Headline, July 24 2026/ OPINION : ''' THE ALGORITHM TAP '''

OPINION : 

''' THE ALGORITHM TAP '''

I TRIED MANY REMEDIES TO BREAK my social media habit. A homemade hack worked best. So that's the lo-fi way I broke my addiction to the algorithm.

FOR HOW MUCH HATE IT GETS THESE DAYS - I like the algorithm sometimes. I've trained my TikTok like an obedient dog - only instead of laying wildfowl at my feet, it brings me videos of Egyptian wedding performers, cooking influencers :

From rural Vietnam and style shows of something called '' Balkan core aesthetic.'' I like when my Instagram ads present me with some inane kitchen gadget shaped like a cute tomato.

But those treats come along with the many dead squirrels my algorithm also brings to me : the hollowness that follows witnessing the mundane details of so many people's lives, the nagging sensation that everyone is somewhere else having fun without me, the flattening of my tastes and substitutes.

Do I actually like ballet sneakers, or have Meta and three paid style influencers I follow in Europe conspired to get me to buy them?

It's why I've been trying to live a Summer of Ludd, a term I'm cribbing from a group that has been papering fliers all over New York City the past few weeks in an effort to get people off their phones.

'' NOT EVERYTHING IS ONLINE, '' read one poster I saw flaking off a wall in the East Village. For me, less and less has been. I've been staging an experiment for the past few months.

I've removed all my social media apps - Instagram, Twitter, TikTok -and moved them onto an old iPhone I had lying around my house.

I had dubbed this phone my Scroll Phone. I designed a single spot in my home where I could use it : a stripy armchair in my living room, which I have now anointed the Scrolly Chair.

The Scroll Phone has no SIM card, only Wi-Fi, and I'm allowed to use it as much as I want, so long as I'm sitting in the Scrolly Chair. The Scrolly Chair exists so that I don't end up doing exactly what I did when my Actual Phone was also my Scroll Phone :

Eating dinner with my Scroll Phone, watching TV with my Scroll Phone, sitting on the toilet with my Scroll Phone. [ You do it. don't pretend like you don't.]

The Scrolly Chair allows me to tether my social media use to a single place. If I'm on the Scroll Phone, I must be on the Scroll Chair.

I even bought a phone stand shaped like a little piggy for the Scroll Phone to keep it on my shelf, a way to remind myself of what I'm doing when I pick it up : gobbling up social media like a pig at the trough.

Friends are sometimes incredulous when they have learned of the Scroll Phone's existence. It makes it sound as if I was in the grips of a serious social media addiction.

In fact, I was already tapering, posting on Instagram every few weeks at most. But I'd gone through difficult life changes in the past few years, and social media wasn't helping. I noticed that at my most vulnerable.

I'd scroll to distract myself and would only plunge deeper into anxiety and insecurity. I would delete or disable my accounts for monthlong stretches, only to re-download and bings, reaching the same depressing emotional dead end once more.

The delete-and-repeat cycle was only one strategy. I tried keeping my phone on grayscale for several months, a hack meant to make us less enticed by the addictive-devices we all keep in our pockets.

I took Instagram off my phone and looked at it only on desktop. I had the daily timers Apple now offers on apps, none of it really stopped the nagging feeling of wanting check, and check again, like a nervous tic.

Regardless of what I did I felt pulled back into the algorithm's grip.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on Social Media, Algorithms, Addictions and Life, continues. !WOW! thanks Meher Ahmad, an Editor in the Opinion section.

With respectful dedication to Parents, Founders of !WOW!, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

See You all prepare for the great '' Constitutional Democratic Convention '' on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter X !E-WOW! -The Ecosystem 2011 :

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - The Voice Of The Voiceless