Miscellany

This week, I want to talk about something that happened to me, and I think several people would notice similar phenomena around them. This is called “addiction”. When I mentioned this term, I believe most of the readers are thinking about the addiction is caused by drug abuse, but here I want to discuss a relatively new type of addiction: being addicted to the Internet – or more clearly, to their mobile phones.

Suppose you were waiting for the metro, and you looked at the notice board which said the train would arrive in 5 minutes, what would you do next – wait, let me guess, you would put your hand in your pocket and reach for your phone, and instinctively check the news today or watch some short videos. Am I right? Initially, I thought this action would be prevalent just among the general public, but unfortunately, I was too optimistic. When I was eating at the university dining hall, I was surprised to find all the students and professors were looking at their mobile phones, barely aware of what they were eating. The funniest thing was once I was sitting across from my teacher of the class I had just taken at lunch time, but we didn’t notice each other because both of us were glued to the short videos displayed on our phones during the meal time!

So why do I want to talk about these details here? At first, I thought it was just something in fashion, but after nearly a year and a half, I found something that is subtle. First of all, I realized I was beginning to lose patience and attention. When I’m writing a paper or finishing my homework, I find that I am just dragging the problems that I have no idea about at first glance to the an AI chatbox. I used to work on this question for a while before asking for help from others. When I want to read a fictional book recommended by my roommate, I cannot concentrate on it for more than half an hour. I think from deep down the story is thrilling and attractive, but some other irrelevant ideas keep popping into my mind, preventing me from reading further. In contrast, if I’m determined to scroll phone before bedtime, I find it’s always too easy to get lost in the forest of the Internet. My phone always knows what I want to watch and recommends it to me immediately, so I will stay up late without feeling exhausted. Even if I know I have to get up early the next day to attend the class that I am interested in, I find it difficult to put down my phone.

The next thing is the physical and mental harm from this habit. After scrolling my phone for several hours, my eyes become blurred, and I felt my back aching from sitting consecutively for such a long time. Somehow, I feel bad spending all the day on my phone without doing anything else, and I began to lose interest in activities in real life gradually. I’m reluctant to do sports with my friends and rehearse with the band. I know at least I can achieve something if I do these things I mentioned above, but what can I learn from the meaningless videos? A weaker body? A stupider brain? A more cynical taste? I cannot imagine what will happen next.

And finally, it comes to why I want to write this blog. Most of us are not brave enough to face the bloody truth: phones held in our hands have no difference from cocaine. Someone would argue that in the 80s, experts once argued that TV was ruining people’s lives by turning people into couch potatoes, but as time goes by, it turns out no one is literally “ruined” by TV. So they think my argument about short videos is hilarious. I have to admit that their attention hasn’t been ruined too much to prevent them from looking for the evidence. But TV didn’t follow us into the dining hall. TV didn’t learn our deepest insecurities and use them to keep us scrolling at 2:00 a.m.. Think about what you can do without it. As cultivated individuals, we should know the working principle of dopamine. If something stimulates our nerves to generate excessive dopamine over a long period, we can be addicted to it, which would hugely affect our work and life. The most effective and primitive way to get rid of it is to stay away from it once and for all. The process for regaining receptors is painful, so why do we torture ourselves? This process may take a lifetime to heal, having nothing to do with education level, because it’s just human nature. If someone is rational (just like all of us), we can defeat this devil at the end, but why do we have to take such time and effort to do this work? We could live a better life without it.

Just to conclude this topic with a metaphor: Every ‘sober’ drunkard looks back with melancholy, wishing they had never tasted that first, fateful drop.

AI version

The Glass Cocaine: Reclaiming the Soul from the Digital Forest This week, I find myself compelled to dissect a phenomenon that has become so ubiquitous it is almost invisible. We call it “addiction.” To most, that term evokes the grim specter of substance abuse, yet I wish to discuss a more insidious modern iteration: our collective subservience to the smartphone.

Picture yourself on a metro platform. The display glows with a five-minute countdown. What follows is a reflex so ingrained it borders on the biological: your hand instinctively seeks the device in your pocket, seeking the ephemeral thrill of a news headline or the rhythmic pulse of short-form videos. I once naively assumed this habit was a mere quirk of the general public, but my optimism was misplaced. Even within the hallowed halls of the university, the sight is the same. In the dining hall, students and professors alike sit in catatonic silence, staring at their palms, scarcely aware of the sustenance they consume. I recall sitting directly across from my own professor during lunch; we remained strangers in that moment, both of us enthralled by the flickering algorithms on our respective screens.

Why do these details matter? Because what I initially dismissed as a passing trend has revealed itself to be a profound cognitive erosion. Over the past eighteen months, I have felt my patience and attention span begin to atrophy. When faced with a challenging academic problem, I no longer wrestle with the logic; instead, I find myself succumbing to the urge to outsource my thinking to an AI chatbox. When I attempt to lose myself in a novel, the experience is no longer seamless. My mind constantly wanders into irrelevant digressions, preventing me from sinking into the narrative. Conversely, when I scroll through my phone at midnight, I am never bored. The algorithm, with its uncanny ability to mirror my desires, ensures I remain awake, drifting through a digital forest until the early hours of the morning, regardless of the responsibilities awaiting me at dawn.

The toll is both physical and psychological. After hours of strenuous scrolling, my vision blurs and a dull ache settles into my spine—the physical price of a sedentary habit. More disturbingly, I have begun to feel a creeping apathy toward the real world. The vibrant joys of playing music with my band or the physical exertion of sports have lost their luster. I am left asking myself: what is the harvest of this digital obsession? A weakened constitution? A diminished intellect? A cynical perspective? The trajectory is chilling.

We must eventually confront the visceral truth we so desperately avoid: the smartphones in our hands are functionally indistinguishable from cocaine. Skeptics will point to the 1980s, mocking the “couch potato” panics surrounding television. Yet, that comparison is a false equivalency. Television did not follow us to the dinner table. It did not possess a tailored intelligence designed to exploit our insecurities and keep us tethered to the screen at 2:00 a.m.

As cultivated individuals, we understand the mechanics of dopamine. When we subject our nervous systems to excessive, artificial stimulation over prolonged periods, we don’t just form a habit—we alter our chemistry. The journey to reclaim our neural receptors is arduous and, at times, agonizing. It is a battle against human nature itself, a struggle that demands immense rational fortitude. We could live a more profound, deliberate life if we simply refused to take the bait.

To conclude with a somber truth: every “sober” drunkard looks back with melancholy, wishing they had never tasted that first, fateful drop.