Every single time I check my phone’s screen time, the same app always seemed to be at the top: TikTok. I always find it difficult to even understand how I could possibly spend so much time scrolling on TikTok, so I decided to delve deeper into my doomscrolling habit in this activity. In Measuring Me 1, I think that the fact that I was recording what I was doing every 15 minutes made me less likely to spend time mindlessly scrolling because I was more aware of how time was passing. For this activity, I chose to record what I did every hour from Friday night until Sunday night, in order to give me more time to fully immerse myself in whatever my current activity was without being pulled out of my flow by the timer going off. However, an hour is still a short enough time period that I was able to trace back smaller steps (such as other social media platforms I scrolled through) before my current activity in order to form an accurate conceptual model.
Overall, I found that my two most common entrypoints to scrolling on TikTok were: responding to text messages and looking through Instagram stories. When responding to text messages, I often also come across TikToks that my friends have sent me, and instead of just looking at the specific videos they sent and responding to them, I usually end up scrolling for a while on my feed. In addition, usually the very first social media I open when I take a break isn’t TikTok: it’s Instagram. Usually, I just click through a few stories and once I get bored, I then either put my phone down to continue working or switch to scrolling on TikTok. I also tend to scroll on TikTok much more at night. Especially right before bed on Friday night specifically I spent 2 hours scrolling on TikTok. I find it interesting that usually when I’m tired from working, instead of taking a nap to recharge myself, usually I opt for something that immediately stimulates me, like being on my phone. Another reason I tend to doomscroll more at night is that during the day, I often recharge myself in other ways, such as taking a walk or talking to my roommates/other friends.
In addition to when I’m feeling tired, I also often opened TikTok while I was waiting for something to load. For example, waiting for my code to finish running or for a website to finish loading. Some of these processes only take seconds to finish loading, but I still feel an impulse to immediately go on my phone anytime there isn’t any work to be done at that exact second. I then end up scrolling on TikTok even long after the process has finished running. I think learning to be more patient and practicing having a longer attention span could have a significant impact on my TikTok scrolling habit. I think that setting some sort of timer for breaks, such as a Pomodoro timer, could be a good way of making sure I don’t lose track of time while mindlessly scrolling. I would also make sure I have a good balance of productive breaks as well, such as going on walks and socializing with my friends. If I were to do this experience again, I might try some of these methods of managing my TikTok screentime over a few weeks and keep track of the effectiveness of different strategies.
