During my first year of UofT undergrad, I was an A student. I studied late every night under my desk lamp, squeezing in workouts, and even timing how long it took to eat meals. After that year, things rapidly changed. My psychiatrists stated that my mental illness was likely triggered from genetics in combination with the environment. Interestingly though, none of my family had a mental illness before me and I often attribute my illness to my brain simply “snapping”—not giving myself any breaks or time to breathe during my first-year studies.
I was working as a machine and I expected to function like one, but even machines break if not treated properly for long periods of time.
Speaking of machines, now that you know a bit about my story, I’d like to discuss the digital age from my perspective. There is a quote by Albert Einstein that my favourite UofT chemistry professor loved: “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” In this digital age, I think it is a shame that so many students today feel the need to depend on artificial intelligence instead of becoming intellectually independent (like I had to).
This problem may be because of how easily accessible information is now 24/7 from the smartphone: ChatGPT is just a click away on top of doomscrolling the news, watching videos on TikTok, or checking likes on Instagram. I actually have never ridden the TTC and failed to see at least a dozen people glued to their phones. It is like we as a species have forgotten how to be comfortable with ourselves and regulate our boredom in healthier ways.
Dr. Cal Newport, a professor at Georgetown University, stated recently on the Mel Robbins Podcast that many of his grad students come to him for help for their ability to focus and then tell him that their phone constitutes all their leisure/spare time—they have nothing else. I personally find that scary, that there is nothing more to someone’s personal life other than their phone.
People with mental health struggles are facing many of the same challenges and opportunities as other people in the digital age, but we often must work harder and wiser because we also must manage an illness. Hearing other people’s stories and creating a toolkit of what works and what doesn’t work for you is important. Self-reflection, humility, and grace can be your guiding lights during this rapidly changing time.
Given this, I would like to share some positive coping strategies I find helpful in reducing reliance on AI, doomscrolling, and digital overload:
- Take time to cultivate leisure habits that don’t involve your phone; I enjoy reading books, exercising, taking nature walks with my partner, playing board games, seeing movies, or hanging out with friends.
- At night, keep your phone in a separate room than your bedroom. It is just too tempting to pick it up from your nightstand and scroll before sleeping, and all that blue light exposure will make it even harder to sleep.
- If you work, turn your work phone off after work hours—there is no need to keep that tab open in your mind. Actually, turn notifications off for all non-essential applications if you can on your personal phone too. “Do not disturb” is your friend.
- If you can, take one whole day without using any devices every week: no phone, no computer, nothing. Tiffany Shlain in her book 24/6 calls this taking a Tech Shabbat and her book reveals a myriad of benefits to this practice—I have now adapted this to just keeping my phone off one day a week if possible (this not always possible if a friend needs to call me to coordinate a meet up that day, but I try).
- Be gentle with yourself. Keep in mind that your phone and those apps (like TikTok) are all specially designed with sophisticated algorithms to keep you scrolling—you are up against multi-billion-dollar industries all wanting your attention. So, if you regress or (like me) spend 3 hours one day just on YouTube, that is ok. What you do regularly is more important than what you do occasionally.
References
Shlain, T. (2019). 24/6: The power of unplugging one day a week. Gallery Books.