Feel-good screen time is a myth

I remember when my family got our first computer. We used it in all the virtuous and honorable ways intended: Searching the encyclopedia and exploring the San Diego Zoo, by way of a Gateway-provided CD-ROM. We wrote term papers and diligently Asked Jeeves. It’s wild to consider that this clunky desktop was the revered predecessor to the smartphones we (figuratively and literally) drop in toilets today.

As much as I use my computer and phone for work, I also readily embrace using technology for pure nonsense. I enjoy the occasional relief provided by a compilation video of puppies yawning. I look forward each morning to the specific order in which I do my New York Times games (Connections > Wordle > Spelling Bee). I enjoy creating dumb gifs, and turning photos of loved ones into stickers that I use in text messages. And yes, like any other blue-blooded American, I carry around a certain amount of screen-time guilt. (But as someone who was raised Catholic, this counts as one of the 3-5 vices that I nurture at any given time.) Mostly, though, I don't think much about my little pocket computer addiction — I’m a functioning app-aholic.

A recent Vox article covered the trend of Gen Z’s love for “bad takes” on TikTok. Such videos consist of a person talking straight to the camera, offering cultural criticism that lacks in-depth analysis — but the TikToker has such a “strong voice and an academic vocabulary” that it makes their theories sound exhaustively researched and accurate.

One potential reason given for Gen Z being so drawn to these TikToks? They don’t want to always feel like they’re just consuming digital junk food. Unfortunately, instead of actually just eating their vegetables, they’re shoveling broccoli-shaped sugar pills into their gaping maws.

“Gen Z, it seems, increasingly realize that they’re stuck on a social media hamster wheel,” Kyndall Cunningham writes in the article. “If they can’t stop scrolling, they may as well make the most out of it and learn something, even if that something isn’t necessarily rigorous or true.”

The desire to consume something “good” in the midst of a lot of sugary content isn’t a unique experience. I’m sure many of our parents felt that watching the evening news or a PBS documentary was (is) the appropriate counter to all the must-see-TV sitcom binging. But, as the Vox article notes, it seems the relationship Gen Z has to social media — where many feel almost trapped by the medium — makes the craving for insightful videos far stronger.

Cunningham quotes Nikita Walia, a brand strategist and writer who specializes in cultural studies, semiotics, and media theory, who says social media users want to feel that their time scrolling has meaning: “However, even the smartest content has to play by the same algorithmic rules that favor speed and stimulation over reflection,” Walia says.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on our ability to research or otherwise explore curiosities online, especially at a time when Google keeps changing its algorithm (for the worse, in my and many others’ opinion). I would imagine that, for anyone who has spent too many hours being spoon-fed by algorithms on what to care about, it’s difficult to tap into a desire to learn more on your own. It’s harder still when the Mother of Search Engines cares less about discovery and more about advertising revenue and AI integration.

There’s loads more to say about how basic search functions have failed us — and I will absolutely be dragging out my soap box to discuss THAT in the future — but I want to focus on the idea that we feel a need to wash down all the pure garbage content with an ultra-processed hot take, disguised as a healthful, righteous smoothie. The only solution I can think of? Digital boundaries.

When I learn about the (sometimes disgusting!) ways that some people use their time online, I often think to myself: This cannot be the same internet where I add Depression Style Glass Butter Dishes to my Ebay wishlist. We need more separation and to expect different content from different places. There’s a running joke I’ve seen about how some online tasks should not be done on a phone, they should be done sitting at a computer — and I think that same concept could be applied to how different platforms are used.

If you wander onto a platform like Instagram or TikTok with the express purpose of being entertained, you won’t accidentally take anything too seriously. Social media apps in particular use every trick in the book to keep us engaged, and we’re the only ones who can police how we use them. It’s hard enough to distinguish the real videos from AI slop anymore, so it can be exhausting to also be tasked with separating a well-educated analysis from a baseless soliloquy. Yes, many great critics and academics use these social networks to reach a new audience, but the internet is also (sometimes unfortunately) the great equalizer. We have to remember: Just because anyone can post online, doesn’t mean everyone is an expert.

I know many folks who have found solid recipes on TikTok, but going viral doesn’t equate to a dish actually tasting good — and that’s too much a risk for me. In the same way, just because an armchair critic’s analysis of a Taylor Swift song received tens of thousands of “likes,” that doesn’t mean it was well informed. I delegate my recipe searching to my NYT Cooking app where recipes have been tested by professionals. In the same way, I want my cultural criticism to be vetted, i.e., written by an informed individual with experience and research.

As much as social media apps want to become catch-all platforms that connect, entertain, and educate, they’re often going to fail at any one of those efforts. I can only “feel good” — and those quotation marks are doing some strongman-level lifting — about my screen time if I’m honest about why I’m really there. I’m in Gmail for work or newsletter pleasure. I’m on Instagram to mindlessly kill time. I’m on Pinterest to brainstorm party ideas. I will not trick myself into thinking my social media scrolling hours are more honorable because I watched a 90-second cultural analysis of a Sydney Sweeney commercial. 

I don’t feel great about the screen time reports that my phone sends me each Sunday, but I also won’t bother convincing myself that “at least I learned something” during that time. Many of us are very likely addicted to our phones, in which case it’s worth recalling the first of the 12-step program: Admitting that we are powerless over the control that our addiction has on our lives. But just as drinking fancier whiskey doesn’t make you less of an alcoholic, watching “smarter” videos doesn’t loosen the app’s grip on you.