Since my life has slowed down quite a bit, I've been able to notice something about social media that I didn't notice before. For the most part, I stay off of it. During the day, I don't try to look at it very much, if at all. In the afternoon and evening, I'll scroll through and look at some things, but it's usually just diversionary, mindless scrolling, something I can be doing on my device and be interrupted.
But I've noticed that with Instagram, my breathing changes. My breaths get shorter, and it's like I'm anticipating the next thrilling post as I wade through advertisements and boring things.
I noticed it especially when I close the app and turn off my phone, I tend to take a deep breath as if I was not getting enough air and needed to deeply breathe just to get moving again. It's like my body is anticipating the next hit of dopamine, anticipating, and it's not respiratory because I breathe just fine otherwise.
There have been many articles on how they've designed social media apps to be addictive, to draw your attention and then lock it in with flashing things and new extremes, suggestions to take you down rabbit holes that lead to more ad revenue for the company and more sales for the companies that paid for the ads.
But it's weird to sense that respiratory change that I experience. Anticipatory and not respiratory.
Be careful out there.
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