Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: tip is that old photos can make for good scrolling.
Speaker 1: If you are looking for something to do when you
Speaker 1: don't have much energy, a little reminiscing can feel more
Speaker 1: fun than checking social media. So a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: my iPhone XS, which I believe I purchased at the
Speaker 1: end of twenty eighteen or the beginning of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: finally gave up the ghost. When I went to buy
Speaker 1: a new one and transfer my data, I realized I
Speaker 1: had somehow turned the backups off. This made the process
Speaker 1: of pulling my information off the old phone rather tedious
Speaker 1: and incomplete. The good news is my photos and contacts
Speaker 1: made it. My apps did not. I decided to conduct
Speaker 1: a natural experiment to see what would happen when I
Speaker 1: didn't put any of the usual social media apps back
Speaker 1: on my phone. I am not committed to abstinence, and
Speaker 1: they may be back on by the time you hear this,
Speaker 1: but I thought I would try it for a few weeks.
Speaker 1: How would my time change? The answer is that I
Speaker 1: still spend a lot of time on my phone. The
Speaker 1: truth is that we all have low energy time when
Speaker 1: it is hard to do much else. I have read
Speaker 1: a few books on the Kindle app, which I did reload,
Speaker 1: and I have been more responsive on email. I've read
Speaker 1: a lot of The New York Times, but I sometimes
Speaker 1: don't even want to read anything. So what then, Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that old photos make for good scrolling.
Speaker 1: I have been fairly impressed with Apple's photo features, where
Speaker 1: they pull together shot of you and a certain other
Speaker 1: person over the years, or show highlights from a trip
Speaker 1: to Disney in twenty sixteen or whatever. It's like a
Speaker 1: slide show that I actually care about. But I often
Speaker 1: then use that as a jumping off point. Let me
Speaker 1: search for photos from Upstate New York and Fall of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. Let me look at photos from that
Speaker 1: visit to the orchid show at Longwood Gardens in February
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen. This can fill a few minutes, which
Speaker 1: is basically what social media scrolling does and requires very
Speaker 1: little energy. But unlike Instagram, where I am looking at
Speaker 1: someone else's carefully curated life, this is my own curated life. Hey,
Speaker 1: look how cute my kids were in twenty seventeen, or wow,
Speaker 1: remember when we used to carry the kids in that backpack?
Speaker 1: Or oh, that's the time I made that gigantic sand castle.
Speaker 1: My little experiment has reminded me that boredom is a
Speaker 1: powerful force. We will seek out something that can fill it.
Speaker 1: What that thing is will vary based on what is available. Obviously,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, no one had smartphones or social media,
Speaker 1: so we filled the time with something else. I do
Speaker 1: remember reading a lot of early Internet forum posts back
Speaker 1: in the day before that, I probably reread a lot
Speaker 1: of magazines or something. But if you have ever enjoyably
Speaker 1: spent an odd fifteen minutes looking through a random photo album,
Speaker 1: then you will know that it has a lot in
Speaker 1: common with scrolling. But no one's trying to sell you something,
Speaker 1: convince you that the world is falling apart, or make
Speaker 1: you feel bad that you are not making your own
Speaker 1: blueberry jam. Old photos make for good scrolling, so they
Speaker 1: might be worth substituting for a little scrolling time in
Speaker 1: the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's
Speaker 1: to making the most of our time by thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback.
Speaker 1: You can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.