Truth Hurts: Scrolling at Night Is Cooking My Brain

In this, his first column, John DeVore confronts an ugly truth about bedtime

‘Truth Hurts’ is a monthly column about accepting who you are, where you are, and how you’re doing. It’s written by John DeVore, a writer who doesn’t always feel comfortable in his own skin.

The truth is, I shouldn’t scroll on my phone before bed. Neither should you. (Good for you if you don’t.)

A 2022 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation revealed that 58 percent of Americans doomscroll on their phones in the hour leading to bedtime. I discovered that statistic while in bed, in the dark, my iPhone’s light dimmed so as not to wake my wife.

Have you ever nodded off while reading Reddit, only to wake up abruptly when your phone drops on your face? That’s a call for help. If you want to spiral emotionally, I know one guaranteed way to do it, and that’s to read Elon Musk’s nihilistic right-wing message board, formally called Twitter.

It’s a self-evident fact—backed by plenty of actual scientific research—that staring at your device at night causes insomnia, disrupts sleep patterns, and feeds anxiety. Everyone knows this. It is so painfully apparent that our smartphones are the equivalent of brain cigarettes, which are, and always have been, cancerous nicotine delivery vehicles. And our devices, loaded with dating and video and social media apps, are just Pez dispensers of dopamine.

I’m old enough to remember the good ol’ days of Marlboro, when everyone smoked everywhere, and the world was a giant ashtray. My old man smoked, so did my mom. As a teen, I sucked Newports, one after the other. We all knew they were bad for us. I knew an 18-year-old shouldn’t wake up coughing like an 80-year-old coal miner. But we couldn’t help ourselves, and it took decades of activists and whistleblowers and non-smokers nagging and begging and proving, without a doubt, that cigarettes were a public health disaster, for the country to change. And the change was slow. But today? Young people are smoking at a historical 25-year low.

I should know better, though. There’s a good reason, when my alarm goes off, that I think “The world is ending.” The world is not ending (it just sucks). I went to a Mets game last week, and there were all sorts of people getting hot dogs and laughing and watching millionaires hit a little ball with a stick. It was a good time. I high-fived a guy named Big Bobby when the Mets hit a homer. But later that night, I crammed as much bad news into my eyeballs as my phone would allow. I should know better because I know what it’s like to blot out existence with, oh, name it: booze, pills, Domino’s pizza.

I haven’t had a drink in over 15 years (hold the applause). And my “journey,” as an old therapist insisted I call it, is actually a day-to-day stroll through relationships and responsibilities and all I have to do to stay off the sauce is say “Yes” to whatever life has to give me at any given moment.

If there’s one thing sobriety has taught me, it’s that there is no escape from the intense, terrible, beautiful, bracing, and aforementioned, present moment. One can try, and I have tried. One can hide from their commitments, or ignore them, or light a stick of dynamite and wait for the ka-boom. But eventually, you’ll wake up and be exactly where you were, which is alive, breathing, and hurting.

I have come to realize that my screen isn’t a black mirror, but a cold, dead pool that I can fall into. In those waters are everything I fear, and I wonder why I dream of desolation and wake up worried. I’m worried. I’m worried about my friends, family, and the future. A trans friend in L.A. wonders if they’ll come for him. My 82-year-old mom is in Texas, and she drives around more aware of her brown, Mexican-American skin than she has been since the 1960s. She feels the stares, and there’s nothing I can do. I worry about teachers I know, journalists, and ranchers. People I care about. I worry about myself, and so I scroll and worry more. Rarely do I ever connect those two actions.

The platforms I scroll are designed to capture my attention, and the easiest, most efficient way to do that is to terrify me with distorted, hope-flattening visions of a false reality populated by miserable little bigots and bots programmed to mock compassion. If you were to stand at the foot of my bed at midnight like a ghost and watch me scroll, you’d see my handsome face melt as I read the news on my feeds. Endless, horrifying videos, and preening influencers, and real people screaming and seething. Or, at least, I think they’re real people?

My wife keeps her phone charging in another room at night, and you’ll get no argument from me because that’s a solid mental health strategy. One reason I won’t argue is that she’s a therapist. I know she’s right, but the problem here isn’t just the technology. I mean, my most conservative political opinion right now is that phones should probably be illegal for anyone under the age of 18, and they should come with warnings. The only way to change these habits is to repeat the truth again and again: social media is rotting our souls from the inside out.

But it’s not just the devices and the apps; it’s something inexplicably, dependably human. We crave control. And as chaotic as Facebook and TikTok feel, they’re just products, widgets. They’re predictable. There are few surprises on social media: it’s just a conveyor belt of snack-sized miseries. The posts are all ugly, rarely uplifting or illuminating. These platforms are public spaces where your most sincere wants and dirty secrets are mined and sold to companies. And if your secret is “I don’t like my body,” you can be sure that these days, there are plenty of ads that will agree with you and offer a solution that won’t work. Or is that just me?

I don’t like to assume everyone knows the Serenity Prayer. I have friends who kind of cringe at the “p” word. It’s my favorite part of any AA meeting, but it’s not important that you know it. Look it up if you want. The prayer is a welcome reminder—to me, at least—that there are things I can and cannot change, and it takes courage to change the things I can.

I cannot change the material fact that there are a handful of billionaires who dream of a society where no one talks to anyone unless they’re on a podcast. The only way to be free, to be clean and sober from Silicon Valley’s unhappiness machines, is to live the life that’s right in front of you. The life that makes direct eye contact with you.

And here’s what’s staring you in the face: Love. Sunlight. A hot cup of coffee. A hug. A niece’s long, winding explanation about her middle-school science project. A 12-year-old dog who slowly rolls over and shows her belly like she’s still a puppy. A long phone conversation with your oldest friend, who lives on the other coast. A joke texted to you by your brother. Every day is a new life, and every breath is a chance to open your heart, make a decision, or reach out to someone who’s struggling.

There’s a popular bit of internet advice that is thrown at those of us who are Extremely Online: “Go touch grass.” Translated, it means “go outside, into the world, without a screen.” But I’ll go further than that. Don’t just touch grass. Roll around in it, take a nap in a field, have a picnic. Picnics are underrated; who doesn’t love blankets and sandwiches?

To misquote the Zen poets: Time on your phone is time lost forever. Be mindful of that. The moment happens whether you’re living in it or not; you are, right now, existing in a minute that will pass and never return. What are you going to do? Who are you going to be? What truths will you own?

I know one thing: I need to read a book before bed, like the good ol’ days.

John DeVore is an award-winning writer and editor whose funny/sad memoir about grief, friendship and jazz hands, Theatre Kids, is now available.