The Erised Experiment
In my burn it all down era
I did something a little bit drastic this weekend. And no, it’s not that I actually washed, dried, folded, AND put away all of the laundry before Monday.
(I’m not that crazy.)
I emptied out my phone.
Social media apps - gone.
100+ Browser tabs of random articles - gone.
Shopping apps other than local grocery stores - gone.
Photos - backed up and gone.
Games - gone.
Youtube - gone.
Streaming apps - gone.
I still need to sort through my photos, files, messages, and reduce the number of accounts stored on my phone but I removed the junk.
My phone is no longer overwhelming with all of its chaos.
A while back IPhone released its “hidden” app function and while everyone was freaking out about how people would use it to hide dating apps and porn I was excited to utilize it to reduce my screen time by hiding time sucks like Instagram and Facebook or work apps on the weekends.
It worked…until it didn’t.
It was still too easy to just FaceID or password unlock the apps I was trying to break free of.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy Instagram and Substack (obviously) but the algorithms are too hard to manipulate to get to see what I want to see. And honestly I need to quiet the external noise because with my high paced job and sometimes higher paced life - I don’t need the extra distraction.
If I’m getting overwhelmed by the things that matter, why am I allowing space in my brain to be taken up by the things that don’t?
Because- FOMO is a thing and it manifests in many different ways.
We live in an over-connected but weirdly disconnected world. We know more about people than we ever should but also are suspicious of our neighbors because they put their trashcans out the night before instead of the morning of.
24/7 News Feeds that become more and more sensationalized to grab our attention, things shouting buy buy buy every second of every day.
Everything geared to make us feel like we’re missing out or that we’re not enough - that God or society is holding out on us. Fueling our rage and sense of entitlement.
I’m not saying that the internet is a terrible place - I grew up with the internet, honestly probably wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for the friends I made via the internet and relationships I’ve maintained through the internet. But it is definitely not a safe space to be in 24/7/365.
In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry stumbles upon the Mirror of Erised, a magical mirror that shows the viewer their greatest desire and Professor Dumbledore comes across him visiting it rather frequently and passes along some sage advice:
How many of us are treating the devices in our pockets as mini Mirrors of Erised? Living vicariously through influencers or posting the idealized versions of ourselves instead of actually living? How much are we doing for the gram or because we saw someone else doing it or saying that we needed to do them. How much money are we wasting because it’s so easy to just open Amazon and click check out or because we have a million people selling us products at every swipe?
I know I fell victim to it.
Booktube/stagram/tok is no exception - my TBR is ENDLESS due to the never ending revolving door of recommendations.
Our phones are supposed to be a tool for us to us as we need them - but instead they’ve become the masters of our will. How much time, energy, and peace can we regain if we put them back under our control?
I decided to run a little experiment since clearing out my phone - let’s see how much my phone screen time goes down over the course of a fortnight. I would start the timer today but because I am still backing up photos I feel like it wouldn’t be an accurate representation.
So, starting Tuesday, May 20th and running into Tuesday, June 3rd let’s see how much removing all of the excess junk from my phone puts back into my life. I’ll try and pop in half way through with an update but we’ll see how far we get :)
If you’ve done a phone detox or want to join me let me know down in the comments!
Already I can tell you my doomscrolling has technically decreased, but I’m still reaching for my phone out of habit. I’m interested to see what happens over the coming weeks.
