The realest world is small

The lie of the hyperreal scroll and how to reclaim the rhythm of our souls

digital collage by elise entz

When I finally close my phone, and blink away Instagram or X or whatever feed has hijacked my brain that day, all the melodramas of the world fade slowly and all that is left is what is actually in front of me: my real life.

There are meals to be cooked, a toddler to be chased and decrusted, animals to be fed, a stack of bills to be sorted and paid, and always, always a dusty floor to be swept. The never-ending work spirals around me and I’m tempted to just plop on the couch instead, open my phone and get sucked away once again to the world of “more important” things: disfiguring wars, half-dead presidents, pornsick pedos, poison-puff lips, fake food, and all other manner of depravities one can possibly imagine.

My mind—much less my body—cannot possibly process all of this “information.”

So as I scroll, I become passive, but not relaxed. Stimulated, but not creative. No longer aware of time but not in a “flow state” either. True disembodiment.

I am nowhere, really.

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An embarrassing confession: a few weeks ago, my average screen time was right at 8 hours per day. How is that even possible with a toddler?

I can tell you how, but it’s a depressing truth: every spare moment, I found myself peering into the phone. I scrolled in the bathroom. And in the moments when she was free-playing, napping, or nearby but not directly interacting with me.

The largest part of those hours spent online are in the evening after June’s bedtime, when I read and scroll instead of talking to Matt, who is next to me on the couch, also reading and scrolling.

“Oh my god, did you see this fresh hell?” I ask him.

“Oh yeah, what about that one particularly horrifying detail?” he responds.

“It’s nuts! Like, how is this even happening?” I wonder aloud.

We are nowhere, really. Together.

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To my credit, I’m really good at throwing my phone down in self-disgust as soon as Junie chirps “Mama?” but even with her gentle inquiry, I’m still reeling from the hell that her sweet voice has pulled me out of: the comment hell where some idiot refuses to acknowledge that U.S. regulatory agencies are under the control of corporate capture but deigns to insult my grasp on reality? With that idiot mustache?!? Ugh.

“Read a book a me, Mama?”

I will never convince NPCs hoping to get laid by Instagram “scientist” boss girls to abolish the FDA, but I can read to my gentle, honey-eyed baby about some rabbits in a garden.

I come back to myself slowly and I remember it is somewhere quite lovely: June’s room, with the sunny window and braided rug and paper pages and her delightful questions about a rabbit’s habits.

When did I believe the lie that this precious parental duty is somehow less worthy of my attention than “real problems?” Can’t all real problems, no matter the scale, eventually be traced back to childhoods devoid of warmth and belonging, anyway?

So mothering is the most important role I’ve ever held…

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I’m happy to report that for the past three weeks, I’ve consistently used my phone for less than 3 hours per day! Three hours still seems like too much, but there are grandmothers to be FaceTimed, prenatal workouts to be completed in app, curbside groceries to be ordered.

How did I do it? I simply got sick of myself. I saw my screen time and felt the shame. And let that shame change me from the inside out. I do not want this for my child. The day-to-day is a challenge, a constant return to my Self.

And while the moment-to-moment compulsion to reach for my phone out of boredom or sheer dopamine habit has finally [mostly] subsided, I still stand on rigorous guard against those neural grooves. TikTok is a helluva drug.

When I am not paying attention to the feed, the “important” dramas of the day, and what everyone else thinks of them, simply drift away and I am able to do things I actually want to do. Like write this…and read nearly 500 pages of physical books. June’s room is organized. I make myself fancy drinks and plan our next garden. We hung curtains and cleaned out the office.

Even with a few minutes daily online, I am still perfectly caught up on the markets crashing, the cringe clown show of presidential politics, and the disturbing dystopia that Europe is becoming and what should I do about it all anyway?

All I can do is what any of us can do: batten down my own hatches. Prepare our little ship for the bad weather as much as one little ship can be.

Reject the hyperreal. And focus on the nourishment of this moment. I recall with great love how my grandmother and mother worked to hem my prom dress as I stood barefoot on Nana’s dining room table, eye level with the old and struggling a/c window unit that mercifully blasted my face while the Texas heat simmered in the early evening.

I cannot recall which war criminal was president at the time. But I knew that I was important to Nana and Ma, and maybe even a little glamorous, despite the blueish lip gloss and gel-slicked hair.

And that memory returns me to the truth. It reminds me that all that the world calls inconsequential, all the “silly little details” of a family life: our rhythms and habits, our meals, our baths, our laundry, our singsongs and our nighttime prayers, our chitchat and our inside jokes, and the feeling of the space between us, these are the only things that can actually hold us together when the world outside is falling apart.

Everything sacred and worthwhile is here, right where we are.

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