I Scroll Like a Gen Alpha.
And Honestly? I'm Over It.

A raw, honest look at social media addiction, screen time, and what loss taught me about actually living my life.

By Mayette · Personal Essay · Mindful Living

Let me be honest with you. I'm a Gen X woman born in the 70s, raised on Saturday morning cartoons and handwritten letters. And yet, if you watched me on any given afternoon, you'd think I was born with a smartphone in my hand.

Hours. Gone. Just like that. I'll pick up my phone to check one thing, and the next time I look up, the light in the room has changed. The coffee I made is cold. And I'm sitting there with this hollow, itchy feeling in my chest, like I've been somewhere and nowhere at the same time.

Does that feeling sound familiar? That quiet emptiness after a long scroll? The faint guilt of time you cannot quite account for? If it does, you are not broken, and you are definitely not alone. Social media is engineered to do exactly this. It is not a personal weakness. But that does not mean we have to keep surrendering to it.

The life that is happening off screen

Here is the thing that finally cracked something open in me: loss. When people you love leave this world, the way you spend your time suddenly looks completely different. What felt like harmless scrolling starts to feel like something heavier, like borrowing time from your own life and lending it to a feed that does not even know your name.

I do not say this to be dramatic. I say it because grief has a way of cutting through the noise and asking a very simple question: What are you actually doing with your days?

And I did not love my answer.

This is not about quitting. It is about choosing.

I want to be clear. I am not here to demonize social media or tell you to delete every app and move to the mountains. Connection is real. Community is real. I have laughed, cried, and found genuine comfort in online spaces. That matters.

But there is a difference between using social media and being used by it. Between choosing to engage and mindlessly reaching for your phone the moment life gets quiet. The scroll is not the enemy. The unconsciousness is.

Small steps. No dramatic resolutions.

I am not making a big announcement. I am not doing a 30 day digital detox challenge or posting a countdown to my screen free life. That is not me, and honestly, those rarely stick for anyone.

What I am doing is simpler, quieter, and far less Instagram worthy: I am noticing. I am pausing before I pick up my phone. I am asking myself, what am I actually looking for right now? Sometimes the answer is connection. Sometimes it is boredom. Sometimes it is avoidance. And just knowing the difference has already started to shift something.

I am choosing progress over perfection. A little more presence each day. A little less automatic reaching. That is it. That is the whole plan.

Life is short. Shorter than we think.

I know that sounds like a bumper sticker. But I mean it in the most unglamorous, ordinary way possible: the Tuesday afternoons, the slow mornings, the conversations that go nowhere and everywhere at once, those are the things I keep thinking about when I think about a life well lived. Not the viral moments. Not the perfectly framed shots. The unremarkable, irreplaceable stuff.

And I do not want to scroll past it anymore.

If any part of this resonates with you, if you have ever put your phone down and felt that same hollow echo, I hope this is the tiny nudge you needed. Not to be perfect. Just to be a little more awake to your own life.

We deserve that. All of us. Gen X, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, all of us.