After spending a week observing my own physiological response to my social media and internet usage I have noticed a distinctive autonomic response that seems to begin the mere second I even think about going online. On a certain level I expected the increased heart rate and tension when I was actively engaged online but to feel an increase in my heart rate and muscular tension as I was just preparing to engage was somewhat of a shock. I can really only attribute the autonomic response I felt as being akin to excitement and the fact that I was presenting that response at the mere idea of logging online really got me wondering about the frequency of my online presence and whether or not my behavior is excessive.
The thing is in relation to most of my peers I don’t think that my internet usage is extremely excessive. It’s difficult to an extent to be self aware about how you compare to others but from what I’ve been able to observe I display similar patterns to those around me. While I was taking in my own bodily response to online stimuli, I also took the time to watch the reactions of others. A pretty consistent pattern emerges:
- With the feeling of excitement or curiosity, log onto Facebook and see what “news” pieces are trending
My Facebook timeline
- Scroll through the various pieces about the latest mass shooting or whatever idiotic new disaster that Trump has created
- You begin to feel disheartened and/or depressed so you move onto happier, low-stakes articles or animal videos
My favorite article that I go to at least twice a day
- You go through this cycle multiple times a day, as your schedule or phone battery allows
This wave of exhaustion and excitement ultimately left me feeling very conflicted and drained by the end of each cycle, with my autonomic excitement at the prospect of seeing what’s going on in the world being counterbalanced by my aversion and dread over what was out there. Not to mention the guilt (and its physical manifestations) that I felt every time after switching from the news to a video of a cat being scared by a cucumber. There is just so much out there on the internet and when mainstream media is consistently overloading you with all the terrible things in the world (at least the ones they think pertain to Americans), all you want to do is escape to something frivolous that has no impact on you. The fact is that the internet allows privileged users, like myself, to get swept up by all of the horrible events going on in the world and then just distance ourselves when it gets to be too much for us to handle, emotionally. We don’t process the events that are unfolding before us, we just say “Oh god that’s awful!” and then we move on to something that won’t make us think quite so much.
I rewatch all these videos on a far too frequent basis to make myself feel better