How to survive being online when everything feels too much (and too annoying)

No More Algorithm Junk Food: How I’m Taking Back My Attention

Photo by Milly Vueti on Unsplash

If someone handed you a tray of food, piled high with processed junk being thrown at it continuously, and theoretically a few scraps of real nutrition hidden underneath, and told you to eat whatever lands on top first, you’d probably hesitate. You’d ask: Who picked this? What’s in it? Is this even good for me? But when it comes to content—the information, opinions, and entertainment we consume—we rarely stop to question. We just scroll and swallow, letting algorithms serve us whatever keeps us hooked, no matter how empty or manipulative it is. And just like bad food leaves you sluggish and unsatisfied, bad content leaves you drained, anxious, and no happier or smarter than before.

I don’t let some random billionaire tech bro decide what I eat every day so why should I let him decide what I put in my brain?

I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit scrolling, consuming, and letting the internet shape my thoughts before I even knew it was happening. I’ve wasted entire evenings reading outrage discourse that I forgot about the next day. I’ve refreshed news feeds, convincing myself I was “staying informed,” when really, I was just feeding my own anxiety.

At some point, I had to ask myself: Is this actually making me smarter? More thoughtful? Rested? Relaxed? Even entertained? Or was I just stuck in a cycle of reacting, consuming, and feeling exhausted or just dulled by it all?

Overloaded

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s not just about social media—it’s about the burnout of trying to care about everything all the time. I wrote about this before in The Other Pandemic: Political Languishing in an Era of Too Much, describing the exhaustion of feeling the urgency to act and yet being too drained to respond.

That cycle of outrage, overwhelm and exhaustion? It’s not just in politics. It’s in how we consume everything: news, trends, life “highlights”, opinions, discourse. The demand to keep up, to stay informed, to react instantly, is relentless. And just like with activism, the guilt sets in: If I stop paying attention, am I complicit?

However, being overloaded is NOT the same as being engaged. And exhaustion—mental, emotional, intellectual—is a tool used to keep people passive. Undoubtedly, if I want to actually think, actually contribute, actually care, I have to get out of the algorithm’s chokehold.

Built like Gambling

Social media operates on the same psychological tricks as gambling: high unpredictability, low actual reward, and a hijacked dopamine system that keeps you coming back for more. Just like, a slot machine gives you a few thrilling wins scattered among countless losses, social media buries a handful of interesting, funny, or informative posts beneath endless mundane content. The occasional hit—a post that makes you laugh, a headline that shocks you, a video you actually enjoy—creates the illusion that scrolling is worthwhile, even though the actual net benefit is low.

We like to think we’re choosing what we consume, but the algorithm is choosing for us. Last year, after watching a senseless reel of a dude I met at a party, that was drone footage of him just going to a movie theater in his suburb, which I watched in full to find out why a drone was involved, I had to pause and ask myself: why did I just watch that? I’m obviously not “learning” from this but I do not even feel entertained or refreshed by it. (And no, I still don’t have an answer as to why!) I’m just keeping my brain/my eyes busy, waiting for the next hit of something engaging to land on my feed.

So this year, I’m making a shift. Not a digital detox (let’s be real, I’m not about to disappear into the woods) but a conscious decision to change how I interact with the internet.

Photo by Wahid Sadiq on Unsplash

What I’m Actually Doing (or trying to do) Differently

📵 Touch grass. Take breaks. Trying to do AT LEAST one activity a day that doesn’t involve a screen.

🔹 Being deliberate about what I read. No more mindless consumption. If I’m going to give something my time, it needs to be worth it, whether that’s a great long-form article, a book, or a newsletter that actually makes me think, away from the algorithm’s endless churn.

🔹 Unfollowing, muting, and curating like my brain depends on it (it really does!). I am limiting my time on The Museum of Everyone’s Fake Perfect Life (yep, Instagram) to no more than 30 minutes a week. Thankfully, I never got sucked into TikTok’s rabbit hole (I just watch the same recycled reels on Instagram three weeks later like a dignified elder millennial) and I treat Facebook like a graveyard, popping in only for birthday notifications and annually to post kitchen items I don’t use on my community buy-nothing. Also, I axed Twitter as soon as it was X’d (see what I did there haha).

🔹 I’ve aggressively limited my LinkedIn time by muting everyone who thinks “I wasn’t going to share this, but…” is a compelling narrative device, scrolling past 37-paragraph “journeys” with the safe assumption that it ends in a promotion, and refusing to engage with anyone who uses “I am humbled” unironically to then share some boring AF certification they did. Beware an upcoming rant on how LinkedIn is the new Facebook!

🔹 Giving my attention to things that take longer than 30 seconds to process. If I can read, watch, or engage with something without thinking, that’s probably a sign I should be spending my time elsewhere.

Writing here on Substack is part of this shift because it forces me to engage with ideas more deeply instead of just reacting to whatever crosses my feed. Instead of consuming passively, I’m processing, questioning, and articulating thoughts in a way that actually sticks, something social media rarely allows.

Even if no one reads this, it’s still valuable because the act of writing itself is an antidote to the chaos. It’s a way to slow down, process, and make sense of the noise instead of being swallowed by it. Writing is not just expression, it’s excavation—a way of pulling my own thoughts out from under the avalanche of external opinions, viral takes, and algorithm-fed distractions. It’s a form of meditation, a way to untangle the mental knots that endless scrolling tightens.

It is about reclaiming my attention, my focus, my ability to think in full sentences rather than fragmented reactions. And if it resonates with even one other person—if it sparks a conversation, a shift in perspective, or even just a pause for thought—then it’s done something that social media, in all its rapid-fire frenzy, rarely does: create space for depth and genuine connection.

This isn’t about moral superiority or pretending I’ve cracked the code (I wish!). I’m just tired of feeling like my attention span is being outsourced to an algorithm.

Are You Feeling This Too?

If any of this resonates, I’d love to hear from you:

• What’s one thing you’ve stopped consuming that made your online life better?

• How do you stay informed without feeling drained?

• What’s something you read or watched recently that actually stuck with you?

Drop a comment or send me a message.

I really hope this space is not just another thing to scroll past.

BONUS oversharing: Some Good Stuff I Enjoy on My Devices (instead of mindless scrolling).

To be enjoyed in addition to real paper books and magazines, not in place of them.

1. ProPublica – Investigative journalism that actually matters. No fluff, just real reporting on corruption, power, and systems that affect us all.

2. Today in Tabs – Smart, sarcastic, and actually enjoyable media commentary. A good antidote to Twitter rage spirals.

3. Longform.org – A curated list of real long reads—investigative pieces, essays, and stories that actually stay with you.

4. Maintenance Phase (Podcast) – Hilariously well-researched takedowns of diet culture, wellness scams, and health myths.

5. Kottke.org – One of the last good corners of the internet, curating fascinating, weird, and wonderful finds across science, art, history, and culture. Always makes me feel like a more interesting person.