it's just so it's all so stupid when you think about it so many hours on this
when life outside looks like this I'm just so over it uh I don't even feel bad doing it this time
[Music]
"we're all running from Pain some of us take pills some of us couch or fast binge watching Netflix
some of us read romance novels we'll do almost anything to distract ourselves from ourselves
yeah all this trying to insulate ourselves from pain seems only to have made our pain worse." if
you've been following me for a while then you'd know that I took part in a two-year social media
detox other than my YouTube channel I was not allowed to go on any other platform the first
month was actually kind of hard I remember my thumb constantly finding itself on the app store
page ready to download social media again and I started finding other ways to watch short form
content and cheat as slowly as time went on I started to feel better I started calling my
friends more I felt more present in my day-to-day life I felt more productive and I started feeling
happy when I achieved the small Pleasures in life and then last October I relapsed as some people
would say I found a way to convince myself that I was going to be completely fine going back on
social media in a non-addictive way mistake number one I thought maybe if I just put a time limit on
the apps then maybe I could enjoy social media without guilt but as someone who was an addict
to social media it was just a lie I was telling myself to pretend that I was fine the thing is
social media isn't really looked down upon for the most part sure no one feels great about using Tick
Tock and there are videos like mine sometimes to come up on that algorithm telling you that
social media is bad but it's legal and everyone does it so it's not like other addictions where
the world is really telling you you need to stop so I'm making this video today to come clean and
hold myself accountable for my addiction and I hope that this video can resonate with you no
matter what addiction you're struggling with the age of indulgence now this video has taken a lot
of inspiration from someone who I just think is an absolute Idol and Pioneer in the addiction sphere
and on science on addiction who is Dr annelin so before I even get started I'm gonna link down
her book in the description below which is called dopamine nation and I cannot recommend this book
enough everything I'm gonna say you're gonna get 10 times more from this expert talking about it so
I really recommend you check her out I mean this book really changed my life it was actually one of
the triggers to make me first delete social media a few years back now the age of indulgence what Dr
limbic meant through this quote is that nowadays we have access to more and more addictions and
they're more readily available at our fingertips than they were you know a couple centuries ago
we have these huge aisles at the supermarket of sugary addictive foods that you eat loads
of and then afterwards you feel terrible about because our body is just not meant to consume
that much sugar it's definitely more socially acceptable to binge drink the same goes for some
other addictions that for monetization purposes I cannot mention as well as my own social media
and phone and Technology addictions where it's just so ingrained in our culture right now to
spend a lot of time in our phones most of us need technology to get through a day and I don't even
mean for Joy I mean to actually get for a day you know every our banks are digitized now they're all
on apps our biggest forms of entertainment are there we work online a lot of people
work remotely like myself I'm inevitably gonna spend 10 hours editing this video on my laptop
reading emails this just makes it so much easier to find yourself indulging on things
that previous generations and societies didn't have to but not me I'm not addicted
first of all I'm fully aware that there's gonna be a lot of people that are going to watch this
video and think to themselves no but not me I'm not addicted to social media I could quit it any
day I want to I just decide not to and as much as I'm not trying to diagnose anyone here this
is a safe space saying you're not addicted it's not the same thing as not being addicted and the
thing about addiction is that we can really convince ourselves that we aren't addicted
because until you know the world crashes down we don't realize the effects that it's having on us
now last week when I came to the conclusion that I just cannot be someone that uses social media in a
healthy way and I'm not saying that there aren't people out there that can but personally I can
was maybe a slightly less invasive realization it wasn't like my screen time was five hours a
day it wasn't like I wasn't getting things done because I was too addicted to my phone reality
my phone screen time was only two hours and one hour of that was regularly me on Whatsapp
calling friends texting friends FaceTiming friends what scared me though was that other hour and the
other hour was spent on Instagram reels I'd always set myself a personal call of 50 minutes because
in my head an addict would stop at 15 minutes and 50 minutes wasn't going to waste my life away but
the problem was I never stayed on for 15 minutes I got sucked in to the end of schooling my thumb
felt like it was just a habit at that point and an hour would pass by until my brain felt like it was
rotting and I felt awful about it and this brings me to my next Discovery the pleasure pain balance
so according to Dr analembic pain and pleasure are co-located another way to say this is that
pain and pleasure work like a balance imagine our brains contain a balance a skill with a fulcrum
in the center where nothing is on the balance it's level with the ground when we experience pleasure
dopamine is released in our reward pathway and the balance tips to the side of pleasure the more
our balance tips and the faster tips the more pleasure we feel but here's the important thing
about the balance it wants to remain level that is in equilibrium it does not want to be tipped off
for very long to one side or the other hence every time the balance tips towards pleasure
powerful self-regulating mechanisms kick into action to bring it level again okay what does all
that mean I'm gonna explain it don't worry in my interpretation if I can kind of bring it back to
my own addiction when I think back to the other day when I was using reels and I had this real
discovery that something wasn't right first of all I realized I'd overspent my 15 minutes maybe
I was at the 35 minute Mark and I started feeling really crappy about it so my brain started telling
me I should feel really guilty and crappy about it and that I did a terrible thing until my dopamine
levels went back down and my guilt levels went up until my scale was more on the pain side so
how did I restore the balance back into the pain and pleasure I went back on Instagram and that's
kind of how I interpret the addiction in my mind where the Vicious Circle starts where I click on
it I get a dopamine rush and then I realize I've spent too much time and these things are not
good dopamine Rush they're unhealthy dopamine rushes and so I feel bad about it but then I
feels so bad in an imbalance on the pain side that I want an immediate dopamine rush and so I
go back onto it and hence the cycle continues think of things that make you truly happy
now if I can just do my job and convince at least one person who's watching this to look inwards
and maybe discover that they too have a social media addiction or or start working on another
addiction they might have then here's what I think might help you realize where your addictions lay
in reality there is nothing inherently wrong with dopamine we get dopamine from a lot of things we
do in our day-to-day life cooking cleaning the house exercising calling a friend this is what
I'm gonna Define in my own professional opinion as good dopamine it's an act that you do throughout
the day that brings you pleasure that you don't in the short term then feel guilty about and I think
that's a real determining factor and if it's good dopamine if you don't feel bad after you've done
it because cooking a good nutritious meal is good for your physical health and mental health so you
don't cook a good meal and then say to yourself I wish I hadn't done that and likewise you don't
meet a friend for coffee and go home and say I wish I was scrolling on Tick Tock instead
these little pleasures that you have throughout your day are common and healthy they keep our
pleasure in pain balance in check amongst all the other inevitable things that do cause pain in our
life so we need these to balance ourselves out and feel happy but things like smoking drinking binge
eating social media and things that might get you demonetized these Pleasures can be more addictive
and offset are balanced too much so I want you to challenge yourself and think would I do in my day
that feels good during and after the act in my own professional opinion this is how I determine
good dopamine and bad dopamine and it's how I eventually came to realization that I am addicted
to social media I'm someone that's been using social media on and off for more than half of my
life and I don't think I've ever managed to find the balance on specifically short form content
um and the sad part is that every platform nowadays has a form of short form content
so here I am stating publicly on a video that people I know we're gonna
watch I am not good on social media or specifically short form content foreign
stupid when you think about it so many hours on this when life outside looks like this
I'm just so over it uh I don't even feel bad doing it this time
I've throughout the past couple months I've deleted every other
social media again so all I'm left with it's Instagram and Instagram Wheels but
don't need this anymore I'm gonna do it [Music]
just a reminder of Dopamine Nation in the description I cannot recommend that enough
please check out whether you listen to it on an audiobook whether you buy it
whether you go on Goodreads and find quotes I don't care but please try read this book
thank you for watching this video here's a reminder that you are loved and bye [Music]
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