My poor brain.

I recently deleted Instagram for a week to see if it’s really the problem or if it’s just me.

And

I think I’m killing my brain. 

For just one week, I didn’t scroll for over 2 hours daily through brain rot, cat videos, car crashes, horrific political takes, ads for fancy sponges I don’t need, or any of the other slop on that app.

And to a combination of my joy and dismay… I felt so much better. On the one hand, yay, it’s the phone making me dumb… on the other hand, it has that much control over me? Scary.

I felt so productive. I felt like I could have intelligent conversations. I was quick, witty, confident.

Why can’t I feel like this when I’m using instagram? Enter: “The Reverse Flynn Effect”

Following WWII, IQs began steadily increasing across the board, they called this the Flynn Effect. Well since 2010… IQs have actually been steadily dropping. Some evidence points to smartphones being the cause of this. In a blog post, Cal Newport says it’s the fact that in print, things need to be logical. They need to be explained. But on the internet, especially social media, anyone can say anything they want to an audience. There’s so much misinformation out there. It’s debated, but I think this past week made me a believer. 

I’m gonna admit something… sometimes I get my news from social media. 

*gasp*

Hey, it’s pretty normal these days, 54% of adults say they at least sometimes do. So this week, I missed out on some of the less important stories that weren’t at the top of the NYT’s homepage. But that wasn’t the issue. The thing is, I’m so nosey… I mean obviously… I am a journalist. And this past week, not being up to date with not just the news, but everyone’s opinions on it, killed me. I love getting the pulse of the public’s opinion on a story. I always check the comments under news posts to see how people are feeling about not only the news but also the reporting on it, and this week I really found myself missing that feeling. And one of the first things I did when I got my hands back on instagram, was find some stories about the biggest event this week, Charlie Kirk’s death, and read all the comments. 

Maybe it’s my negativity bias (a tendency in humans to attend to, learn from, and use negative information far more than positive information). I love to see people getting mad in the comments. Sometimes it validates what I think, sometimes their takes anger me. Or, my more optimistic side likes to think it’s that I find that feedback important. I want to understand what the public dislikes so I can apply that to my own writing. Whatever it is, I didn’t realize how bad I’d miss those comment sections.

So as I alluded to earlier, I have since redownloaded Instagram. And I got stuck in a scroll for a solid 30 minutes before I could force myself to write this. 

I think I’ll keep it downloaded for a little longer, but if I get back to 2 hours per day on it, or start subconsciously opening it when I’m supposed to be working, it’s gone. 

Cause I can’t keep doing this to my poor brain.