“
We can miss other things, but we will hardly miss scrolling through our Instagram or Facebook feed. Wherever your audience is, you need to be there.
”
”
Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
Another day.
How long are you gonna scroll down?
Semicolon
Smile
”
”
Sanhita Baruah
“
I wait in front of the stadium, scrolling through Facebook on my cell phone. I swear if one more of my high school friends posts pictures of their lunch, kids, or dogs, I'm going on a spree reporting everyone as spam.
”
”
Aly Martinez (Changing Course (Wrecked and Ruined, #1))
“
Do you want an extra 44 days a year to do whatever you please? Or, do you want to spend this time aimlessly scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed?
”
”
Benjamin Wilson (Stop Procrastination: 10 Power Habits To Earn Back 1,072 Hours A Year - How to Stop Being Lazy and Obliterate Your Goals in Life: Comprehensive Blueprint to Finally Stop Procrastination Today!)
“
Perfect life is just an illusion and to spend hours scrolling down the Facebook feed means you are making the fantasy world part of your own somehow.
”
”
Jyoti Patel
“
toxic addictiveness... news feed and other "infinite scrolls" the worst offenders..
”
”
Steven Levy (Facebook: The Inside Story)
“
It’s the pull to visit YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter for just a few minutes, only to find yourself still tapping and scrolling an hour later.
”
”
Nir Eyal (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products)
“
I have spent the last half hour scrolling through Facebook while contemplating deleting Facebook. I used to enjoy it, but every single one of my friends’ posts now seems to consist of babies upon babies. Is anyone besides me not procreating right now?
”
”
Freida McFadden (The Boyfriend)
“
Facebook automatically catalogued every tiny action from its users, not just their comments and clicks but the words they typed and did not send, the posts they hovered over while scrolling and did not click, and the people's names they searched and did not befriend. They could use that data, for instance, to figure out who your closest friends were, defining the strength of the relationship with a constantly changing number between 0 and 1 they called a "friend coefficient". The people rated closest to 1 would always be at the top of your news feed.
”
”
Sarah Frier (No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram)
“
Comedy is tragedy plus x, with x being an amount of time defined by the person experiencing the tragedy. Some people need less time than others. I joked about Dad’s death as it was happening. But that gave some friends the impression they could join in . No . My dad, my jokes. A Facebook friend posted one day after Dad died: “Welcome to the Dead Dad Club.” I hated him instantly. He was an Early Orphan. I scrolled through his profile pictures, I saw smiles . Life had gone on for him. I didn’t want to be in his stupid club, I didn’t want to read his wry asides.
”
”
Laurie Kilmartin (Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed)
“
It seems that we are distracted because we are always in search of something better. We always want to see a different place or a different person’s life, as ours passes us by. We don’t pay attention to our own lives, therefore we want someone else’s. In a way, this is the definition of our social media feed. I want your life; please ‘like’ mine and tell me that it’s good enough. The thing is, most of us live the life that we are searching for. We just aren’t aware enough to see it. We are half present, therefore half appreciative, and our relationships suffer because of it.
”
”
Eric Overby
“
A smartphone allows you to choose your own adventure. So be a hero, not a villain. Don’t be your own worst enemy. No wasting time… No training your brain not to remember things, losing the skills necessary to read a fucking map… No trolling. Don’t make snarky remarks on comment threads or internet forums or social media. Just do good. Help others. If you’re out in the world and bored, which you shouldn’t be anyway, but still, if you feel like you need to get on your phone, be useful. Answer questions, offer advice. Look only for question marks when you scroll through your Facebook news feed. Log on to Reddit and comment on something you have firsthand knowledge of and real insight about. Give far more than you take. Never text and walk. And stop googling things as you think of them. Instead, write it down and look it up later. If you can’t remember to do this, then you didn’t deserve to know the answer. This will keep your mind active, agile; clear to really think. It will keep you sharp. Using the internet for information or socialization should be an activity, something you sit down for—it should not be used while out and about. You should not refuse the beauty of what’s in front of you for mere pixels of red, green, blue on a 3.5-inch screen. Otherwise, you’ll lose yourself. An abyss of ones and zeros will swallow you whole. Don’t be a dumb motherfucker with a smartass phone.
”
”
A.D. Aliwat (In Limbo)
“
I post a petition on my Facebook page. Which of my friends will see it on their news feed? I have no idea. As soon as I hit send, that petition belongs to Facebook, and the social network’s algorithm makes a judgment about how to best use it. It calculates the odds that it will appeal to each of my friends. Some of them, it knows, often sign petitions, and perhaps share them with their own networks. Others tend to scroll right past. At the same time, a number of my friends pay more attention to me and tend to click the articles I post. The Facebook algorithm takes all of this into account as it decides who will see my petition. For many of my friends, it will be buried so low on their news feed that they’ll never see it.
”
”
Cathy O'Neil (Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy)
“
I don't know about you, but first thing in the morning I lie in bed and scroll through my cell phone. Facebook, Google +, Twitter, email. Those all come first even before brushing my teeth.
”
”
Dawn Robertson (Statistic)
“
Follow-up research suggests that passive social media use—idly scrolling through a feed—harms mental health more than active use—going onto Facebook with a plan to post something
”
”
Katherine Reynolds Lewis (The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever -- And What to Do About It)
“
Spending all day scrolling through Facebook is to stop our own progress to see how others progress in life...
”
”
Rodolfo Peon
“
What would it be like if we spent as much time reading the Scriptures as we did scrolling through our Facebook and Twitter feeds?”
-Shenita Etwaroo
”
”
Shenita Etwaroo
“
Much of my day can consist of me being lost in thoughts. An equal amount of the day can be lost in scrolling a Facebook feed, mindless and solitary in a room full of people. Now add in the amount of time that I sleep. This is the recipe for a lot of time with little attention.
”
”
Eric Overby
“
We lose self-control. It’s easy to slip back into some routines without realizing. That could be checking Facebook first thing in the morning, while still in bed. The first thoughts we feed our mind with, though, are crucial to what mood we’ll be in for the day. Ultimately, how we start our days shapes who we become and what our life looks like. If each new day begins by scrolling down a feed just because it’s something you’re used to and do effortlessly, then you end up watching a video or a few without wanting to. You see an old relative inviting you to play a game, someone from college posting details about their life that they could have kept for themselves, another guy you barely know sharing photos from their holiday, and much more. Does it feel right to let these people in your head, overwhelm yourself with that unnecessary information, and even let your brain start comparing your situation with theirs? No. That’s time-wasting and harmful for many reasons.
”
”
Lidiya K. (Quitting Social Media: The Social Media Cleanse Guide)
“
Aza [Raskin] said: 'For instance, Facebook tomorrow could start batching your notifications, so you only get one push notification a day ... They could do that tomorrow.' ....So instead of getting 'this constant drip of behavioural cocaine,' telling you every few minutes that somebody liked your picture, commented on your post, has a birthday tomorrow, and on and on - you would get one daily update, like a newspaper, summarising it all. You'd be pushed to look once a day, instead of being interrupted several times an hour.
'Here's another one,' he said 'Infinite scroll. ...it's catching your impulses before your brain has a chance to really get involved and make a decision.' Facebook and Instagram and the others could simply turn off infinite scroll - so that when you get to the bottom of the screen, you have to make a conscious decision to carry on scrolling.
Similarly, these sites could simply switch off the things that have been shown to most polarise people politically, stealing our ability to pay collective attention. Since there's evidence YouTube's recommendation engine is radicalising people, Tristan [Harris] told one interviewer: 'Just turn it off. They can turn it off in a heartbeat.' It's not as if, he points out, the day before recommendations were introduced, people were lost and clamouring for somebody to tell them what to watch next.
Once the most obvious forms of mental pollution have been stopped, they said, we can begin to look deeper, at how these sites could be redesigned to make it easier for you to restrain yourself and think about your longer-term goals. ...there could be a button that says 'here are all your friends who are nearby and are indicating they'd like to meet up today.' You click it, you connect, you put down your phone and hang out with them. Instead of being a vacuum sucking up your attention and keeping it away from the outside world, social media would become a trampoline, sending you back into that world as efficiently as possible, matched with the people you want to see.
Similarly, when you set up (say) a Facebook account, it could ask you how much time you want to spend per day or per week on the site. ...then the website could help you to achieve your goal. One way could be that when you hit that limit, the website could radically slow down. In tests, Amazon found that even 100 milliseconds of delay in the pace at which a page loads results in a substantial drop-off in people sticking around to buy the product. Aza said: 'It just gives your brain a chance to catch up to your impulse and [ask] - do I really want to be here? No.'
In addition, Facebook could ask you at regular intervals - what changes do you want to make to your life? ...then match you up with other people nearby... who say they also want to make that change and have indicated they are looking for the equivalent of gym buddies. ...A battery of scientific evidence shows that if you want to succeed in changing something, you should meet up with groups of people doing the same.
At the moment, they said, social media is designed to grab your attention and sell it to the highest bidder, but it could be designed to understand your intentions and to better help you achieve them. Tristan and Aza told me that it's just as easy to design and program this life-affirming Facebook as the life-draining Facebook we currently have. I think that most people, if you stopped them in the street and painted them a vision of these two Facebooks, would say they wanted the one that serves your intentions. So why isn't it happened? It comes back... to the business model.
”
”
Johann Hari (Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention— and How to Think Deeply Again)
“
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As I turn on my computer: Come to Me, I want to connect with you. As I make a phone call to talk through my stress with a friend: Call on Me! As I scroll through Facebook: Don’t follow them, follow Me. As I open up Instagram: Come to Me, open up to Me. As I binge watch another late-night TV show: Come. To. Me. As I start a text, complaining to a friend about my day: Delete that; don’t complain to her, come to Me. As I link over to Amazon Prime for a little retail therapy: Come to Me, I’m a Wonderful Counselor. As I run in to Starbucks for something sweet: My words are sweet as honey. Come to me. As I turn to comfort food: Come to Me, I’m the Great Comforter.
”
”
Wendy Speake (The 40-Day Social Media Fast: Exchange Your Online Distractions for Real-Life Devotion)
“
How much did I actually benefit from watching YouTube videos, scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed, or checking my emails repeatedly? In hindsight, was the time spent in a meaningful way? Did it enhance the quality of your life?
”
”
Thibaut Meurisse (Dopamine Detox : A Short Guide to Remove Distractions and Get Your Brain to Do Hard Things (Productivity Series Book 1))
“
Facebook automatically cataloged every tiny action from its users, not just their comments and clicks but the words they typed and did not send, the posts they hovered over while scrolling and did not click, and the people’s names they searched and did not befriend.
”
”
Sarah Frier (No Filter: The inside story of Instagram)
“
Imagine two Facebook feeds. One is full of updates, news, and videos that make you feel calm and happy. The other is full of updates, news, and videos that make you feel angry and outraged. Which one does the algorithm select? The algorithm is neutral about the question of whether it wants you to be calm or angry. That’s not its concern. It only cares about one thing: Will you keep scrolling? Unfortunately, there’s a quirk of human behavior. On average, we will stare at something negative and outrageous for a lot longer than we will stare at something positive and calm. You will stare at a car crash longer than you will stare at a person handing out flowers by the side of the road, even though the flowers will give you a lot more pleasure than the mangled bodies in a crash. Scientists have been proving this effect in different contexts for a long time—if they showed you a photo of a crowd, and some of the people in it were happy, and some angry, you would instinctively pick out the angry faces first. Even ten-week-old babies respond differently to angry faces. This has been known about in psychology for years and is based on a broad body of evidence. It’s called “negativity bias.” There is growing evidence that this natural human quirk has a huge effect online. On YouTube, what are the words that you should put into the title of your video, if you want to get picked up by the algorithm? They are—according to the best site monitoring YouTube trends—words such as “hates,” “obliterates,” “slams,” “destroys.” A major study at New York University found that for every word of moral outrage you add to a tweet, your retweet rate will go up by 20 percent on average, and the words that will increase your retweet rate most are “attack,” “bad,” and “blame.” A study by the Pew Research Center found that if you fill your Facebook posts with “indignant disagreement,” you’ll double your likes and shares. So an algorithm that prioritizes keeping you glued to the screen will—unintentionally but inevitably—prioritize outraging and angering you. If it’s more enraging, it’s more engaging.
”
”
Johann Hari (Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again)
“
Take for another example the case of distraction caused by the most notorious of modern-day diversions—the mobile phone. While you’re at your desk, typing away on your computer for a soon-due report—or attempting to, more like—your phone sits just beside your keyboard. This arrangement makes it oh-so-easy for your hand to alight on your phone whenever you pause to think what to type next, and the next thing you know, you’re trapped in an endless cycle of scrolling through Facebook memes, bingeing on YouTube videos, and chatting with your friends over WhatsApp. When you attempt to concentrate on a task with your phone just within sight and reach, buzzing on every notification, you are practically depleting your willpower to resist temptations with every second that passes. To remedy the situation, disable your phone’s sound and vibration features for notifications, then keep your phone in your bag or drawer. You may even opt to go the extra mile by locking your drawer or putting your phone in a locker across the room. The extra effort and time it would take for you to check your phone whenever your attention drifts off is usually enough to deter you from pursuing that distraction, and it allows you the chance to refocus your efforts on the task at hand. Ultimately, you want to create an environment for yourself that is clear of distractions and obvious temptations.
”
”
Peter Hollins (The Science of Self-Discipline: The Willpower, Mental Toughness, and Self-Control to Resist Temptation and Achieve Your Goals (Live a Disciplined Life Book 1))
“
Spatial and temporal context both have to do with the neighboring entities around something that help define it. Context also helps establish the order of events. Obviously, the bits of information we’re assailed with on Twitter and Facebook feeds are missing both of these kinds of context. Scrolling through the feed, I can’t help but wonder: What am I supposed to think of all this? How am I supposed to think of all this? I imagine different parts of my brain lighting up in a pattern that doesn’t make sense, that forecloses any possible understanding. Many things in there seem important, but the sum total is nonsense, and it produces not understanding but a dull and stupefying dread.
”
”
Jenny Odell (How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy)
“
It’s no surprise we’re exhausted. Before we’re even fully awake, we start scrolling through everyone else’s opinions and ideas and solutions—our news feeds, our Facebook page, our Instagram feeds.
”
”
Jenna Kutcher (How Are You, Really?: Living Your Truth One Answer at a Time)
“
I was working towards my bachelor's degree in creative writing at Arizona State University when videos, pictures, and stories from these protests started blooming across my Facebook feed. I saw Native people holding their ground and being ground down by the opposing police force. I saw them bitten by dogs and hosed down and maimed by rubber bullets hitting their faces and bodies, all while bright white words scrolled across the bottom of the video, explaining the situation and giving statistics.
”
”
Leah Myers (Thinning Blood: A Memoir of Family, Myth, and Identity)
“
Fulfilling one’s legal responsibility does not release a company from their ethical responsibility either. After we click a box to accept their terms and conditions, for example, many companies believe that they are free of responsibility for what happens next. Legally that may be true, but ethically speaking, they are not. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and any number of mobile gaming companies, for example, cannot deny their role in making what is increasingly accepted as addictive technology, simply because there is not yet a law against it. Particularly when they knowingly add features such as infinite scroll, “like” buttons, and automatic content play with the intent of keeping us peeled for longer. These companies almost always explain that they add such features or need to collect our personal data in order to “enhance the user experience.” Though we may indeed receive some benefit from these decisions, there is also a cost. Weighing those benefits against the harm they may cause or whether they violate our values is what ethics is all about! Nothing is for free.
”
”
Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game)
“
What are your hobbies and interests? Hobbies: eating snacks, sleeping during the day, scrolling through Facebook quickly enough that people’s stupid videos don’t start playing automatically, listening to slow jams.
”
”
Samantha Irby (We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.)
“
The word itself comes from the Latin cura—to care, to be careful and diligent. There are three types of curiosity. Diversive curiosity is our hunger for novelty; this is what makes us click on cat videos and keeps us scrolling through Facebook feeds. Empathetic curiosity is the drive to understand another person by trying to see the world as he does. Epistemic curiosity is our deeper, more directed quest for understanding that prompts us to explore, ask questions and make connections.
”
”
Bernadette Jiwa (Hunch: Turn Your Everyday Insights Into The Next Big Thing)
“
You scroll through a window of coffins. Think about it, each person fits in a 1080 x 1080 frame. It feels like a digital coffin to me. And don’t get me started on hashtags. They are like prison bars, locking in ideas behind a tag that loses is relevant until only the next inmate walks in.
”
”
Soroosh Shahrivar (Tajrish)
“
Every moment of attention we spend scrolling through social media is attention spent making money for someone else. The numbers are staggering: a New York Times analysis calculated that as of 20414, Facebook users were spending a collective 39,757 years' worth of attention on the site, every single day. It's attention that we didn't spend on our families, or our friends, or ourselves. And just like time, once we've spent attention, we can never get it back.
This is a really big deal, because our attention is the most valuable thing we have. We experience only what we pay attention to. We remember only what we pay attention to. When we decide what to pay attention to in the moment, we are making a broader decision about how we want to spend our lives.
”
”
Catherine Price (How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life)
“
A couple of years ago, I was hooked on Facebook. I might have enjoyed seeing what was going on with my friends for a few minutes a day, but just touching my phone would quickly spiral me into compulsively scrolling through the news feed, sometimes for an hour or more, getting no enjoyment out of it at all. I would even say to myself out loud, “Why are you doing this? You don’t want to be doing this. Stop!” When I could finally pull myself away, I’d feel drained. I’d been giving myself tiny dopamine hits, like a lab rat with his brain wired to a switch. I wasn’t building toward a long-term reward. It was as if I had eaten cotton candy for breakfast, and now I was crashing from my sugar high.
”
”
David Kadavy (The Heart To Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating)
“
No one stops to think.” Most people I know don’t think about culture, or worship, or ways of viewing the world, or idolatry, or felt wrath and felt grace. They are just living their lives. They’re just scrolling through Facebook. They’re just watching box sets. They don’t stop to think. And it’s part of our mission to get them to stop and think—to try and rouse them from their nightmare and bring them back to reality, back to their senses. The idols we worship can’t and don’t deliver what they promise on any level, whether intellectually, emotionally or imaginatively. They can’t give satisfying ultimate explanations of the world. Our task is to make people “stop and think” about their self-deception. To make them “stop and think” about the commitments they make, the authorities they listen to, the stories and scripts they follow. And from here it’s only a short step to get to Jesus.
”
”
Daniel Strange (Plugged In: Connecting your faith with what you watch, read, and play)
“
Minimize passive social media usage. Voyeuristically scrolling through the curated news feeds of others on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms can trigger self-defeating, envy-inducing thought spirals. One way to mitigate this outcome is to curb your passive social media usage. Use these technologies actively instead to connect with others at opportune times.
”
”
Ethan Kross (Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It)
“
I was in charge of decisions and marketing, and Sean was in charge of research and operations. When we were trying to identify our target customer, he spent a ton of time putting together spreadsheets comparing all the different markets we should consider. When he showed them to me and asked me what I thought, I replied, “Yoga.” Huh? “We could easily do multiple products serving people who do yoga,” I told him. “It’s an emerging trend. And I know a ton of those people; I can ask them what they want. Let’s start a yoga business.” Sean’s initial response was, “That’s not a quantitative analysis, Ryan!” I’ve never been one to overthink things—most people spend way too much time in the research period. I make decisions fast and adjust later. With our target customer identified, we made a list of possible products and chose our gateway product—a yoga mat. With that, we began the process of product development. We looked up the top-selling yoga mats on Amazon and read through the reviews; we asked questions on Facebook groups, subreddits, and Instagram influencer accounts. It didn’t take long before we had an idea of the main pain points we needed to address with our first product. I remembered Don’s advice and began looking for people to make the product. With a quick scroll and a click, we could choose between a wholesaler in China, a private label supplier out of India, or a contract manufacturer in Vietnam. For about fifty bucks, we were able to order a set of yoga mat samples that had the exact features we were looking for. It was that easy. Samples in hand, we needed to refine our product idea to make sure we were really hitting the pain points we’d identified. At that time, I’d done yoga maybe two or three times in my life, and I wasn’t nearly the right demographic for our mats anyway. That forced me to ask questions. We were targeting yoga-loving millennials, so I went where they often congregate: Starbucks. There, I did the kind of tough field work that really makes an entrepreneur sweat: asking young women questions over coffee. “Which yoga mat do you prefer? Why?” “What makes the difference between a bad yoga mat and a good one?” “What’s wrong with your current yoga mat?” “What do you think of this one? And what about this one?” Next, I headed over to local yoga studios to see how our samples stacked up against the strenuous demands of a yoga class. A few classes later, Sean and I had everything we needed to narrow down our product development. Armed with all our data, we went back to the manufacturers. From a couple yoga-clueless guys, we’d become knowledgeable enough to know not just what a good yoga mat looked like, but how it had to feel and perform. We knew what we needed our yoga mat to do. Now we just had to find the manufacturer to supply it.
”
”
Ryan Daniel Moran (12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur)
“
For consumers, most of these problems are invisible. That is by design. You’re not supposed to know that the trending topics on Twitter were sifted through by a few destitute people making pennies. You’re not supposed to realize that Facebook can process the billions of photos, links, and shareable items that pass through its network each day only because it recruits armies of content moderators through digital labor markets. Or that these moderators spend hours numbly scrolling through grisly photos that people around the world are trying to upload to the network. Uber’s selling point is convenience: press a button on your phone and a car will arrive in minutes, maybe seconds, to take you anywhere you want to go. As long as that’s what happens, what do consumers have to complain about? Now joined by a host of start-up delivery services, ride-sharing companies are in the business of taking whomever or whatever from point A to point B with minimal fuss or waiting time. That this self-indulgent convenience ultimately comes at the expense of others is easily brushed off or shrouded in the magical promise that anything you want can be produced immediately.
”
”
Jacob Silverman (Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection)
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On their deathbed, nobody wishes they had watched more series on Netflix, spent more time scrolling their Facebook newsfeed, or posted more pictures of themselves on Instagram. Yet, most of us spend an incredible amount of time doing exactly that. Instead, we’ll probably wish we had spent more time with our family and friends, right?
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Thibaut Meurisse (Master Your Time : A Practical Guide to Increase Your Productivity and Use Your Time Meaningfully (Mastery Series Book 8))
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A habit is at work when users feel a tad bored and instantly open Twitter. They feel a pang of loneliness and before rational thought occurs, they are scrolling through their Facebook feeds. A question comes to mind and before searching their brains, they query Google. The first-to-mind solution wins.
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Nir Eyal (Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products)