The Unseen Choice: what you’re really choosing when you scroll
These days, everyone has a story about how they sat down “just to relax and scroll for a few minutes”, and then they suddenly discover that an hour or more has disappeared. A glance at your screen time then reveals that, together with some optimistic scrolling earlier in the day, perhaps you’ve consigned 2 hours of your day to ‘lost in the scroll’.
The Hidden Cost
This may seem like a harmless pleasure on the surface, but what is the cost over a month? Or a year? Let’s dwell on saving an hour of lost scrolling time a day or thereabouts. That’s about 30 hours a month. If we consider we have about 8 hours of productivity time a day (based on your average working day), then in a month we have thrown away almost 4 days!
Here is the hidden cost - choosing to scroll is choosing it over something else. It says that right now I’m giving this choice the highest priority over other things I could be doing; other things that could be more beneficial to me and help me in the future. I’m choosing one version of my future self over another. Should we be doing this?
A Vote For ‘The Best You’
There are many future versions of you. Picture them as candidates in an election, and picture the one you would most like to vote for.
Is it the one who is healthy and fit? The one who enjoys walks with their family and who makes meatballs with their kids on a Sunday? The one who is confident at work because they’ve read those teamwork books? The one who knows how to play Christmas Carols on the piano at the next family Christmas? Perhaps it is the person who is ALL of the above?
Every minute or hour spent scrolling is a vote. A vote for becoming ‘The Best You’ or a vote for ‘Still The Same You’. The journey to your best self is the sum of those votes over months and years.
Meanwhile, something unseen is happening when you vote for scrolling. The Big Tech Algorithms convert your votes into revenue… for themselves. The Attention Economy knows that our attention is a finite resource and tries to mine that resource every day. They have all the tricks in the book at their disposal because they invented many of them. So time spent on your TikTok or Instagram feed is not only a lost investment in yourself, it’s another few dollars on their bottom line at your expense.
The Choice Challenge
Try this for a week.
Make a list of things you want to get done.
Then, when you find yourself scrolling, think to yourself “I have chosen this”
Next, ask yourself “Is this the choice my Best Future Self would have made?” Remind yourself of the other choices you have on your list
Now re-consider your choice. Do you want to change your choice?
Doing this re-affirms to you that you have made a choice, and it is one of many. Choosing where to spend your attention is important and it is totally within you control.
Screen Balance helps with this choice. By injecting custom-made and personalised videos into your social media feeds, you are given a chance to recognise that you have a choice and realise that your choice is within your power to change. Perhaps your chosen video is your “Best Self” from the future, reminding you of the power of your choice.
You will have thousands of these choices in your lifetime, and each one counts as a vote towards becoming who you want to be. The question is, do you want to win by a whisker or by a landslide?