via @adenmengistu
Meditation has been proven to have beneficial effects in many areas of one’s life, including mental health. It breaks you out of your constant desire for dopamine hits, an urge that is most immediately met by scrolling. Meditation teaches your brain that it’s okay to be bored, that you don’t have to go running for a solution, and that you’ll survive without any stimulation. Riding the dopamine wave of scrolling social media wears us thin. It feels good (or at least numbing) in the moment, but when you put down your phone, you feel worse. Your brain has been filled with so much information in such a short amount of time that it’s impossible to process. You’ve lost more of your precious free time than you wanted to. You’re left drained of your creative energy. Taking mindful breaks is essential for keeping us out of that cycle a little bit longer.
via @mamamiaoutloud
Critics of the trend wonder why participants can’t just call it what it is. One podcaster asked, “Do young people think they’ve invented meditation?” One Twitter user wrote, “Ya but they are recording themselves so not a true experience. Because they will upload it and get the dopamine hit from sharing it.” However, when you’re speaking to an audience whose brains have been thoroughly rotted by the internet, a little slick repackaging might be just the ticket. It makes you feel relevant and current to take part in a trend. Filming yourself can also be a great way to hold yourself accountable, whether you post it online or not. If you know that someone is “watching,” then you’re more likely not to give up on it. Plus, posting your success online might inspire others to do the same. Who cares what you call it? If it’s making us happier and healthier, we should embrace it in whatever form it comes.
This rebrand also makes the concept of mindfulness less intimidating and more accessible to a larger audience. The word “meditation” conjures up long histories and traditions that you might not see yourself fitting into, and it feels like a skill that you have to be “good at” or “know how to do” in order to practice. You might think, “I need to take a class to learn how to meditate,” or “I need to download an app before I can try it.” The concept of “rawdogging boredom” takes that all away. You don’t need anything to begin, just a willingness to drop everything and do nothing. The secret is, that’s what meditation was this whole time. You’ve just found a different way into it.
via @skinwithsophs
Of course, there is inherent tension in an internet trend that asks you to leave the internet, at least momentarily. An eye-grabbing, algorithm-catching TikTok trend that encourages us to use TikTok less is a paradox. It asks us to be both online and not online. It’s similar to the trend of “deinfluencing,” where “deinfluencers” make videos telling you about all the products you don’t need to buy. They aim to cut through all the noise of consumerism using the same tactics as the influencers who promote it. They hope to be a solution for the endless scroll, taking the very form of the content it’s critiquing.
It is time to make space for these kinds of anti-content trends. The creators behind them have found a way to get to you when you need it the most, speaking the language you’re most fluent in. They encourage us to look more critically at our feeds while being part of the feed. It makes your head spin so much that you log off.
If it takes a TikTok trend to motivate young people to start to heal their attention spans, we should embrace it. And maybe, during one of these boredom sessions, you'll come up with an idea that will keep you offline for even longer. Or maybe you’ll instantly return to your phone. Either way, you’ve made an effort, and that's worth celebrating.