What is Scrolling?
Mobile phones, smartphone And tablets have now become indispensable objects in all respects. Of the must have That accompany us twenty -four out of twenty -four, wherever we move. From the outdoor walk to the intimacy of our domestic rooms, during work, in company, in solitude, in the time busy, in your free time and in the empty time, now almost completely zero and filled.
Technological objects are increasingly used, as well as for their countless instrumental and work functions, also to fill our “dead times”. Thanks to musical and playful apps, unlimited navigation on the Internet and, of course, continuous access to social networksuch as Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok and others.
The gesture of taking the smartphone in hand, unlocking it, opening and scrolling our social pages has become so habitual and automatic that it deserves the minting of a real name: scrolling.
The Scrolling corresponds to the movement of the thumb flowing from the bottom upwards on the screen of the touchscreen devices to recover the new news that appears on the bulletin board or in the stories. Or from top to bottom to update the pages and view feeds and notifications.
Infinite Scrolling
This gesture, repeated hundreds of times a day in a often completely automatic way, is indicated, in fact, with the expression Infinite Scrolling.
We do not view our smartphones only following the reception of notifications that report the arrival of calls or messages, but also on the basis of an automatism. This leads us to take the phone and scroll through the social pages without realizing it.
Often we “awaken” only after a few seconds, creating the gesture just made: at that point we can decide whether to continue to “scroll” or close the apps and store the smartphone. However, this will be recovered again after just a few minutes or second, as under the effect of an automatic pilot.
So, repeatedly. Some authors (Bayer et al., 2016) have defined automatism as habitual, impulsive behavior, outside the processes of attention, awareness and control.
Maintenance factors
In addition to automatism, what are the psychological processes that keep our behavior active?
One of the most powerful explanation mechanisms is the one defined as instrumental conditioningwhich is based on the concept of positive reinforcement.
This conditioning mechanism occurs when, in putting into practice a behavior, we obtain a gratification, which works as a “prize”, (from reinforcement, in fact), pushing us to replicate the aforementioned behavior.
It has been highlighted how scrolling generates a real feeling of gratification and pleasure, due to the release of dopamine. This especially when we receive likes of likes and comments, which we feel we must absolutely view.
Even when we come across posts and neutral or not interesting content, we are still led to go on “still one, still one, still of one”. Waiting to find some other source of gratification which, without delaying too much, sooner or later arrives, feeding a mechanism of intermittent reinforcementwho keeps us glued to the screen.
Parallelism with addictions
To a wider measure, this mechanism is the basis of all pathological addictions, both those of substances and the so -called behavioral addictions.
In particular, there are new addictions related to technology and dysfunctional behaviors online, such as internet dependence, video games, compulsive shopping, sexual and porn dependence, addiction to TV series and, ultimately, dependence on social networks.
In addition to the positive reinforcement mechanism linked to pleasure, when it comes to addictions, it is also necessary to consider the phenomena of tolerance And addiction. That is, the need to increase the time of implementation of behavior to obtain the same degree of satisfaction. As well as the phenomenon of abstinencethat is, the discomfort caused by the impossibility of implementing the behavior of gratification.
In the case of dependence and abstinence on social network, the term has also been coined nomophobia (from English no-motor) which occurs when it is unable to connect (also called disconnection syndrome)
Activating negative emotions activating stimuli
During Scrolling behavior, our attention is captured not only by pleasant and rewarding stimuli, such as notifications, photos, memes and other pleasant contents, but also by negative stimuli or adverse francing, which arouse unpleasant emotions such as anxiety, fear or anger in us.
As Ned Presnall, director of the Center for therapy against addictions Plan Your Recovery of St. Louis, explains in a recent interview on the Washington Post: “It may seem a contradiction that we cannot detach ourselves from bad news. But the human brain has evolved to manage stimuli in a hierarchical way, starting first by those who are most relevant for survival».
When we come across bad news, therefore, we are led to try to know more and more for a sort of survival instinct. This, however, if brought to the extremes, becomes more illusory than real, more counterproductive than beneficial.
This is what happened, for example, during the period of Pandemia from Covid-19 and related Lockdown, when we often found ourselves shaking compulsively sites and social channels to the spasmodic search for news and information.
In addition to the aforementioned psychological maintenance mechanisms, of course, all those graphic elements of the social pages are added, which have layouts, colors, content and hierarchies expertly designed to attract us and let us remain glued to the screen.
Trigger factors
It may be important to dwell on trigger factors of Scrolling behavior.
If it is true, in fact, that we often find ourselves with the smartphone in hand without realizing it, at a careful analysis we could discover that, most of the time, just before taking the phone we were immersed in a situation not too pleasant for us.
If we start paying attention to what happens just before Scrolling behavior, we can find that, probably, we are in a moment of boredom. For example, while we wait our turn in line, while we are waiting for the bus stop or, even, stop for a few seconds at the red traffic light.
Or, we are in a situation of social unease, for example when we are in the room with someone who is not familiar to us and you are creating embarrassing silence.
Or, again, we can find ourselves immersed in Scrolling behavior during a moment of difficulty proceeding in a task. For example when we are studying something complicated or when we have to solve a mentally demanding problem and we are in a situation of impassewe feel effort and our attention splashes away from the goal.
Other times we find ourselves scrolling before sleeping, when we are already in bed and we cannot sleep, perhaps intent on mentally retraced something that went wrong and that caused us frustration.
All these situations have, as a common denominator, to arouse unpleasant emotions in us, from which we try to go out as soon as possible.
Scrolling, subtracting from these emotions, therefore represents the faster and more accessible way out, exploiting another key mechanism of instrumental conditioning, called negative reinforcement. In this case, the incentive to start scrolling is not given by the addition of something positive, but by the subtraction of something negative, such as an emotion of boredom, embarrassment or frustration.
How to get out of it?
Although the scrolling does not necessarily translate into a real dependence, when it begins to occupy every second of our empty time or when it is triggered in the moments dedicated to work or rest, it can become a somewhat dysfunctional behavior.
It may therefore be useful to try to limit and circumscribe the time dedicated to Scrolling (Price, 2018). In this regard, more or less functional solutions have been proposed, such as modifying the settings of our devices to change the colors of the screen, selecting gray stairs at the expense of more vivid shades and, therefore, more attractive and stimulated for our brain.
Another solution may be to make use of a sort of “Parental Control“At the time deadline, downloading apps that limit the connection time on the social pages.
Even more drastic solutions provide for the uninstallation of social networks and the return to a more essential use of the phone.
A weighted and aware use of the vehicle
However, those just described do not appear easily practicable solutions. Rather, it may certainly be more useful to promote a less automatic and more aware attitude towards the Scrolling: it is not so much about eliminating this behavior, but of making it more weighted, the result of a conscious and deliberate choice.
A useful exercise could be to dwell on the trigger factors, in line with the above.
When we hear the impulse to take the phone in hand to open social media and start scrolling, or when we realize that we have just done it without realizing it, we can stop for a moment and ask ourselves: “Why do I feel the need to do this now?”; “What emotion am I trying?”; “Is there any unpleasant emotion from which I feel the need to escape?”.
This process can be quite complicated, at least at first, and needs to be trained. The goal is to reduce automatism and increase awareness, in line the psychological and meditative practice of Mindfulness (Baym et al., 2020; Colier, 2016)), which plans to pay conscious attention at the present moment.
By monitoring our mental state, we will be able to know what we are feeling, thinking and feeling at a given moment and, therefore, also to choose how we want to continue. The goal of this monitoring exercise is to switch from a process of stimulus to Automatic reaction to a process of stimulus to Weighted response.
With this awareness, we can decide whether to start (or continue) with scrolling or choose alternatives. For example, re -enter the attention on the task we were carrying out, try to socialize, or entertain with previously downloaded apps, for example apps to listen to music, meditation or learn a new language.
Any decision (even continuing with scrolling), at that point it will still be a good decision, because the result of our free choice, aware and thoughtful.
Bibliography
- Bayer, JB, Ellison, NB, Schoenebeck, Sy, & Falk, EB (2016). Sharing the Small Moments: Ephemeral Social Interaction On Snapchat. Information, Communication & Society, 19(7), 956– 977.
- Baym, NK, Wagman, KB, & Persaud, CJ (2020). Mindfully Scrolling: Rethinking Facebook After time Deactivated, Social Media + Society1–10.
- Colier, N. (2016). The Power of Off: The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a virtual world. Sounds True
- Price, C. (2018). How To Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan To Take Back Your Life. Ten speed press.
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/coronavirus-doom-scrolling stop/2020/07/29/2C87E9b2-d034-11a-8d32-1ebf4e9d8e0d_story.html
