Jackie McGregor: Can’t stop mindless scrolling? It’s addictive – we’re all doomed!
I’m in a predicament. My husband is being blatantly seduced by brazen hussies and I am utterly powerless to intervene.
After work he engages with them, right there in front of me, the man has no shame! He sits mobile in hand, enthralled, monosyllabic, unreachable, under the intoxicating spell they weave.
The minxy temptresses I refer to are shorts and reels. I’m not talking leisurewear and Scottish dancing, I refer to the irresistible lure of YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, and even worse, is the tantalization of Tiktok. Up against this thrupple, I fear my husband’s attention may never return to me, as he remains mesmerised by his mobile, engrossed by the potent power of pixels, rendering him blind to my charms and immune to my womanly wiles.
Wondering what the big attraction was, I tentatively dipped my toe into the beguiling world of the internet short. Several hours later, I was finally able to extract myself from its intoxicating hold. My evening had all but disappeared. I’d mindlessly scrolled videos featuring wedding dress try-ons, clips from Sex and the City, people my age dancing like they did in the 1980s and cats attacking dogs. I eventually tore myself away after being presented with a reel captioned, ‘Her wedding day was ruined when this happened...’ I watched until the end of the video only to find, nothing happened! She walked up the aisle, the end! This brought me to my senses.
“Enough of this witchcraft!” I declared, throwing down my mobile and begging hubby to save himself, but it was too late. He had fallen down the rabbit hole and was engrossed in a video of a horse trying to get a piece of duct tape off its nose. As I watched him all I could think of was the quotation from Dante’s Divine Comedy, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’
A recent survey revealed that 80 percent of Brits confessed to mindless scrolling, averaging three hours daily glued to the screen.
What starts as just a quick check-in to a social media platform like Tiktok, can turn into hours of scrolling, but it’s designed to do just that by tech teams whose one aim is to make us spend more time online. These masters of manipulation provide us with specifically targeted, easily consumed content through an algorithm, causing us to keep scrolling, even if we’d rather stop.
These platforms work on the same principles that make gambling addictive. Perusing these videos activates the brain’s rewards centre by releasing dopamine - the feel-good chemical associated with pleasure and reward. It works on the same basis as playing a slot machine. You may not hit the jackpot every time with a video that interests you, but there’s always the promise that the next one will be a goodie, and so we scroll on in search of the next entertaining clip. When we find one, more feel-good chemical floods us. We’re effectively drugging ourselves into an almost hypnotic state.
In the meantime, our mental health and relationships suffer, as we immerse ourselves in the virtual world and neglect our human connections.
It seems the more sophisticated our means of communication become, the less we communicate, as we create a world where we’re being left to our own devices.
NORTHERN IRELAND’S TOOTH FAIRY HAS THE BEST GOING RATE
My friend’s young son, Johnnie, lost a baby tooth and was excitedly awaiting his first visit from the Tooth Fairy.
“It’s been a while since the Fairy visited our house. What’s the going rate for a fang these days?” I asked his mum.
“We’re not sure. There’s been talk in the playground of someone getting a tenner, then £5 for every tooth thereafter, which I find hard to believe. Johnnie says Emma was left £3, even that seems like a lot! Emma’s got another wobbly one and she’s expecting a little bonus as she claims she’s practically a tooth factory for the Fairy now! Then there’s Jake, he got £2 under his pillow and walked on the tooth in his kitchen and hurt his foot. He’s reselling it back. His mum told him the poor Tooth Fairy must have been very tired and dropped it and was it fair to ask for more money, when he’d already received payment? He argued it was definitely fair as it was the Fairy’s fault, he’d suffered an injury and where there’s blame there’s a claim!” she whispered conspiratorially.
“Good grief!” I exclaimed.
Research revealed Northern Ireland is the best place in the UK to secure a good sum for a gnasher, with a tooth fetching an average price of £2.93.
Who’d want to be a Tooth Fairy these days? When it comes to dental transactions the youth of today are fearsome, threatening legal action for poor service and dealing in incisor trading.