Endless Scrolling and the Struggle to Stay Present

Scrolling has now become the symbolic gesture of our time. That automatic movement of the thumb gliding across the screen has become part of almost everyone’s daily routine, so natural and repetitive that it no longer even requires awareness. Yet the more I do it, the more I realize how exhausting it is, both mentally and physically.

There is something hypnotic about that endless motion, but also something deeply empty. It feels like being drawn into a whirlpool that leaves you, at least in my case, tired, tense, and frustrated. Every time I close an app after minutes or hours spent scrolling, I feel a sort of emotional discharge, a sense of emptiness that is hard to explain. What I find even more irritating is that once you start, it becomes almost impossible to stop. You let yourself go without realizing it, as if you were a passive spectator of an infinite flow of images, words, dances, comic sketches, and opinions that don’t truly enrich you.

Lately, I’ve been trying to change the way I use social media. I’m trying to “train” my algorithm, to show it what I really like and make it a little closer to my real interests. So I try to interact only with creative, artistic content, related to design, aesthetics, or hobbies that genuinely inspire me. And most of all, I try not to open the video section automatically, because I know how easy it is to get lost there.

It’s difficult, because scrolling has become a reflex, a mental pause that doesn’t recharge me but rather drains me. Still, I believe that each of us can try to regain a bit of control, even for just a few minutes a day. Maybe the real challenge isn’t to eliminate scrolling completely, but to consciously choose what we want to see and how much time we want to spend in front of the screen, reminding ourselves that real life doesn’t scroll downward, it unfolds right in front of us when we lift our gaze.

And you, how do you experience all this? Do you ever find yourself lost in endless scrolling? How do you feel afterward? Have you ever wondered how much real space it takes up in your everyday life?