I’ve written before about my problem with Facebook Reels, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and any other site that gives me an endless scroll of short-form videos: I will keep watching that shit long past the point that it’s giving me anything of value, despite the fact that I know these services are manipulating me. You’re better than this, I chastise myself, before losing whole evenings of my life to literal garbage. While I’m not a Christian, I decided to take inspiration from my friends undertaking Lent and give up short-form videos for 40 days. It was absolutely the right move, and I think I’m going to keep doing it.
While there’s definitely funny or informative short-form video out there, at enough scale, all that good stuff gets buried under misleading or outrage-baiting clips, or just stuff that’s forgettable and meaningless. This becomes more evident the longer I scroll, when the contours of these sites’ algorithms start to show. Inevitably, some vaguely interesting or inoffensive religious content will end up on something conservative or anti-queer, or cooking recipes will lead me to wellness conspiracies. Even when most of what I see during my scrolling binges isn’t nefarious, I never come out of it feeling enriched or energized, just numbed by hours of staring at what can only be described as Content.
Changing my habits was definitely a challenge. In the early days, I had to work really hard not to instinctively click the Reels or Shorts widgets at the top of my feeds, and I ended up just staying away from Instagram altogether. (Luckily, I’ve never been a TikTok guy, so I didn’t have to worry about that one.) This is probably just conspiracy brain talking, but it felt like Facebook noticed this and started pushing Reels more, peppering my feed with videos by the creators I used to watch for hours. It was a struggle to rebuke the voice in my head that whispered Just a couple Shorts when I’d go to YouTube. All this made me aware of how often I go to these sites expressly to watch short videos instead of whatever their actual purpose is, which was embarrassing to realize. These feeds of literal engagement bait inflate your time on these sites in the same way that the crappy slideshows we got pushed to do by our PE overlords at Kotaku did. It always made me angry to make those kinds of posts, knowing they were just “line go up” scams; I hated the thought of some exec at Google or Meta giving a boardroom presentation in which my gullibility played a role.
Staying away from short-form video also meant not clicking on ones that showed up in my Bluesky feed. This was a little harder to stick to, especially when someone would put one in Aftermath Slack because it was relevant to our beat or to a news event. I did falter on occasion when a video was relevant to current events or I needed to watch it for work, but I also tried to ask myself more about why I was watching these, if I really needed to or if there wasn’t a different way to get their information. Sometimes, I’d go look up a print news story instead, which was a good way to actually enrich my knowledge of a topic instead of just a soundbite. On the plus side, this freed me from watching clips of politicians saying horrible things, which was a good reminder that, while it’s important to know what they’re up to, I don’t actually have to listen to them.
Over time, my avoidance became more natural. I spent less time on Facebook, always a good move. I’d go to YouTube expressly because I was looking for something: a mandolin tune, video game tips, an Irish lesson, and I’d leave the site when I’d gotten what I came for. On the occasion that I did want to relax by clicking around YouTube, I’d watch something more robust or focused than a million little nibbles, and I’d come away more informed or entertained instead of my brain feeling like the inside of a subway station.
Now that Lent is over, I’m willing to let a few more social media news video or funny jokes back into my life–there’s a lot of useful or just really funny short-form video out there that I’d hate to miss out on–but I’d like to keep staying away from those video feeds at the top of sites. And avoiding these videos made me realize how often I use sites like BlueSky in the same way I used them, telling myself I have to be glued to my feeds for work when really I’m just poking them for dopamine. I, like maybe many people, have a tendency to decide I’ll undertake way too many life-changing habits all at once, so I’m not going to immediately pivot into deleting my social media presence or something, but being aware of it and knowing I have it in me to avoid endless scrolling feels like a small step in the right direction.
If I had to get metaphysical about it, this experience was a good way to think more intentionally about why we communicate with each other on the internet–how much of what’s out there is actually saying something, and how much of it is just noise to feed metrics and engagement? It pushed me to be more thoughtful with my attention, something I can definitely lose track of in the rush of a day’s news and the so much of social media and life online. I feel a lot better for it, and there is way less shit bobbing around my already-overloaded brain. I might have missed out on some funny jokes or actually good recipes, but the tradeoff was worth it.
