Lindsey Komson

Featured Image: Paul Hoenhorst

In the book Stolen Focus, author Johann Hari gave up all electronics and social media for three months. That inspired me to do the same.

Okay – not exactly, but something similar! I decided to do a four-day detox (as opposed to the three months) and eliminate one app from my daily routine.

I decided to give up Instagram because as I discussed in my last blog, Instagram conveys some negative messages from a social standpoint.

At the beginning of my Instagram detox, I felt confident that I wouldn’t try to use the app much. Boy, was I wrong. I didn’t really consider that I work in social media, so this detox would be harder than I thought. On the first day, as I was doing homework, I went to the Instagram website on my computer to check two accounts that I work on. Both times, I opened the website, realized what I was doing, and immediately closed it out. Outside of work, I didn’t use the app at all during those four days.

From a purely social perspective, it’s important to note that I barely used the app beforehand. Last summer, I purposely set a five-minute time limit on the app so that I wouldn’t spend too much time on it. Even so, the act of knowing I couldn’t use the app made me want to use it more. Why?

During some downtime, there’s basically nothing stopping me from tapping through all my social media apps before coming back to real life. Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter. Instagram usually fits between Snapchat and Facebook (when I allow myself to use it) but knowing I couldn’t tap on it made it especially difficult. I found myself scrolling more on Facebook to fill the void (what void?) but it got boring, fast.

Finally, when I reached the end of my detox, I went straight to Instagram and right back to the endless scroll. Aza Raskin, the inventor of the “infinite scroll,” mentioned in Stolen Focus that he thought he was making people’s lives easier with his invention. Instead, he may have contributed to the whole reason the book was written.

That happened to me yesterday. I went on Instagram to search up a post from a baseball player. Once I opened the app, I immediately looked at stories from my friends (since they were right in front of me), then spent a half hour scrolling on Reels, and then closed out the app. Afterwards, I realized that I went there with a purpose, but never ended up fulfilling it.

Tristan Harris, former Google engineer, said, “Distraction matters to me, because time is all we have in life…yet hours and hours can get mysteriously lost here.” While it wasn’t “hours and hours,” even a small experience like mine speaks volumes about the problems facing society today.

After meeting with several developers, Johann Hari came to an important conclusion – “It’s not just the phone; it’s the way the phone is currently designed. It’s not just the internet; it’s the way the internet is currently designed – and the incentives for the people designing it.”

That quote prompted me to think in a whole new way – not just as a person who uses social media, but as a professional designer. It became clear that as a designer, my job matters more than I thought. I have the power to influence people, their decisions, and maybe even their lives. Every design decision I make can lead to something bigger.

I know this exercise was intended for me to understand the addictive nature of social media, but I learned a whole lot more.

Hari, Johann. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. Crown, 2023.