I didn’t wake up this morning thinking I was going to delete Instagram and TikTok off my phone but...

I started listening to an episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast with Steve Bartlett on the Brain Rot Emergency and it was profoundly impactful to listen to. I’ve been hearing the research via different podcasts about the harm that social media has on our brains, behavior and relationships and I feel it in my personal life. I want to talk to someone sitting in front of me, but they are on their phone scrolling through their feed. Do I interrupt them? Do I wait for them to get off their phone before connecting with them? And then I find myself doing the same thing right back at them, busy on my phone while they sit right next to me. 

But listening to this episode was different, because the speakers in particular spoke about the harms of short form videos. You know the Instagram Reels, all of TikTok, Youtube shorts - basically any video that is short and we have the ability to swipe to the next one that captures our interest better. Short form videos are highly addictive and they are re-wiring our brain so that we lose our ability to focus for long periods of time. What’s scary is that Disney Plus, Netflix and all the other entertainment platforms are moving toward short form videos, we are literally surrounded. 

Where in the past we could watch a 2.5 hour movie and be completely absorbed in the storyline and eat our popcorn the whole time, the younger generations (and ourselves) have difficulty following even a 30 min episode. I’ve noticed this in my USC class as a professor when I’ve seen 22 year olds having trouble watching 25 minutes of a highly entertaining video about the food, cultures and arts scene of Los Angeles. How cool is that to watch in class yet I see many of their attention spans wane. 

After a conversation with a friend who has completed digital detoxes in the past, I made an abrupt decision to delete IG and Tiktok off my phone for 10 days. I arbitrarily chose 10, it sounds nice, right? If I feel the urge, I am allowing myself to go on Instagram on the weekend but only through my laptop, so it’s very clunky and not fun. I’m so new to Tiktok that I can easily stay away from that platform. The goal is to digitally detox off short form videos from my phone. Also, I’m very lucky that I don’t manage the social media for People’s Yoga so I acknowledge my privilege here. 

It’s only been a few hours, so the angst of filling my down time or those 20 seconds at a red light with a quick dopamine hit on my Instagram feed hasn’t affected me yet but I have a feeling I’ll be much stronger on the other side of this digital detox even if it kicks my ass in the process.

I’ll report back in 10 days on how the detox went. I’ll see you here or in real life!