taylor nicholson?

It was 11:55 P.M. on a Monday night: I had just gotten home from leading a WQAQ club meeting and had finally stripped out of jeans and a tank top for pajama pants and an oversized NY Giants t-shirt. As I laid in bed and scrolled TikTok mindlessly just like I had every other night, I felt dread bubble up in my chest. In just a few minutes, I would be booted from TikTok and locked out of opening the app for the next 5 days. I had never tried a total social media detox before, and was only attempting it for a class assignment. In all honesty, I probably would never do a social media detox on my own accord. But here I was, moments away from exiling myself from the app that keeps me in the “know” with my friends and family.

It’s not that I was against a TikTok (or any form of technology) detox because I don’t think there’s any benefits to it: I am well aware of how detrimental the general population’s social media habits are, myself included. To put it into perspective, a Patreon post explained that 37,000 human lifetimes are lost to technology every day. This time could have been spent “~5,800 books, 175,000 miles walked, 730 marathons trained for and more”. It’s still hard for me to wrap these numbers around my head, but it’s harrowing data nonetheless. Despite my initial anxieties around the detox, I felt the smallest glimmer of hope and pride in myself for challenging myself. I hoped that this short five-day detox period could be the small step in the right direction for my internet habits, just like the other small steps I had talked about in previous posts. I thought that this could be a way of reconnecting with those around me, and rediscovering some thoughts and feelings about myself that I had suppressed with endless scrolling. Little did I know, this would have an opposite effect and bring me further away from the peers I hoped to connect with in light of my detox.

As the days of my detox went on with relative ease, I wasn’t feeling the extreme changes I had hoped to feel. After hearing Johann Hari describe his own complete technology detox that took place over a three month period as life-changing, I was kind of bummed that I wasn’t having the same revolutions right away. I did pick up on some immediate, smaller changes, like how the downtime between classes seemed to drag or that I finally noticed a crooked painting in my living room when I stared blankly around my room rather than my phone, but these internal changes did not feel like enough progress. I decided I needed to apply my newfound free time to socializing with friends, to see how much of a difference spending time with others is when I am not constantly checking TikTok. When I went into the living room to cook dinner with my suite mates, I felt more disconnected from my friends than ever before.

Everyone (excluding me) was six inches away from their cellphone screens, scrolling through an endless sea of TikTok posts. The room was silent, only broken by the occasional chuckle and “look what I just sent you” comments. I was mortified at the sight: it was like my suite mates weren’t even there, but somewhere far away and unreachable. The only way to attempt to reach them would be breaking my detox and entering the world of distractions once again. A sting of dread echoed in my chest, and thoughts centered around my fear of missing out rang through my head. I knew what TiKTok was doing to me and so many others, and have read countless articles about how all the time spent worried about social media will amount to nothing when we’re nearing the end of our lives. Even still, I couldn’t help but want to break my detox and go back, just to regain my connection to my peers. It felt like my detox was having the opposite effect, all I wanted to do was spend more time socializing, but I inadvertently cut out the platform that most people my age use to connect. I felt lost: sure, I could spend more time daydreaming and reading, but these solitary activities drew me further away from my loved ones who kept TikTok in their lives. I wanted to yell out “put the damn phone down and talk to me, god damn it!” to the quiet room, but instead I sat there silently, eyes darting between my roommates, whose eyes never lifted from their devices.

As I write this, I have completed my five day TikTok detox, and feel more or less the same as I did when it first began. I don’t feel enlightened like Johann Hari, or absolutely shell shocked like former Google engineer Tristan Harris, I just felt slightly bummed out that I was late to the newest trends on TikTok that my friends saw first, and a bit terrified about my realizations at the dinner table a few nights ago. Even though I can resume to my standard TiKTok habits, i’m hesitant. I would be lying if I said I haven’t opened the platform countless times since my detox, but its noticeably less than I did before my TikTok cut off. As I mentioned at the start of this post, its all about baby steps, and even if my time spent on TikTok daily goes from 45 minutes to 44 minutes, I will consider it a small victory, and will try not to view it as a minute I could have spent connecting virtually with friends who are feet away from me.