Escaping the Scrolling Spiral

Young adults growing up with social media bear the weight of endless content

By: Jack Glenn

Illustration by Sam Fozard

Jonathan Lolkema has tried and failed many times. He knows it’s not what he wants, but he can’t seem to stop. 

Coming home after a long day, Lolkema’s only wish is to relax and put his mind at ease. Throwing his backpack near the entry, he walks upstairs, straight to his room. On the bed he made early that morning, Lolkema collapses with his school clothes still on. There, he lies supine for up to four hours, scrolling through social media. 

Thoughts of dinner snap him up out of bed – cracking the foggy trance he put himself into. His free time is burnt up, spent on hundreds of 15-second videos he won’t remember. Lolkema is trying to quit scrolling; thumb pushing through social media content mindlessly, without recalling most videos his eyes anchor to. 

“It feels really bad, afterwards,” he said. “It feels bad to think about the time you’ve wasted.”

In their many forms, social media applications like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit and others have endless scrolling features. The user can press a finger to their phone two or three times and have their attention locked in for hours. The persistent audio and video stop when you consciously choose to halt them.

This choice is what Lolkema, a student at Western Washington University, struggles with. He understands that every scroll of a short clip is time he can’t get back – time he wishes he spent doing almost anything else; even if that’s doing nothing. 

“I go through it for a couple of hours or maybe more and think, ‘What am I doing?’” Lolkema said. “I feel like I need to put it away and not think about it … I miss being bored.” 

According to a worldwide 2024 study, the average user spends almost two and a half hours on social media every day, with 35% of Gen Z consuming it for more than four hours daily. 

Lolkema hasn’t always felt this way. He used to tame his use, yet recently he’s been in “remission,” as he described it — drawn back in and unsure of how to stop. It’s always there, on his phone, waiting for him to peek in.

He’ll see an intriguing thumbnail, raising a question that can be answered with the press of a finger. When the video ends, his thumb rises; onto the next. He tells himself he’ll watch 10. With every video less than a minute, that’s a good amount — enough to pique his interest without wasting too much time. As he counts down, the number fades.

“At the beginning, I have too much faith in myself that I’ll know when to stop,” Lolkema said. “I don’t plan to spend three hours scrolling through TikTok.” 

Social media’s entertainment may be perceived as a route to relaxation, as “it’s not a challenge to engage in social media,” said Antonya Gonzalez, an associate psychology professor at Western. “But spending too much time on things that don’t challenge us leads to lower levels of life satisfaction.”

Lolkema’s current social media use is not abnormal, he said. He and his friends crack jokes and meme their escalating screen time to cope.

“We’ll talk about how scrolling … makes us feel bad,” he said. Yet, they won’t hint at stopping after admitting to doing it nonstop for hours.

As a kid in middle school, Lolkema first heard rumors of Instagram and eagerly downloaded it to fit in with friends. On his “crappy” old Android tablet, he would post photos of his pillow or anything that went on in life. He saw it as a new form of communication – a public group chat with his classmates.  

“It was a digital journal,” Madelyn Porter, another Western student, said. “I remember when I was young, it was posting pictures of my day and typing out … why it was worth posting.”

For Porter and Lolkema, social media was an innovative friend-to-friend experience, using Instagram and Snapchat to update their circles on day-to-day activities. As technology improved and social media apps became more prominent, they both saw Instagram morph into pure entertainment — into a deep sea of endless content produced by strangers. 

“People stopped using it as a way to talk with each other,” Lolkema said. Remorsefully flicking through YouTube Shorts, he sees exciting graphics and videos, unrelated to any friend.  

With every refresh, the content incessantly gives the user more cooking videos, memes or Lolkema’s vice: short videos of baseball, a sport he’s never played.

We are fed depending on what we choose to watch initially and how long our fingers pause until our shortened attention seeks more. The content is shown to keep you watching, by any means possible.

“It enables me to be anti-social,” Lolkema said. Instead of being present, with family or friends, he’s alone in his room, mindlessly tapping through his phone.

Social media takes away the opportunity to self-reflect as opposed to other solo activities like reading or movies, said Dr. Thuy-vy Nguyen, the principal investigator of the Solitude Lab and an associate professor at Durham University.

An engaging book has a coherent narrative to follow, while social media is fed to you randomly, Nguyen said. “Tiktok is the most guilty of this … it doesn’t have any meaningful patterns.” 

These shriveled hours consumed by social media are always on Nate Strach’s mind. So much so, that the former Western student resorted to quitting completely. 

Strach had social media from the age of 9 until after high school. Upon graduation, he realized how it was affecting his time. He knew that clicking a video was much easier than getting up and completing his to-do list. He said the initial struggle was the problem, so he eliminated it. 

With work to do or a project to start, Strach would delete Snapchat and Instagram from his phone and redownload the apps once he finished. This method went on for some time, yet he knew the reward system he had built up wasn’t sustainable. 

Slowly tapering his use, Strach’s urge for social media dissipated. Since early 2023, he hasn’t regularly used either app except to message his tattoo artist. 

“Social media was … stopping me from reading [or] getting outside more,” Strach said. “I didn’t like how it was taking up my time.” 

After a session of scrolling for hours, Lolkema feels terrible — like he’s wasted his day. He’s learned little and remembers almost nothing he’s watched. Yet, he sees this negative recognition as a sign of hope.

“If [feeling like that] is going to help you manage it better, and spend less time [on social media],” Lolkema struggles to say. “Maybe those feelings aren’t bad.”

On the far end of this spectrum against social media, there’s Porter. She started using social media at 16 when she got a smartphone. While today she’s a normal college student in most respects — goes to classes, studies for exams and spends time with friends — she doesn’t use a smartphone. She owns a four-inch, teal, Nokia 2780. 

She bought it in 2023 and keeps her old smartphone in a basket on her bedside table. The Nokia provides everything she needs, a notes app, Google Maps, internet search, and of course call and text. Porter quit social media a few years ago, feeling that it and phones were a barrier to her social life. She wanted to eliminate the norm of connecting on social media before actually getting to know someone. 

“I just got sick of it,” Porter remembered. “I decided to remove myself … and just appreciate what's actually tangible.”

Social media is so addicting, that few can successfully use them in moderation, Strach said. The constant content fed through the screen gives users little reason to stop watching.

“You can see the best part of anything … the top 10 seconds,” Strach said. “You don't have to watch the build-up or the process to get to that.” 

For Strach, that build-up is what makes entertainment fulfilling. He said if you’re constantly at the peak, you’re dull to the reality of what you’re witnessing. 

The short-form video has left Lolkema’s mind writhing for space, looking for a way to stand on its own without a 15-second video playing in the background. 

“When I have that urge [to scroll],” Lolkema said, “I feel I need to just put it away, and lay down and not think about it.” 

Conscious of his issues, Lolkema is making an effort to manage his stress in more effective ways, like playing sports, hanging with friends and avoiding isolation. Alone time brings down all your strong emotions, Nguyen said. “If you’re angry or excited, and you spend time alone, it will bring that down … but the risk of that is it will introduce other emotions like loneliness and boredom.”

“Now and again I go on my phone and I’m not being productive,” Lolkema said. “But I feel less cloudy … I’m in the moment more.”

When Lolkema gets back home from classes with time to spare, he’s fully aware of how he could spend that time. So he’s intentional, creating a specific plan to be far from lying supine prone in his bed. 

At the pond, half a mile from his house, he hangs his hammock. While opening up a fantasy novel or jotting in his journal, Lolkema notices a blue heron – with its stretching wingspan and long beak – enjoying the slow moment. 

“Even if you were pretending to … when you’re scrolling,” Lolkema said, “when you’re able to be in your own thoughts, that’s when you actually feel relaxed.”