Life after Doomscrolling

Previously published in Free Inquiry Magazine

*Editor in Chief Paul Fidalgo

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, I can’t actually remember if it was stormy or not. But it was at night. A Tuesday night, Election Night 2016 to be exact, and a certain Stormy had come into play at some point. I was still working as an exotic dancer, and I had walked into work that night assuming that the TVs mounted on the walls would be silently playing some sports game. I have no interest in sports of any kind, but that night I was looking forward to glancing up and seeing guys in tight pants running around with a ball of some sort. I desperately needed a reprieve from what I had been watching before I left my home that evening.

Like most people, I was glued to the results of the election on TV. And also like most people, I had been riding on the roller coaster ride that had been the 2016 presidential campaign. The reality show celebrity and his antics had been dominating the news cycle with scandal after scandal in a made-for-TV drama I hoped would finally come to an end that night. When I left my home for work, I was confident that it would end. So confident in fact that I promised my then-ten-year-old son, who had been utterly confused and disturbed that a person who had said such foul things could even run for president, would not win.

Although I was disappointed to see the TVs tuned to election results and not football, my confidence that the pseudo-businessman would lose held fast. He would throw a child’s tantrum and go back to being a vile human being outside of politics. He would no longer dominate the news and social media feeds, and I could tell my son that the guy who bragged about violating women with impunity because he was a star would not be his president.

As the night progressed, I watched with horror as the bad joke got worse. And when the man I assured my son could not win actually did, I wondered if maybe somehow I had stepped into one of my horror books. I felt I was having some sort of fever dream from which I would wake drenched in sweat, relieved to have escaped it.

I knew this guy.

Or rather, I knew his type. I danced for him. I had him as a manager and a DJ. I knew and understood the fragile but carefully crafted façade he had built for himself to cover up his lack of business prowess and human decency. I had watched him lie, obfuscate, and maneuver to serve his own ego with no regard for the harm he was causing. I also knew just how easy it is to manipulate someone like that, whose motivations are driven by his delusions of grandeur. Just tell them how pretty and smart they are, and you’ve won their favor. I knew that someone like this had exactly no business running a strip club, let alone the United States of America.

And then he won.

Scrolling to the End of the World

The next day, I began my almost two-year journey of doomscrolling. I scoured my news feeds for any shred of hope that this nightmare wasn’t a reality. What I found instead was a constant barrage of fear and outrage. The scarier it was, the more I watched, read, and scrolled. I watched as the toxicity bled into just about every aspect of my life. All I wanted was some semblance of good news, but the more I scrolled the less I found.

I got involved. I found that my foundation of fear stemmed from the erosion of the separation of church and state I was watching in real time. That became my focus, and I began donating time and money to organizations I believed were fighting to protect it. I became, albeit reluctantly, an activist or advocate. And I did feel better. Rather than sitting back passively as the world burned, I was doing something. Maybe not much but something.

My newfound relief was short-lived. My doomscrolling continued and even accelerated. I found I couldn’t leave my phone untouched for more than a few seconds. I had to constantly know the latest news, the newest bit of reporting on the apocalypse. It didn’t even matter I would see the same information repeated through different outlets almost every time I touched my grubby fingerprinted screen. I was undeterred. I had to know. How else could I help the cause if I didn’t know exactly everything that was happening in real time?

Each time I opened my phone, regardless of the redundancy, I became more anxious. Each tweet, Facebook post, and headline was scarier than the last, the same information repeated in ever more severe and clickbaity language. The more I exposed myself to it, the more the fear and anger wound itself around my guts. This was also the period in my life when I desperately tried and failed at meditation and mindfulness to disconnect. Even watching movies or reading books became an exercise of willpower in which I found myself rereading a paragraph or hopelessly losing the plot.

And one night, I saw my kid’s face.

That’s it. That’s what changed. One evening, out to dinner with my husband and son, I briefly looked up from my phone and saw my son. I saw how fast he was growing, his face in mid-morph between kid and teenager. I saw that the smattering of freckles on what I’m sure is my nose had gotten bigger. There was my beautiful boy, stuffing an enormous ketchup-laden cheeseburger into his mouth. I saw my husband also looking at him, struck with the same awe.

My stupid phone beckoned. What was happening? Was I missing anything?

I was. I was missing my kid. I was missing my husband. I was missing out on my life. In my need to effect change, I had forgotten to live.

Kicking the Habit

Perhaps the greatest advantage to getting older is the increased capacity for self-awareness and self-reflection. And as someone who spent over two decades making a living off my looks while simultaneously worrying about getting older, finding any advantage at all to aging is a tricky proposition. As a secular humanist and atheist, I have very little if any confidence that there is anything beyond this life. I have to acknowledge that I could be wrong, but I have yet to find any evidence that my consciousness will go on after my body shuts down for good. So, the most reasonable thing for me to do is to live this life like it is all I have.

I would like to leave this world a better place than when I came into it, even if only just a teeny tiny bit. I want my son to be able to enjoy his life, whatever he chooses to make of it. That is why I didn’t want to just sit back and do nothing when I could do something. Even if it was just a little something. But did I really want to leave him with the memory of my frowning face staring into my phone? I didn’t.

And so began the slow removal of my face from my screen. It wasn’t easy. It still isn’t. The more I tried, the harder it became. Maybe even harder than breaking the bond between me and my beloved Marlboro lights. But I had kicked that habit for my and my family’s well-being, and I would kick this too. Well, hopefully.

Fear and outrage are big business. Our time and attention have become the ultimate commodities. Removing oneself from the quicksand that is political media can feel impossible, especially if one is motivated to try and make things better. But how much good can really be accomplished when living in a ceaseless state of stress and anxiety? Not much. While fear and anger can be great motivators and catalysts for change, they are gifts of diminishing returns. Not allowing for a break, not insisting on one, can lead to apathy, despair, and resignation.

But the algorithms do not care. And they do not go down without a fight.

Their motivations are not benevolent or malicious but profit driven. Highly emotional posts and headlines that raise our blood pressure are simply more effective at holding our attention and getting us to click, comment, and share. Action starts with our awareness of a problem, but there is only so much we can do. And how effective can we really be living in a constant state of outrage?

I began to retrain my feeds. I unfollowed most if not all the political pages and replaced them with kittens and cake frosting videos. I followed science and humor pages. Slowly, my urge to doomscroll began to fade. I started to notice the things I had been missing: the clouds, the flowers, and the damned birds crapping on my freshly washed car. I read fiction in between my nonfiction. I actually enjoyed the trips to thrift and antique shops with my not-so-little kid, rather than simply waiting for the moment when I could check my phone. I began to enjoy my life again.

My perspective changed. I found that when I did look at my news feed, I still saw scary things happening, but I also took greater notice of the people helping. I saw organizations, and the people I have met within them, making progress. I saw that the world isn’t in fact resting on just my shoulders but on the shoulders of many. The conventions I have attended always include speakers who illustrate the dangers we face today concerning the erosion of the separation of church and state along with basic civil rights, not to mention the very real threat of misinformation and the mainstream acceptance of pseudoscience. And yeah, it’s scary. But I can look around and see hundreds of people at once, all motivated to make things better and actively helping to do so. All the smart and talented human beings who are not going quietly, who are effecting change. The elusive feeling of hope that all is not lost was never going to be found on my phone but rather in the people out in the real world doing the real work. And rather than making me feel like I should stop trying to help, it renewed my drive to help in my own way where I can.

There is a lot of work left to do. A whole lot. And we aren’t even close to undoing the damage that electing a reality TV charlatan has done to the very foundations of our basic freedoms and rights as Americans. But we are getting somewhere. Throughout history, we have made so much progress when it comes to rejecting dogmatic religion and making the world a fairer place. That doesn’t mean the job is done, but our past successes should give us hope. That can be easy to forget when we are living in such tumultuous times, especially when making us feel like everything always sucks is so profitable.

This life is highly likely to be the only one we have. Finding balance between work, play, activism, family, and friends can be a struggle. But that struggle is necessary, and it is worthwhile. When we all close our eyes for the final time, we will have lived our lives the very best we can.