It’s not about how you consciously choose to spend your time, it’s about being able to choose when to stop. I commonly hear from alcoholics that the problem is

It’s not about how you consciously choose to spend your time, it’s about being able to choose when to stop. I commonly hear from alcoholics that the problem isn’t that they want 1 drink, the problem is that they want 10 drinks. They lack the ability to moderate consumption and be able to consciously stop. Social media struggles from this exact same problem. It’s so easy to just keep scrolling, to just keep seeing what’s further down the feed. Maybe I missed a picture that I would like, or something. This FOMO is intentionally designed and baked into the apps to keep people from leaving them. You can choose to put down the book whenever you want to or need to, and maybe you don’t have a problem putting down social media either. But many, many people do. Just because you don’t feel psychologically pulled in doesn’t mean that it’s not a real addiction. There’s an easy way to test this out on yourself. Commit to going a whole day without checking your favorite social media apps and add the parental control time limit to those apps. If you find yourself unconsciously whipping out your phone and checking social media, you’ll see the prompt to input your parental control code. If you’re anywhere near the statistical average human, you’re gonna find yourself mindlessly checking social media multiple times that day. That’s what I’m talking about.