For the last two or three years, I’ve noticed that my media consumption has increased significantly, often taking up anywhere from a third to nearly half of my day. Whenever I get my weekly screen time notification, I usually avoid opening it because I already know I’m going to be disappointed by what I see. Honestly, the problem is not simply that my screen time is high, but that much of it feels unproductive. Week after week, Instagram remained my most-used application, accounting for more than 75% of my total screen time. On some days, I was spending three to four hours on the application alone.
It was obviously a problem, and the immensity of the complication became more significant during the academic year. On evenings when I should have been using my time to work on or complete homework assignments, I would instead scroll for hours before finally attempting to finish the task within the last hour before it was due. Nevertheless, my decision always left me frustrated and stressed because of the academic binds it would position in.
I wanted to get rid of the application because I recognized that my habitual use of it was interfering with my productivity, but at the same time, I did not want to lose the connections I had built through Instagram. I could preserve connections with people who lived far in proximity and still keep up with what was happening in their lives. In some cases, I could even maintain a relationship without ever having a direct conversation simply through the reels we exchanged. Because Instagram gave me a sense of connection to these people, I convinced myself that the consequences of removing it from my life would be too significant.
As time passed and my usage maintained, I was progressively getting more frustrated. Consequently leading me to conduct some research into my behavior.
The first piece of information I uncovered was a TED Talk presented by Tim Urban. Throughout his talk, he describes a monkey inside our brain, which he calls the “Instant Gratification Monkey,” that fights for control over our productive trajectory. When we face tasks that are time-consuming or require an immense amount of effort, the monkey tends to take control of our decision-making. However, when the “Panic Monster,” better known as the due date, appears, the monkey surrenders control back to our rational decision-making. As I was watching, I felt like Tim was literally describing me. The instant gratification I was receiving was the reels that Instagram was providing. It was easy, enjoyable, and delayed my problems,
However, although I understood the problem in greater detail, I still didn’t have a solution. That changed when an advertisement appeared while I was scrolling through my reels. The promotion was for an application called Social Lite, which removed reels without interfering with the other aspects of Instagram. It allowed me to maintain my relationships while eliminating what had become one of my greatest enemies to productivity. Since initially downloading the application, I’ve seen my screen time decline by nearly twenty hours each week.
The unfortunate reality is that we now have entire generations addicted to applications like Instagram. Dr. Arthur Brooks describes in an interview with Big Think how we have begun using our phones as comfort tools to escape normal difficulties and discomfort. This problem is relatively new because previous generations did not have access to the same level of constant distraction that we have today. As our tolerance for discomfort has decreased, social networking applications have increasingly designed their platforms around providing comfortable and entertaining experiences. This often means targeting highly engaging content toward Generations Z and Alpha.
The issue this creates is what I would describe as a media literacy epidemic. With such an overwhelming amount of information available, younger generations can easily choose to consume only the information that provides comfort or confirms what they already believe. Because of this, we need to begin educating younger generations on how to seek out information that is credible and challenging. I can say from experience that this type of information can’t be found on Instagram, where an algorithm is designed to feed you content that keeps you engaged. For me, the solution began with refocusing how I used the platform and, in many ways, getting off Instagram.
David Lujan 
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