"Doomscrolling"
13 September 2026
I have probably spent more than 1 year and 2 months of my life just continuously staring at my phone. Day and night.
When I recently came to that conclusion, I was shocked. Not because I had been consuming media on a device for so long – people have been doing that at least since the invention of the TV – but rather because I wasn’t able to tell what I had looked at all this time. Sure, there was a lot of web browsing, communicating and watching videos, but I couldn’t tell you what exactly I was doing for so long.
But I could tell you how many hours I poured into Animal Crossing, Zelda or watching Breaking Bad. And I know the reason why: it was a deliberate decision to consume this specific content. The main problem arose in the last couple of years, and it’s called „short-form video content“. Instagram has Reels, YouTube has Shorts, and then there is the giant itself: TikTok. You probably spend hours of your life just watching seconds-long videos and continuously scrolling.
But what did you actually watch?
It is always the result of an algorithm tailored to your interests (or at least the things you watch for longer). For me, it boiled down to memes, trash and what most men immediately experience: sexualized content. I cleared my history (and algorithm) a couple of times, and it would still show me more sexual content compared to my wife’s accounts. And I’ve met people who share the same experience; when you set your profile to „male“, it seems to automatically splice in some form of sexual content more often than not.
While I can handle seeing a woman expose her body on the internet, what really struck me was the fact that I was just consuming trash. Often, I would feel worse after spending a certain amount of time on these short-form video platforms. I felt like I was getting numb; sometimes even brainless or slightly depressed. Your brain can only handle so much human misfortune, stupidity and failure before feeling depressed.
So I deleted those apps and social media in general. It wasn’t a „magical experience“. The world around me didn’t suddenly get more colorful, but after a while, I started seeing some real differences:
Mostly in my own behavior. I felt calmer. I felt like time was moving slower. I found myself having more time to do the things I needed or had wanted to do for a while.
In the first week, I started reading a book instead of scrolling. After 5 days, I was done with a 600-page novel. I have never read a lot in the past, let alone this fast. But it was actually easy, relaxing and a ton of fun. Next, I started listening to music more consciously again. I discovered some of my new all-time favorite songs on albums I had access to for years but had never taken the time to listen to all the way through. Turns out physical media is great for experiencing music! More on that in another blog post someday …
I went from using my phone often during the day, sometimes just to „check on things“, to not wanting to use it at all.
So I won’t. At least not a regular smartphone that is designed to keep pulling you back to it. I have looked into some „dumbphones“ or „semi-dumbphones“ and ordered a Commodore Callback Phone. I have to replace my iPhone anyway, so buying something comparatively cheap seemed like a good choice. Only time will tell if I stick to it or have a smartphone „relapse“.