Warren’s Wisdom: I got my first phone, and it taught me that learning to live without social media is learning to live with boredom: it’s scary

By Opinion Editor Warren Su

I didn’t have a smartphone last year. I didn’t have Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, even now. From most students’ perspective, I lived underneath a rock. 

This was all my choice. I had chosen not to have a phone because I didn’t want to succumb to endless scrolling and addiction, something I saw all too common in my peers around me. It was only this year, when I traveled around the country, where I got one for safety.  And, immediately, my fears were realized.

I started to look at it more. Every time I had to wait for something, there was always the web. When my phone buzzed, I restlessly checked my emails. Every minor inconvenience no longer stayed inconvenient because of this small, magical box in my pocket that could solve all of my issues. I knew what it looked like as an external observer to be glued to a phone — I had never before felt what it was like on the other side. 

That’s not to say that I was perfect before — far from it. I would procrastinate by spending time watching YouTube, scrolling Reddit, and worrying while I did all of this. I became susceptible to the same dopamine traps which I saw in others. 

One solution to phone addiction comes in the form of phone bans, newly implemented across California schools. When we think about them, we often talk a lot about the phones themselves and less about what happens next. What happens when social media is replaced by nothingness? In my experience, it’s almost like a withdrawal: anxiety slowly sets in, stress builds up, and disaster strikes. We don’t know what to do when we aren’t given this technology to numb us..

In the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, the characters consume a magical drug; it has no downsides and just creates a pure feeling of bliss. “All of the advantages of Christianity and alcohol,” Huxley writes, “[and] none of their defects.” What is this drug? Soma. Happiness. But fake, chemically engineered happiness.

I am not the first to compare phones to soma. I am not going so far as to say that they fully are, or that social media is wholly bad. What I am saying is that we have created a drug — something that imprisons our brain and leaves us with little else to enjoy.

Why do we choose to scroll? Because it’s easy. And, frankly, because we’re tired. Because we’re insecure. Because it takes too much energy to pick up a book and sit down to read it, and when we have that much energy we have the energy to do what we need to do. Because we’re afraid that we don’t know where to start.

This is fine. I can say from experience that boredom is good. It makes you more creative, forces you to come up with new ways to entertain yourself, or it causes you to think, and think, and think. And that’s why we’re so afraid of it. But, boredom makes us find new ways of entertaining ourselves. I find that my best thoughts often come when I’m getting ready to sleep, or waiting for something, or walking outside — social media has shut off my ability to think during the day. 

Phone bans create this new world where we must sit with ourselves. It will be difficult to let go of  our phones. But difficult is good.