Most nights, I’m alone with the glow. Phone on chest, thumb working on autopilot. It’s not boredom — it’s something else, something deeper. A strange comfort in surrendering to the scroll, letting the feed assemble a version of the world just for me. It feels passive, but it isn’t. It's choosing silence over sleep, distraction over rest. The algorithm knows — and I hate that it knows — that I’m most vulnerable around 2:14 a.m.  

There’s something addictive in seeing your own interests reflected back at you, sharpened and exaggerated. I see jazz clips, abandoned architecture, protest art — all the things that feel like me, but not quite. Like a distorted echo. The more I scroll, the less I know what I actually like and what I’ve been taught to chase. It’s not curated taste — it’s trained impulse.  

Sometimes I pause and just sit there — phone in hand, no movement, just the hum of electricity and the sound of my own breathing. The algorithm hates that. It needs input. It needs me to click, react, re-engage. In those pauses I remember the outside world — streetlights, dust on the record player, silence that isn’t emptiness. And then I scroll again, like I always do.  

I’m not writing this to offer a solution. I’m still here, every night, eyes burning. But lately, I’ve been trying to reclaim a few minutes before the scroll — to think a thought that wasn’t suggested to me, to feel something untagged. It’s not rebellion, really. Just a quiet reminder that I still exist beyond the feed. Maybe you do too.