February 13

zombie scrolling: the mindless reality of the scrolling addiction no1

Last week’s exploration of our relation with our phones felt incredibly relevant to many of you. Whereas technology can be and has been extremely beneficial, it can also have a very dark side; as any tool, it needs to be used in awareness of purpose. One can never be cautious enough, though. Since the pandemic, the world both accelerated and increased their digital activity, forcing life to gradually become dangerously pixelated. For a significant number of people, overindulging in a mindless reality has turned into a scrolling addiction, also known as zombie scrolling.

Interested as I am in maximising the potential of our digital tools, I am also concerned about the dangers they carry. The toxically unrealistic beautification of life through filters and curated content, alongside the constant trimming of our attention span, makes it hard to maintain a healthy relationship with the digital world: it is my firm belief that the Metaverse has already been with us long before we name it. As a friend of mine says, the internet might be a relatively young realm, but it has shown early on its predominant aptitude. No matter how alluring it appears to be, we must never not use it reflectively.

In order to achieve this, there are so many questions we had better regularly ask ourselves: why are we using the web? Why are we using our phones? How difficult is it to focus off our phones? How much awareness do we bring to our digital realm? How do we feel about the flaws and mortality of the real world? Have we got a clear understanding of wins and losses, thus know when digital is necessary or potentially imbalanced? Do we ever run a cost-benefit analysis? What do we sacrifice for spending time online? Is this spending overwhelmingly regular, or merely an occasional splurge? Ultimately, is it our choice, or our addiction? And if it is the latter, what are the needs under the needs that it doubles for?

As digitalism has absorbed us exactly because it makes everything as convenient as possible, I am guessing that this discourse is an uncomfortable one to have. After all, who likes deliberately forcing themselves out of convenience? Nonetheless, I would love to hear your opinion on the matter. You guessed it right, it is time for a survey, my favourite kind of indirect discourse. Please click on the following link to access it; it will take you less than 2’. I have only one request to make: reply as sincerely as possible, and don’t judge yourselves if your answers are not as politically correct as you would like or expected; something tells me that resisting the allure of digitalism is hard for everyone. Have a lovely Sunday.

liberalvirtue