My phone is ruining my life

By Samira Jafar
Exclusive to The Times Kuwait

This summer, I had the goal of “discovering myself” creatively, professionally, and personally, which has been the main theme of the past few years of my life. These were the ways in which I planned on doing this:

• Writing more
• Reading more
• Spending time with the people I love
• Experiencing new things
• Experiencing film and theater
• Traveling

Thankfully, I did all of the above. I am proud of all the things I’ve learned, written, read, and accomplished. But something in me still feels empty. In between all of these things, I found that I was spending a lot of time on my phone. It was out of pure boredom: being off of work will have that effect on you and being away from home leaves a desire to feel some level of connectivity to the people you left behind.

But what was first productive and collaborative quickly turned unsettling. I was learning a lot about people I knew, but I almost felt like I knew too much about them. Seeing travel, proposals, promotions, families, and other snippets of their lives, coupled with the ample amount of time I had on my hands, made me feel frozen in time.

How could I be in such stillness when people around me were moving and hustling? I was always someone who felt majorly disconnected from people I was no longer in contact with; it’s nothing personal, it’s just that I quickly lose interest in the life of anyone who doesn’t impact me. But when faced with all of their faces, I was forced to confront a world I had long compartmentalized.

Feelings of dissatisfaction quickly brewed within me. I’m part of the age group where people are either CEOs, parents, unemployed, or famous. It’s so easy to compare: this person has something I don’t. I have something they lack. Personhood becomes a scale, checks and balances. People are literally reduced to a few words and a caption that is no longer than a few emojis or a sentence at best.

In between people I know from high school are pictures of the worst atrocities I’ve ever seen. Scrolling brings me so much dread and anxiety. And then I scroll to an article about how being chronically online contributes to lazy eye, and I become anxious about that, too, and spend more time squinting at my phone to assess the dangers.

Social media is an echo chamber of screamed advice and complaints that interferes with my six goals, but with “experiencing new things” most significantly. On TikTok, people will warn you against XYZ. You’ll open the comments and see older women warning younger women against XYZ. Sometimes it is possible to know too much.

I get this warped fear that I’m not living my life correctly. Women are being told to get married or about how marriage is the worst thing ever. Stay at home wives will talk about how much better their lives are. We have become the consumers of too many cautionary tales and warnings. When I get overwhelmed, I feel the urge to do nothing.

I wonder why I compare myself to people I never know and will never be, and whose life circumstances vary so much to mine. I wonder why some people are in Greece and others are in refugee camps. I feel like I was never meant to know this much about people in my life, and then feel like maybe they need to know more about me, only why would they? I oscillate between thinking I’m horribly uncool and above being concerned about what people think. My self-esteem is either obnoxious or deplorable, depending on the day.

Social media is a side effect of wanting to be a successful author. Authors are all over Instagram and TikTok promoting their books and gaining readers. Don’t get me wrong: I do love the connectivity of social media. It enabled me to start my book club, where I met 90+ lovely and educated women around Kuwait. It also allowed me to meet amazing people and share my work with them.

But I wish I could shrug off the pressure of being online. I have this fear that abandoning an online presence would make me abandon every possibility for success in my field. Then I feel like I’m too much of a cliche, and like some of the best authors only have a mailbox and a radio and a flip phone with no SIM card and live in the woods. When I disconnect and focus on writing, I feel guilty for quite literally doing my job, because I feel like I’m not putting myself “out there” enough on social media. After all, isn’t the job of a writer to make reels and go on Live?

Once again, social media succeeds at making me feel like I’m living life incorrectly. Taking a social media break makes me anxious about losing whatever readership I have and connection to what’s “going on” around the world. It makes me want to read about the side effects of every decision before I make it instead of just living.

And don’t get me started on ChatGPT and how it has completely ruined social media and our ability to think critically. I watched a TikTok about a woman who was in love with her psychiatrist and had all her delusions about him validated by ChatGPT. I judged her, but then wondered if I was better for being a victim to the overwhelming power of technology, even when I thought it was stupid.

I’m writing all of this to say that I want to take a social media break. I don’t know if Substack counts.

Samira Jafar is an English instructor at Kuwait University. She is the author of two collections of poetry. You can reach her at @samirawritesstuff on instagram or samirajafar.substack.com