Opinion: My relationship with my phone was fine until I came to Edinburgh

I often look incredulously at my daily time screen. How could I have wasted so many hours sitting on my phone? Two hours on TikTok, one and a half on Instagram. It seems almost inconceivable that so much time could be spent doing so little. The numbers don’t lie. Clearly, I have been spending my days scrolling away until I am finally grasped by sleep.

Yet I would be the last to admit that this is a problem.  My assignments are always handed in early, I make time for friends, I attend socials- so surely, it’s fine if I’m choosing to wind down with some phone time each evening?

Before I came to university, I was very judicious with how I used my phone. I would rarely use it in school. At home, my phone would stay downstairs while I slept, ensuring a way to allow my brain to switch off. I would say I used my phone a healthy amount.  However, since moving to Edinburgh in September, this routine was completely thrown off. My phone is now constantly at my side, while I sleep, while I work, and I find myself reaching for it.

Not my finest moment…

Reaching for my phone has become almost an escape. If ever there is something I don’t feel like doing, I instinctively grab my phone. Those assignments that are always handed in early? Between each sentence written is arguably five minutes of scrolling time. At social events, I find myself unlocking and checking my notifications almost every minute, waiting for something to distract me from whatever else I might be doing. These appear to be the signs of a functional addict.

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I’m not quite sure why my phone use has become so problematic. Though it would be hard to tie it directly to the university itself, I think something about the transition from home to university has certainly played a part. First year has left me with very little time to myself, and so in those times where I need to wind down, I think I have compulsively turned to something which allows me to switch my brain off completely and requires little effort. With each scroll, each dopamine hit, I would find myself relaxing, enabling the stress of the day to roll away.

Terms like ‘brainrot’ are often used to describe something perceived as silly, however, I would argue that it encapsulates the impact social media has had on me. My attention span? Rotted. My enjoyment? Rotted. My sleep schedule? Rotted. So, though this word may just be used as a joke, I believe it is a genuine barometer of the effect social media and phone use have had on young people.

Perhaps worse than the amount of time wasted is how excessive screen time has made me feel. I could not even say the last time I came off my phone feeling uplifted or joyful. With each scroll that passes, I feel nothing but a biting sense of my passivity and growing inability to stop it. I would find myself trapped in a mental struggle each day of wanting to put my phone down and try and fix my relationship with social media, but the mental exertion of attempting to do this was simply too much. I have found myself more anxious and demotivated as a result.

However, I take solace that I am not alone in this struggle. A recent report published by King’s College London highlighted that 18.7 per cent of 16-18-year-olds struggle with what they term ‘problematic screen use’, and that 44 per cent of those were struggling with symptoms of anxiety. There is a clear link, therefore, between young people’s use of excessive social media and the negative impacts this is having on their mental health.

All improvement is good improvement, right?

Where does the solution to this lie? For me, this has been in rediscovering old hobbies, and even more drastic measures, such as keeping myself physically away from my phone. Though I think that social media companies should be mostly responsible for helping young people with this issue, the truth is they simply never will, so it should be on us to extricate ourselves from the online matrix as much as possible.

I have written this article not with the intention of lamenting myself for my extensive screen usage, but rather to lay out for myself in clear black-and-white how my phone use has made me feel, and to hopefully tell others in similar situations that they are not alone. I also hope it has brought to light the extent of this issue, particularly among university students, and the culpability of social media companies.

Cover image by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash