I’m sitting outside a cafe, waiting for my friend and at the table next to me, two women are having the most wonderfully spicy conversation about divorce and dating, that I couldn’t help overhearing.
So I get out my phone.
Nothing on Instagram is more interesting than the conversation happening to my left, but sitting alone at a cafe table doing nothing, I sort of feel like I have to…
Why though? Do I feel exposed? Rude? Nosey? Like I’m obviously listening?
I mean it was hard not to. But the phone, it can feel like a shield of some sort…
A way of saying look, I’m busy, I’m not ear-wigging… 👀
Except once I was in my phone I wasn’t actually looking at anything in particular... Scrolling & swiping… Moving through content without anything being that interesting or productive... A low level sense of restlessness and dissatisfaction start to bubble up inside of me…And then I hear myself clearly say, almost like someone else had said it out loud to me…
“Katie, you are in a scroll loop.”
So I put my phone face down on the table.
Look up.
Take a breath.
The two women’s conversation is still going strong, the sun is shining, new people walk by, and we exchange smiles as we make eye contact, it’s human and real.
And instead of staring into my phone aimlessly, I sit there, alone, present to the moment, feeling the sun on my face, soaking in the atmosphere, slightly amused at the situation.
This wasn’t willpower, or a screen time limit, or a rule I’d set myself regarding social media.
This was me having agency in the moment. Making a different choice than to scroll for the sake of it.
This simple phrase of Scroll Loop is a name I’ve given to something that happens to me everyday… My often unconscious habit of scrolling or app hopping.
And with my nerdy digital wellbeing hat on, what is exciting is that the very act of naming it is called metacognition.
Metacognition is considered the space where conscious choice, agency, and self-regulation live.
It means that naming the scroll loop can create a tiny gap in our attention when we are unconsciously using tech, and this gap is where we can make a different choice.
And it’s got some really interesting neuroscience to back it up.
This is what The Attention Experiment is all about.
We are in the car, chilling out after a lovely day out, I’m driving, there is some music on, and me and a bestie are weaving our way through the beautiful Somerset countryside.
We aren’t chatting, but there is a comfortable quiet in the car… but then I notice somethings shifted in the space between us…
I glance over and my friend is looking at their phone. I think maybe they are checking messages on WhatsApp. Maybe it’s a work thing… I glance over again maybe five minutes later… And now I see that he is scrolling Instagram and that it feels like he isn’t really there with me in the car anymore… And I notice that I feel a bit sad about that.
Aha, I think, he isn’t being rude, he is in a Scroll Loop!
So I don’t say anything neggy or make a thing about it. But instead I just ask, what are you looking at?
He looked at his phone. Looked up and over at me and said, oh, nothing really…
And put it away.
He made that choice for himself.
We talked for the rest of the drive home, taking in a magnificent view of Glastonbury Tor as we dropped down into the valley.
Two stories. Same sequence.
Scroll. Loop. Notice. Choose.
One was me catching myself.
One was me noticing it with someone I love.
Scroll. Loop. Notice. Choose.
What’s actually happening…
We all know about dopamine and variable rewards by now, the infinite scroll, the slot machine design… We know it’s been designed to be engaging, to get us online as often and for as long as possible.
But it’s no longer just pings and dings or likes and follows that suck us into our phones, it’s the internal triggers, the micro habits, the personalised content activating our default mode network (where we daydream and identify)…
But the good news is that the same brain that gets pulled into a Scroll Loop has the ability to notice that it’s been pulled into a loop, and then it can choose to do something different.
This is the metacognition.
This is where you are ‘thinking about your own thinking’, noticing what you’re doing while you’re doing it.
And research shows that this noticing, and naming what’s happening in real time, creates a measurable gap in our automatic behaviour… aka our unconscious habits, which happen a lot for us when we use phones / social media.
There’s a study from UCLA by neuroscientist Dr Matthew Lieberman, that found when people simply identified and named what they were feeling, activity in the amygdala .. aka the brain’s threat and reactivity centre, this decreased, while activity in the prefrontal cortex, the rational, decision-making part of the brain, increased. (Lieberman et al., Psychological Science, 2007)
Which means naming what’s happening brings it into our conscious awareness, which allows the rational parts of our brain to take over and interrupts the automatic habit…!
This opens up the space for choice.
And this is just some of the science behind Scroll Loop Notice Choose.
It sounds so simple and yet you’re literally shifting which part of your brain is in charge by noticing and naming it.
Ker Pow! Take that Big Tech!
Your Turn
I’ve been practising this for a while now. And I’m developing this work to take into schools, but I need more feedback to see how this works out in the wild and would love you to get involved!
I’m recruiting you as subscribers to Social Media For A New Age to take part in The Attention Experiment to help me see if I can help you improve your digital habits too.
Todays experiment is super simple…
Just try naming it.
Next time you pick up your phone without really meaning to, or find yourself mid-scroll wondering how you got there, or app hopping without intention… just say it. Out loud or in your head.
Scroll Loop
Don’t force yourself to stop scrolling in that moment. Don’t judge yourself, or others, for being there.
Just name it.
And notice what happens in the moments after you do.
Is there an organic Notice Choose that occurs?
Did naming it create any kind of change to that moment, or to your day?
Or to your relationships maybe?
Did you try it with someone else… a partner, a kid, a friend in the car like I did?
Did it feel strange? Did it work? Did it not work?
What happened when you named it and noticed?
Please come back and tell me!
In the next issue of The Attention Experiment, I’ll be sharing more about the magic of this attention sequence, taking you through Scroll Loop Notice Choose stage by stage…
Sharing what’s happening in your brain and body at each point and why I think it matters to know this now more than ever!!
And I’ll give you a new experiment to try using the same sequence.
Scroll > Loop > Notice > Choose
Also coming up is a Substack Live with doreen dodgen-magee, psy.d. , my fave tech psychologist, author of Deviced. I found her book early on in my digital wellbeing journey and then we became friends through Instagram. She has a brilliant new book she is working on, In Praise of Boredom that I am looking forward to talking about. We can’t wait to chat together, and share our passion about this topic with you.
I hope you enjoyed this first issue of The Attention Experiment, this work is born out of my own relationship with social media and digital technology, and what I see happening in the world around us.
It is surely a topic for these times, especially now with AI. I believe we need better education, support and strategies to self regulate and develop agency, no matter what.
I don’t think waiting for the government to age gate, or big tech to change algorithms, will change that much in our day to day lives, or the habits that we have already engrained.
This field is still new, and we have work to do, but together we can understand what this tech is doing to us and create the change we wish to see in the world.
I really hope you enjoy this new series as part of your subscription, and please do let me know how you get on with naming and noticing!
Love Katie x
The Attention Experiment explores our habits, health and happiness around social media and AI. As a qualified Digital Wellbeing Coach, and fellow of The Consciously Digital Institute, I’m using neuroscience, the latest digital wellbeing research and real life stories, to help us navigate our relationship with tech.
I love the way you have applied metacognition to our phone habits. Being able to recognise a thought or a feeling is the first step to changing almost any habit. This is a tool that will enable us to feel in control rather than believing we have no resistance to the scroll loop. We have the power!
Brilliant article lovely. The metacognition aspect is super fascinating and so much food for thought. I am also honoured to be featured in your first Attention Experiment article he he xx I'm also feeling that very possibly the 20 minutes waiting for me by the cafe was perfectly cosmic ordered to flow into this :) xx