Orion's Void

A word on social media

Social media and it’s effects on mental health

Short form content

In 21st century you have plenty of options for overstimulating your brain. Whenever it’s TikTok, Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, you can pick your poison. Watching short form content is like constantly writing data to a disk and erasing it right after. Tell me, do you remember your last 10, 5, or at least 2 videos you’ve watched today? It is like the perfect exploit for human brain. You have a strong feeling that you are learning something new. Motivational content might be the worst offender. You subconsciously tell yourself that you are making a good use of your time by watching it. It is tricking your brain into believing that you are making some sort of progress in your life. You are not though and you’re wasting your potential just as much as someone who watches memes on there. It’s essentially content for “smart” people. “Oh, I’m so much better for following ‘Stoic.Quotes2020’. I’m not like other people on this platform, I’m learning something and bettering myself!”

I am currently trying to minimize my use of Reels and YouTube as much as possible. With Instagram I’ve developed a nasty habit of not being bored. If I have nothing to do, I instantly reach for my phone and start consooming some garbage on my For you page. With YouTube I’ve been using it as background noise since forever. Having to do a presentation, learn, eat, or even play video games? You bet that I will have a YT video on my second monitor.

“Working with distractions is like nutting with only one ball” - Tako Balls

I don’t believe that we can actually (fully) focus on more than one thing at a time. 1 hour of focused work is better than 4 hours of distracted work. Great tool for keeping you fresh while you study or do any other mundane task is Pomodoro. It is a technique which divides your time into segments of work and short breaks. Let’s say that you will work for 20 minutes and relax for 5. After 4 working periods you can have a longer break (20 minutes for example). You can of course set this up differently! Try and experiment with what will work for you the best.

Feeling shit

Never in my life have I felt better after a quick Instagram session. It’s always been a little bit worse after. Repeated enough times throughout the day and voilà. Most of your day now felt like shit and you don’t even know why. It’s simply from all the noise, flashing lights and running text all over the screen. Each video is different and conveys a different emotion. Some videos motivate you and spike that adrenaline in your blood. Some videos will make you feel sad because of some tragic event. Some videos will piss you off because of a different political view or simply because the video is cringe. Now, this is happening multiple times per minute. Your brain is constantly switching between different emotions and simply cannot keep up with this mess.

Upcummies

What is an upcummie? It is a like, it is a follow, it is a comment, it is anything that keeps you on the platform and gives you some sort of validation. It is something that triggers that dopamine response in your brain. These systems target our primal part of the brain for survival. Being part of a group meant that we would survive. Today it’s the same, except for the survival. We are social creatures, we crave attention and validation from our peers. This unfortunately leads to an endless comparison between people. Remember, that everything on the internet is fake (even this very post you are currently reading). People ony present their acomplishments and highlights to the world. They rarely show their ordinary and boring lives which they are actually living.

My point is; don’t get fooled by social media. Work hard and strive to actually live the life many people only pretend to actually live.

How to overcome an addiction?

“Flee temptation, physically flee temptation.” - Luke Smith

Simplest way to stop doing something is by not doing it. You don’t need to “stay in the loop”, you don’t need Instagram to stay in touch with your friends. If you wanna reduce your overall screen time, here are some tips that work for me.

Learn to be bored

“Learn to be bored, learn to love it…” - Luke Smith

Boredom is something that most people from my generation don’t really get to experience. Our easy fix for boredom is just to reflexively pull out our smart phone and start watching garbage. Boredom is very essential though for our creativity, decision making and overall clear mental function. I started replacing this nasty habit with reading. Instead of watching YouTube on my way to school I read a few pages from a book. Of course this isn’t possible a 100% of the time since people on the bus tend to be loud and/or annoying. But when I have the opportunity and a little bit of silence, I take out my book and start reading. It isn’t much but I believe it’s a good start. I also try and limit my music/podcast consumption when I’m outside. For example when I walk from the bus stop to the school. I noticed that only the first 2-3 minutes without any stimulation are painful. Once you overcome that, you actually start to enjoy your own company. At least in my case…