Time can be felt in only two ways: prospectively and retrospectively. When I was getting my driver's license, I was forced to wait in line at the DMV for about three hours. The wait felt like centuries to me, as I stood in a cold WiFiless room surrounded by strangers. Time was moving slowly. In the days after I received my license I drove aimlessly, hours on end, just exploring. This time moved fast; the hours I spent only felt like minutes. This is prospective timing, it's how one feels time in a specific moment. Months later, when I measure past time retrospectively, these moments feel different. That three hour wait at the DMV is just a small blip in my memory, but my first opportunity to explore the world in my mom's Jeep feels like a much longer, more significant part of my life. The DMV line was prospectively slow and boring, but retrospectively very minor because it was substanceless and tedious. Contrarialy, exploring the world with my new license, prospectively, flew by like it was minutes, but retrospectively became a meaningful core memory of mine because the event was full of new engrossing experiences.
The issue with "doomscrolling" social media is that time will escape you both prospectively and retrospectively. I used to wake up on a Saturday morning, pick up my phone and start swiping through TikTok. As I would swipe, time would pass quickly; I would glance up at the top left of my phone and see an hour had passed in what had felt like 15 minutes. Normally, this would mean I could expect to recall scrolling through TikTok as being a long, important, full experience, but it's quite the opposite.
I have practically zero meaningful memories of anything truly interesting I saw while endlessly scrolling all those Saturday mornings. Time would somehow escape me rapidly while swiping through TikTok in both the present moment of swiping, and my recollection of said swiping. This is because short-form video feed style content delivery creates the illusion of fullness and engrossing experiences, while remaining substanceless.
Retrospectively, I'm glad I deleted TikTok. It stole a lot of time from me. However, I admittedly do miss the undeniable accuracy to which TikTok's algorithm can provide a perfectly catered, individualized feed of often genuinely humorous content. I've never been concerned with companies having access to all of my "data". However, I do think that how well TikTok understood my passions, humor, and insecurities was a little creepy. Ultimately, concerns regarding my digital privacy played only a minor, and largely subconscious role in my decision to delete TikTok. I mostly just wanted my time back, and I hated the way that endless scrolling made me feel unproductive.