Slowly changing habits

Aside from Instagram, there's been a steady decline in my active posting on social media. I'll sometimes have a burst of replying to people on the likes of Twitter but I'm mostly now a passive consumer of the content on there. Same with Facebook, I don't really post anything there (other than sharing posts from my art account) and I haven't done for a long time.

At first, I thought it was out of a desire to switch off but I still use my phone a lot, probably too much. I've come to realise that I've been slowly curating a bit of change in what I do with the time I'm on my phone. I managed to break the habit of getting lost in Reels and I'm noticing more when I find myself mindlessly scrolling through the likes of Twitter.

I'll admit that, like many, I suffer from the automatic reaction to pull my phone out when I have some downtime, something I want to change in the long term but I've been shifting my focus away from social media towards the likes of Substack, Pocket and RSS.

Although it's still not ideal, I feel I'm at least spending my time a bit more productively by enriching my brain with something useful, interesting or educational. The critical thing is the content is very intentional, from sources I've chosen to follow. No retweeted content, no random "For you" content.

It feels like I'm clawing my way out of the attention-grabbing sinking sand. My relationship to content consumption feels like it's shifting back to how it used to be before the attention economy really kicked off.

It feels good.