Pandemic’s Recipe for Addiction
Ingredients:
- cut good experiences
- anxiety-provoking news
- exploitative media
Put it in a large pot of people and let simmer for 3 years.
Water without gas, please
I’ve lost many activities during the pandemic that gave my life a little spice. I’m an office worker, and there is not much spice to be found in creating documents. It’s quite a chili sin chili. Losing the flavor in private life as well was a big setback for me. I only know now how much my personal activities balanced out my work life. Belated thanks to my sports subscription.
The loss of good experiences is not to be underestimated when looking at the consequences of corona restrictions. It makes us more vulnerable to emotional outbursts and lowers our tolerance for inconvenience.
In the beginning, we were all excited to make the best of it. We tried to create moments of joy with friends via video chat. By now, the spirit has turned stale because we know that it’s not the same. — By the way, the metaverse will face a similar problem. Digital is not the same.
What’s on the menu? News!
Before the pandemic, I hadn’t been watching the news regularly. Then, the ever-changing rules made it necessary. I don’t know about other countries, but I guess the sudden changes in regulations were hard to follow everywhere. I am living in Germany, and we had few real lockdowns. Instead, we had many long half-brewed semi-lockdown-ish situations with strange rules like not being allowed to sit on benches in the park (even alone).
The daily news informed us about the minutely changes in incidence and reproduction number. We watched the numbers rising and politicians failing. Sometimes I would have wished for fewer facts to give my hopes a slight chance, but the reality was too daunting.
Our anchor of hope at that time was the vaccine. We thought we’d get out of the pandemic if only we would vaccinate enough. I remember that I felt tremendous and invincible when I got my second shot. But we all had to realize that 70% of people being vaccinated was not enough to save us. It wasn’t a reason to lose hope, but we did everything we could, and it still wasn’t enough. I was angry why people would doubt the existence of the disease and wouldn’t believe in science.
The high-caloric dessert
Closed gyms, clubs, bars, theaters, museums, swimming pools, and much more left us with a void. For those who switched to home-office work, the day consisted of staring at one big screen only to switch to another screen after work. There was nothing else to do.
For me, this was (and still is) a time when my eyes got really bad. I didn’t spend little time looking at my screen before the pandemic, but in lockdown, my screen-time skyrocketed. I have new glasses now.
At the same time, my mood sank day after day. To date, I still don’t know if I felt terrible because of the pandemic or because of the time I spent with social media, news, and dating apps. Partly without being able to date because of lockdown…
When we are at our weakest, social media has an easy game. The business concept of these apps is to steal as much of your attention as possible. They generate insights about you to sell them to advertisers and flood you with their ads. The problem here is not that you are weak because we are sometimes, especially in a pandemic. The problem is that the media is engineered to use the weakness and keep you from living your life and from achieving your goals. They get money for every minute you spend with their apps. The problem is the incentive of those companies, not the weak individual.
And then there was another app that I was using to pile up screen time: With the COVID-19 stock market crash and the rise of cryptocurrencies, I felt that the time had come to get my finances together. I signed up with a broker app and bought books about stocks. It seemed like everyone was talking about it anyway, so it was an excellent opportunity to learn something new and talk about it with friends. Little did I know that following the stock market would get me hooked so quickly and that I’d develop a severe compulsion to check my account every other minute.
At some point, I spent several hours per day researching stocks and strategies only to lose track of the work I had to do. It was an obsession, and I had the feeling that this was close to being addicted to gambling. It didn’t feel good, and I was losing money on top of it. I had to stop it.
Filling the void
If you’re like me and your life has changed quite a lot in the last few years, you might also have to realize there is space in your schedule that is still without purpose. The pandemic has freed up time, but don’t give it to something that keeps you from doing what is good for you. Don’t let social media take your free time, don’t let gambling take your free time, and don’t let porn take your free time ;-)
My formula for a healthy and happy life in the pandemic and afterward is to reverse the recipe from the beginning:
- Actively create positive experiences. Try something new or remember something you used to like and do it again.
- The news seem important, but try reducing your exposure when you feel they are making you anxious. Deactivate push messages and don’t watch the news. I’m pretty sure you’ll not miss anything important.
- Keep on trying to reduce your social media use as far as possible. Cut down on apps that exploit your basic human needs and steal your attention. The engineers are outstanding at getting you to pick up your phone again, so don’t let your hopes down if you relapse. Let your real emotions come back.
