Doomscrolling and the “bread and circuses” of the modern age

Roman Kavanagh

Opinions Editor

Last year I deleted Instagram. It was a long time coming. Up until that point, I had tried everything: screen time limits, third-party apps, even aversive conditioning. Nothing was working. I still found myself on a morning and nightly scroll, mindlessly clicking the app every time I picked up my phone. So I thought to myself: it’s time to let go.

And guess what? It worked! For about a day. Then I found myself on Youtube shorts: ‘the lowest of the low,’ I’ve heard some call it. So I deleted that too. Then Pinterest, and every other social media. And it worked for a while. Until I needed to watch a Youtube video on how to do something, and got sick of typing it into the search bar again. Or I met somebody new, and they would never ask for a phone number, because that was too personal, but instead…an Instagram handle.

You see where I’m going with this. In the digital world, it’s almost impossible to not feel like you’re on one side of the polar extremes, either a phone-addicted iPad baby or a flip phone carrying recluse. Don’t get me wrong: I respect those of my generation who have been able to revert back to analog. I tried it for a week, but then realized I couldn’t get anywhere without Google Maps.

So are we completely lost to the machine? Do we need to give in and take what the companies are trying to sell us? I don’t know that I’m willing to give up that easily.

I can’t sit here and dish out advice because I myself haven’t really overcome this addiction. I still find myself sitting in bed on my phone when I really wish I was doing something else, gripped by the jaws of executive dysfunction.

The only thing I think is going to get us out of this mindless addiction is probably the same thing that progresses change in any area of life: rage. Not the self-loathing disappointment I used to reflect at myself for not accomplishing what I wanted to do with my time, but rather, rage at the people behind the scenes. The tech CEO’s who make billions off of our time, our attention, and our complacency.

Every time I find myself clicking the Reels page, I think about the phrase ‘breads and circuses.’ It’s a well-known quote from Roman poet Juvenal that essentially reads that before, the People of the Roman empire governed themselves with political liberty and vigor which has been subdued by the promise of “just two things: bread and circuses.” Food and entertainment; the most basic needs of the people are met, and the rest of their wants are filled by the colorful distractions the bourgeoisie class puts out.

I have no reservations in saying that we are living in a political hellscape. The extent of the horrors we are seeing---a topic for another article---are masked by the breads and circuses that we actively and willingly consume on a daily basis. Humanity is in a state of complacency because we have allowed ourselves to be satiated by the most pathetic excuse of entertainment in human history: short form content. Our dopamine seeking brains enjoy playing the slot-machines of micro-emotions that these videos provide us with every day, but in reality, we aren’t experiencing anything. I’m your perfect modern citizen: I love the internet for a million and one reasons. But I also think it's vital to remember that the smoke and mirrors of the internet will never compare to the reality of human experience, and we will never get anything done for ourselves if we let the conversation end at bread and circuses.