I'm a working professional in early 30s' and I'm using Facebook for over 15 years now as I remember. (yes I'm one of them used Facebook from golden era ;-)). Now I'm working from home in my room since Covid time. Few months back, I realize I was addicted to Facebook. Spending time in Facebook in between work, specially I open Facebook app soon after a meeting and it became a habit. Not just that, when I felt tired from work or coming back from gym, I open Facebook. Also after taking my lunch. In all these times, I was tired, and I opened Facebook thinking I'll be feeling good after spending some time on Facebook, and suddenly when I check time, it's either 30 mins, but mostly it's near 1hr. I was like, "did I just spent one hour on Facebook reels?" Unbelievable. That's when I started to check screen time in my iPhone (I didn't even realize that's there, and it's terrible). Not just that, I felt exhausted after spending that time. Imagine you started to do something just because you're tired, and suddenly that thing made you tired again. It started to give me a guilty feeling. I always knew I have potential, but ended most of the days just passing time with work, sometimes I worked extra to catchup the time I wasted. This feeling made me thing of "I'm drowning". Then one day I made a decision to deactivate my Facebook account. It was a hard decision, and that realize me how addicted I'm to Facebook. Finally, I deactivated my FB account, and I felt peace.
You know the best part, it didn't last long. I was posting some content in Instagram, but didn't spend time in Instagram as much while using Facebook, but few weeks after deactivating Facebook, I started to scroll on Instagram and it gave me that same feeling I had using Facebook, and in addition to that it gave me a feeling which I started to ask myself "Am I not enough?". You know, Instagram is a hall different world compared to Facebook.
And that moment, I realize, it's not Facebook or Instagram, it's the person inside me who need to escape from real things in life, person who don't want focus on things, who really don't won't to deep work. I realize no matter what I do, my brain always find a way to crave what it needs.
This has happened few months back. I'm just sharing this with you guys to see whether there's anyone in the same shoe because I'm new to this Reddit platform. I'd like to know your experience in doom scrolling, and what you did to fix it.