It is easy to spend 5 seconds on a post, move on, and feel like it is negligible. However, 5 seconds x 100 times is different from 100 x nothing. This exercise is to help you see more into your online life, activating a part of your brain that gets shut off over time naturally.

It goes as follows:

  • overall, keep surfing

  • for each post/story/piece of news:
    • “enjoy” it first (assuming you surf such platforms to seek some thrill)
    • reflect: what topic is this piece about?
    • reflect: how do i feel after seeing this?
  • after about 10-20 pieces, ask yourself:
    • reflect: what is the topic distribution of my feed so far? (how many friend-originated posts, how many ads, how many life hack videos, how many news, how many emotion-provoking posts)
    • reflect: how do i feel about spending that much time to go through those contents?

These tricks are not to expose social media in a bad light. Depends on how you use it, it can be good. I come up with this exercise because I want to incorporate meta-cognition into my life more. Will keep you posted on the result.