’s life as close as possible to my face, I am somehow living it. Now that the boredom has been allowed to set in, I understand that the next step is to move. It is not enough to no longer be at the mercy of my phone. I want to lead a brimming, beautiful life entirely of my own, and for that I have to accept the effort I must put in. 

Social media has made accessing good feelings easy, even if those good feelings are brief and need to be reproduced constantly. There is no effort required in the mechanical movement of fingers across a screen. With dopamine as attainable as it is, why would I ever need to learn how to work for my rewards? I find myself uneasy, unsure if the payoff I am seeking will ever come. Uncertainty is human. By ensuring a consistent source of dopamine in my life, I made it so I never had to feel the discomfort of being completely lost; which is, in truth, what I feel right now. But what a shame it would be to never feel the elation of finding myself because I never set out to look in the first place.