originally written 2/7/26
A quick intro to this post
If you become familiar with my blog you'll notice that I talk a lot about the digital age and taking a step back from it. It's a lot easier said than done. I don't expect that I'll be able to replace my phone completely but I still want to take a break from my spoon fed algorithm.
As I'm writing this my screen time for social media alone is at 33 hours and 7 minutes for the week. I wouldn't mind nearly as much if this consisted of long form content or something that was worthwhile and I could actually remember... but that is so not the case.
So why do a personal curriculum if I'm just trying to quit my scrolling addiction?
Going cold turkey has never quite worked for me. What would I end up doing for those 30 some odd hours I now have free for myself? Find alternative content to consume? How is that any better than what I'm already doing? Hence the personal curriculum.
Okay, now what is a personal curriculum anyways? Simply it's just a self directed learning plan surrounding your own personal interests. The goal of you curriculum will be different from person to person, but some of the main reasons I've seen people put out there are: deepening knowledge, combat burnout and brain rot, rediscover the joy of learning, and general self-improvement.
My own personal curriculum looks something like this (as of writing this blog post):
Language, Literature, and Writing
- Classic Lit Pick: Flat Land
- Word of the Day (to expand vocabulary)
- Book Reviews (to keep myself reading and engaging in the material)
Geography, History, and Anthropology
- Country Locations: Africa
- Human History: Prehistory and Early Civilizations
Philosophy, Psychology, and Contemporary Thoughts
- Metaphysics — Narrow down to a specific topic
- Weekly Video Essay and Review
And your rubric doesn't have to look like this! It can be loosely based around one or two topics, or rigidity structured with timetables and specific required reading. What matters is that what you're learning is something that piqued your interest.
Circling Back to the Algorithm
There's a number of tasks or hobbies I could have used to replace social media; a personal curriculum felt the most right for me. I've been out of school for nearly a decade and haven't done much to curate my love of learning and knowledge. I honestly blame the rise of social media circa 2019, especially with the prevalence of TikTok during the pandemic.
I don't think any of us really understood the risk of these algorithms when we downloaded these apps. They're wrapped so neatly in tight bows, and on the inside they're dopamine draining factories.
"While social media algorithms keep users scrolling, they can also deepen emotional distress by prioritizing sensational and comparison-worthy material."
From the ACP Mental Health Blog
The article also lists caveats of removing social media entirely (hence why I'm not cold turkeying it) such as isolation. Again, it's really easy to say that we will engage more mindfully with social media but in this day and age where our algorithm is out of our hands, it feels nearly impossible. Replacing instead of removing is important as well with the way that social media has an affect on triggering our brain's reward system.
Secondarily, social media rewards misinformation and emotional bias at it's core. The more "controversial" the short form content might be, the more it gets pushed out to our feeds. This way the app itself creates a cycle of user retention and engagement that never seems to end.
“This was kind of a shocker for the misinformation research community,” she says. “What we showed is that, if people are habitual sharers, they’ll share any type of information, because they don’t care [about the content]. All they care about is likes and attention. The content that gets attention become part of habitual users’ mental representations. Over time, they just share content that fits this mental representation. Thus, rewards on a social platform are critical in shaping people’s habits and what they are attuned to share with others.”
From Yale Insights, relevant study available here
At the end of the day, my personal curriculum is protecting my mental health and reducing my screentime. It also is having an impact on forcing me to relearn without the bias that the algorithm has provided me for the past 7 years on social media. As a disclaimer, I'm not an academic. I'm just a regular person who wants to learn as much as I can in life.