When you flick your thumb upwards, scrolling to the next Tiktok, the creator has three seconds to capture your attention. They speak fast and use eye-catching visuals, starting with a question you’ve always wondered about or a brief preview of what the rest of the short video will show you. This strategy is effective. It takes advantage of one of the keystones behind social media addiction—the average attention span is shrinking, so our brains are more attracted to bright, quick-moving content that ensures we don’t have to focus for more than half a minute.
Attention span refers to the amount of time we can focus on an activity before we get distracted. Even beyond high school, it’s hard to find anyone who’s exempt from the massively decreased attention spans, making any project that requires concentration seem much more daunting than it might have in the past. I believe that this is part of the reason that so many students have turned to ChatGPT for their essays and schoolwork. We’re losing our ability to think deeply, and thus turn to whatever resource can do the work for us… at the cost of increasing our stress levels.
How can we break free of the chains that social media has cast on us? You’ll often hear a solution—connecting with nature—but few bother to explain why that’s such an effective strategy. Here, we will peer into why a connection with our natural surroundings is so effective for clearing our minds of the deceptive algorithms and flashing colors of the online world.
I am a birder. To those who have never gone birding before, this understandably sounds quite boring. There is no immediate reward—there are days when I see nothing remarkable whatsoever, the same few species milling about like any other day—and it may seem like all a birder does is linger around with no particular purpose. However, this hobby has come to offer me a bout of relief whenever I need to separate myself from the internet because of one key element—you don’t need a phone to watch birds.
The number one step towards removing something as addicting as social media from one’s life is separation. If your phone is always right in your pocket, ready to provide a distraction at any moment’s notice, you’ll never learn how to entertain yourself without it. Boredom is a lost art that’s essential for our brain’s development. It forces us to be creative and resourceful, turning mundane objects like fallen tree branches into swords, or plain pieces of paper into works of art. Whether you’re outside birding or just taking a walk around the neighborhood, so long as you aren’t glancing at your screen or listening to stimulating music, you are participating in the act of being bored and thus learning how to entertain yourself. It’s a powerful skill.
Birding isn’t boring once you have your hands on the reins. In fact, sometimes, it’s thrilling. There is joy in watching a remarkably smart chickadee caching seeds for the wintertime and noticing just how common bald eagles are in spite of their borderline magical aura in our media. Birds are, of course, only one of dozens of things you can observe. The outdoors is much more entertaining than we give it credit for, with so many beautiful plants, unusual animals, and interesting geography that gives space for so much speculation. Observation is only one potential factor in our quest for digital separation, however. There are also a huge range of recreational activities we can undertake to shave away our free time in the place of “doomscrolling.”
One of the best ways to distract ourselves entirely is through exercise. With the mind so focused on the movement of our bodies, there isn’t as much room for us to ponder our phones, fighting the urge to check our notifications. Check what your screentime was for the past few days. Imagine if that number, whatever it may be, was just an hour or two lower because you used some of that time to go swimming at a local pool or take a brisk walk around the neighborhood. It doesn’t have to be big. Starting small, just a fraction at a time, is great for chipping away at that screentime.
What about the small moments of boredom, though? When you’ve finished your assignment in class and are just waiting for the bell to ring? You can’t exactly go for a ten minute run around the classroom to kill time.
There are countless things that people can do to entertain themselves during these brief moments of reprieve. Something you can easily remove from your backpack, like a book or journal, can help “replace” the dopamine you get from glancing at your phone—it’s instant entertainment that we crave. An engaging story to immerse ourselves in provides much more benefit to our minds than a few YouTube shorts, for sure.
My favorite thing to do with this downtime, however, is glance out the window. There is much to see no matter what season it is. Whether it’s the springtime flowers or frost melting off of trees, there’s always something worth observing just feet away from your desk. Learning how to identify a few different features of the outside world provides a certain sense of satisfaction that social media just can’t match.
Tearing our eyes away from the algorithms built to keep them engaged takes something beyond a step-by-step process—it’s a commitment that requires days of discomfort and ignoring the way our brains request instant gratification. The world around us provides tools that can make this process a little less painful. Next time you’re outside, try putting away your phone, taking your airpods out of your ears, and appreciating the slow tempo of nature.
WRITTEN BY: Daryan Cem, Empowerteen Editorials Journalism Intern
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