The Habit I Chose
The habit I chose to track was scrolling on Instagram. For further context, I have deleted all social media from my phone itself. The only way I can access social media is through the web browser on my laptop, yet I still want to scroll. Instagram has remained a sort of addiction. I feel as though most times when I scroll Instagram my mood honestly is worse after or I end up wasting time that I could have used for something more productive. My goal through measuring this behavior is to hopefully find commonalities between each time I want to scroll to isolate what feelings or actions cause me to want to scroll instagram in the first place.
Methods
I tracked this habit for two days. I chose to test it specifically between Sunday and Monday because tracking a weekend day and a weekday allows me to capture more variation in behavior, as weekends are generally more relaxed whereas weekdays are usually busy. I wanted to ensure I encapsulated all possible motivations that might vary between weekends and weekdays as well as see what times I am most susceptible to this habit between the two days.
As far as tracking, I tracked in my notebook each time I went on instagram, along with my motivation behind going on instagram and what I was doing in the moments leading up to it.For example, one of my entries says: finished lecture videos and wanted to scroll as a reward. This example shows what I was doing before which was watching lecture videos and my motivation of wanting to use scrolling as a reward. I thought it was important to include both of these details in my logging as it offers more insight into why I go into this behavior as only having one wouldn’t necessarily give me the information I need to change my behavior. From this log, I would know when I finish an assignment that I might want to go on Instagram which would help me know that I will need to fight that behavior upon completion. I chose to track only when I scrolled rather than an interval of time since by just using an interval of time, I might be incentivized to scroll between times so I didn’t have to log it.
Experience
Logging the behavior was very simple for me. Since Instagram is only on my laptop which is at home, I was able to always have a notebook open and accessible nearby. When I went to class I also brought my notebook, but I didn’t end up logging anything because I don’t usually use my laptop during class because it distracts me. Only logging when I scrolled Instagram made the process easier, as I didn’t have to log as often and it allowed me to think about each time I did the behavior I wanted to change.
Main Learnings
During this process I found that scrolling Instagram often functions as an escape for me. Having a reality in which I felt was boring or difficult or lacking connection, I would often turn to Instagram to attempt to escape my current reality and feel better. Everytime I searched social media for these things, I never actually found any of them, yet I kept scrolling to escape.
Another learning was that I scrolled Instagram to procrastinate. Even though I don’t have Instagram on my phone, I still somehow consciously choose to go on Instagram to scroll when I want to avoid doing something. It seems as though feeling that something was difficult would lead me to want to procrastinate, which led me to scrolling Instagram. This connection is important as it also shows that negative feelings lead me to procrastinating something by scrolling. Scrolling gives dopamine so it essentially gets rid of those negative feelings temporarily. My tendency to procrastinate is fueled by negative feelings of not being directly in my comfort zone and scrolling distracts me from facing these feelings.
My last learning is about when I don’t scroll. I tend to only scroll when I am alone. I don’t scroll when I am outside of my room basically at all. This might be fueled by the fact that I only have Instagram on my laptop, but I do use my laptop between classes. However, I never felt a tendency to go on and scroll. I have to consider if being in a public place is better for my productivity as there is more incentive to be productive when I see others being productive. I also enjoy social connection with friends as a preventative measure to social media. The times when I don’t scroll in my room are when I have a goal in mind and fight the urge to use social media. I think by presenting alternatives to myself to give myself what I seek by scrolling I can start to scroll less.
Next Time
If I were to do this study again, I would do it for an entire week. I would be interested to see if my scrolling behavior decreases throughout as I become more conscious of when I go on social media because I have to write it down. I want to see if this method of just having to understand why I’m using social media would be effective for reducing social media use.
It would also be a good idea for me to track how long I am on social media each time. This would be good for figuring out what commanalities exist when I am on social media each time, like seeing if I spend longer when I’m bored versus when I’m just procrastinating.
