Stop Doomscrolling & Enable Screen Time : My advice for keeping your sanity intact through 2020 and beyond
The idea of “Doomscrolling” has become a popular thing on social media lately…the general idea that you’re anxious or bored and just scroll up and down social media looking for the next bad news to drop. With 2020 being such a dumpster fire of a year, I have found it helpful for me to turn back on Apple’s Downtime for iOS and MacOS. Like most, I find myself struggling to go to sleep at night…its just hard to turn off my mind at night after a busy day. I’ve gotten to the point I limit my News and social media intake (Namely checking the news twice a day at most and removing Facebook/Twitter from my iPhone’s home screen). I’ve been using iMessage and Telegram a lot more to keep in touch with those I care about over 1:1 or group chats to avoid the doom/gloom of social media website like Facebook and being force-fed everyone’s opinions on everything from face masks to coronavirus conspiracy theories about SEC football plans. I have recently turned back on Apple’s Downtime feature and pushed it back to midnight. As a night owl, I’m often awake until 12:30 or 1am, but Downtime forces me to actively tell it to dismiss for 1x minute, 15 minutes, or for the rest of the day. It also greys out the icons on my iPad, iPhone, Watch, and Mac as a nice visual reminder that I really should be doing something purposeful like reading, writing, watching TV, listening to music, playing a video game…something over just mindlessly Doomscrolling through social media late at night. It sounds infantilizing for my phone to tell me to stop spending so much time with it, but it helps me late at night when I’m probably too tired for my better angels to regulate myself. I find it to be a small, but useful visual and mental reminder to take a break from things.
Here is a link on how to enable Screentime
Schedule downtime on Mac
Stay safe and hug your pets
-Hobie Henning
