THE INFINITE SCROLL
Roisin Kiberd is getting a handle on social media
Sometimes I find social media brings on the symptoms of a panic attack. I’ll be scrolling, purposeless and distracted, when suddenly my cursor will arrive at something I find disturbing. It might be trolling, political opinions which read as complacent, or brash; benign life updates, which seem more like showing off. I find myself drawn into cycles of self-doubt, disliking people who in real life are my friends, and then disliking myself.
There’s a connection that forms between body and mind and screen, one that I’m rarely aware of until it begins to work against me. I dwell on these disposable posts, overthinking words and pictures which would usually be forgotten in minutes. My heart starts to thump, a feeling of emptiness lurches from my ribcage, and I’m left with a spiralling sense of dissatisfaction, characteristic, I believe, of online life right now.
While writing my book, The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet, I encountered a term again and again: infinite scroll. It’s a web design technique where, upon reaching the end of a page, more content appears and the user can keep scrolling. Social media employs it, among other addictive tactics, because it keeps the brain in a state of engagement, dopamine flaring in anticipation of a reward.
Do those rewards ever come? It’s doubtful, but we keep scrolling anyway. Sometimes I think of myself as a cyborg, someone whose body is augmented by technology. It’s a term more commonly used in sciencefiction, but I mean it in a more mundane way, describing how we outsource our emotions, our relationships and our self-image to the internet. The panic I feel – a sense of being overwhelmed by opinions and information – arises from that same connection, and I’m not alone; a rising number of studies document the connection between social media, anxiety, depression and loneliness.
“Cyborg anthropology” studies these connections, but a more accessible way to think about this is the way we speak to Siri and Alexa, the way a keyboard shortcut becomes a muscle memory, or the dull ache we experience when away from our phones. Then there are the internet’s subtler, emotional and mental effects; the habits we form, and the ways in which our minds are manipulated by apps designed to work like slot machines.
Last year, pandemic internet use gave us a new term, “doomscrolling”, describing the act of consuming vast amounts of bad news online. It seemed like a nadir in our love-hate relationship with the internet, but also, a turning point. There’s a growing backlash against big tech; Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional hearings, whistleblowers, and a series of critical books and documentaries (Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism stands out) have all helped to build a case for change.
It’s easy to advocate “digital detox”, or to tell everyone, smugly, to simply press the off button, but I don’t think these approaches work – social media is woven too intricately into our lives for us to ever avoid it entirely. Nor do I believe the responsibility rests on us to adapt, in order to navigate a frequently inhumane online terrain.
I do, however, think we can benefit from becoming attuned to how technology makes us feel. For a long time I was lost in the endless scroll, writing about the internet and consequently spent all my time there. Eventually, I realised I was depressed, and had to learn to put up barriers and step away whenever online life became overwhelming. Writing my book was part of this process; a way of unravelling the strangeness of life around us, and locating the borders, where technology ends and real life begins.
These days I try to check in with myself and my internet use, part of a broader effort to keep myself emotionally balanced. I’m more aware of the time I spend online – sometimes I even set a timer, if only to track how quickly minutes and hours are lost. I rarely Tweet, and I mute often – sometimes people, but more often topics of conversation that I know will annoy me. I’ve not had the Twitter app on my phone since 2016. It’s a small change – I still browse on my desktop – but it’s less intrusive, and the notifications don’t follow me around all day. I deactivate on and off, for months at a time, and I use a browser extension called BlockSite to ban myself from Instagram and Twitter on days when I know my mental health is fragile.
The bigger project, however, takes place off-screen; over the last few years, I’ve tried to cultivate self-knowledge and genuine connections with the people around me, and to question myself when I start taking online life too seriously. This process is far from over, but at least change is happening. What remains at the end of the scroll, doom or transcendence? The end to our searching? The answer? I wouldn’t know – I’m still scrolling, but I’ve not reached it yet.
The Disconnect: A Personal Journey Through the Internet
by Roisin Kiberd (Serpent’s Tail, €15) is out now. Roisin will be taking part in this year’s International Literature Festival Dublin, which runs May 20-30, ilfdublin.com.
“It’s easy to advocate ‘digital detox’ and tell everyone to press the off button, but social media is woven too intricately into our lives to avoid it entirely.”