Why You CAN'T Stop Scrolling

I don’t think people really understand just how hard quitting social media is.

I mean, there are literal teams of incredibly well-paid scientists and programmers trying to make these apps as addictive as possible.

This is how they make money.

You know how crazy that is? There are people whose entire job is to keep you scrolling.

It’s you vs them.

So trying to hold yourself back all day can seem impossible at times.

This is one of the biggest problems I had for so long. I could always hype myself up and push through the “one-time” things - do the workout, go for the run, sit down to study.

But I just couldn’t do those things where it was about not doing something. Not eating junk food, not going on social media.

Because here I couldn’t just close my eyes and power through once - I had to hold back for the entire day.

But we can actually eliminate this problem completely with just 3 steps.

What I realised was that once I had started scrolling, it was very difficult to stop. But the times when I started were usually positioned around similar times each day.

1. So the first step was I made a list of all the times when I usually start doom-scrolling.

• As soon as I get out of bed.

• Straight after a meal.

• After I’ve done everything else, and need to go to bed.

The truth is, you don’t always want to go on social media. Most of the time you’re fine.

But there are these few “sliding-door” moments, the entry points, throughout the day.

So now, we can shift the mindset from “I need to resist going on social media all day (a pretty daunting task)” into “I need to resist or do something else instead just these particular 3-4 times.”

Sounds a lot more manageable.

2. Think back to the last time you slipped into binging social media, and identify all the triggers around it.

Why did you start scrolling?

For me, some of these triggers were:

• I was tired

• I was lonely

• I was anxious

• I didn’t have anything I was meant to do at that point

2. Now that I had the list of triggers and times, all I had to do was break them down and find solutions, one-by-one.

There are 2 things we can do here:

1. For some, we can just eliminate the trigger altogether (eg. I now timetable my day in advance the night before, so I always have something I should be doing.)

2. But for others, we have to try and create an alternative response.

Like I said in my last email, social media is just a tool our mind uses to cope with these negative thoughts and emotions - so all we have to do is find a different, less damaging tool for our mind to use.

• If I’m feeling lonely, now I have created a new response of calling or messaging my friend, of talking to my family, or of reading the Bible and praying.

• If I’m feeling anxious, I just take a few deep breaths, maybe meditate or exercise, and focus only on the task at hand.

• If I’m feeling tired, I go tf to sleep.

Obviously I’m not perfect. We all still slip up and revert back to our old habits sometimes.

But the more you do this, the more you reinforce the new response - until eventually it becomes a habit that you do without even thinking.

You replace social media as the coping mechanism, with stuff that actually makes your life better.

Hope this helps.

Speak to you soon,

Yvan

P.S. Just dropped a whole video on how to short-circuit your brain to stop procrastinating.

Would love to see any comments about how you’ve been able to beat procrastination!

Watch it here.