By Anonymous
For an hour of media consumption, I chose to watch videos on TikTok. TikTok is a relatively new social media platform that has influenced fashion trends, music charts, and many other things. The videos are anywhere from a few seconds to three minutes long which makes it embarrassingly easy to mindlessly scroll through for 60 minutes. TikTok features a “For You” page (FYP), which utilizes an algorithm to show videos the user will likely enjoy. My FYP is full of fashion, cooking, crafts, and cleaning videos. Sometimes I do learn something useful from the videos such as different cooking “hacks” that make cooking dinner a tad bit easier. I also find many outfit ideas and get satisfaction from seeing spaces cleaned in an aesthetic way. The hour of scrolling was not new to me, unfortunately. I hate to admit that I do this almost daily, probably for more than an hour at a time. My brain is constantly playing TikTok audios.
One thing that stuck out to me when I was reflecting on this practice was my specific FYP. Why do I always see these kinds of videos? (Besides the fact that I like them, so more of them show up.) I decided that I probably enjoy these types of videos the most because they feature people who seem to have their lives together. It’s always a pretty girl with a cute, trendy outfit in her Pinterest-perfect room or someone in a bright, spacious, well-decorated high-rise apartment with spotless floors and white furniture. This brought me back to when McKibben wrote about how television distorts perception. Deep down, I realize that a 30-second video doesn’t accurately portray what someone’s life looks like. Even still, it’s fun to pretend that that’s me wearing Lululemon leggings and a NorthFace puffer jacket in my overpriced but cozy city apartment.
For an hour of unmediated time I took a walk through my neighborhood. Usually I would have headphones in listening to my Spotify 2021 Wrapped playlist for entertainment. I noticed myself thinking about my upcoming assignments, what my work schedule looks like next week, when I need to go grocery shopping again, etc. I had a difficult time shutting those thoughts off to focus on the things I was walking by. I ended up looking at all the houses and imagining the people who live in them. I noticed the trees and how their leaves were at the mercy of the cold wind. I even saw a tiny mouse disappear into a thick patch of ivy. Even still, my new neighborhood is a world away from what this walk would look like at home. I am from a small farming town with acres of land between each house and usually a herd of cows. It was interesting to mentally compare how an hour’s walk in Northern Virginia would look at home.
When reflecting on this, I realized that I had such a hard time shutting my brain off because I am so used to instant gratification and endless entertainment. Even when I stopped thinking about what’s next, I still found a way to turn on my imagination to give me something to do. Last semester I was fortunate enough to spend a semester in Front Royal at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation. One of our first assignments was a class hike where the emphasis was on noticing what is around you, rather than the destination of the hike. I always try to keep this in mind whenever I’m outside now. It’s definitely more interesting and beneficial to notice your surroundings regardless of location. At the beginning of the pandemic I noticed that I was spending way too much time on my phone and not properly focusing on my assignments. I decided to change my screen time settings for social media to be 15 minutes a day. Once those 15 minutes are up, I am locked out of the app until the next day. I still haven’t changed this setting because it made me realize that Instagram is not as important or entertaining as I previously thought. I did this for all social media apps except for Facebook and TikTok. It also inspired me to change my screen time settings to also lock me out of TikTok after 15 minutes, just like the rest of my social media. Overall, this practice showed me a little more about myself and the things I value.