Pratique du Shadowing: Life is too short to be scrolling 860 hours a year - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

Every year, the average person spends 860 hours scrolling on social media.

⏸ En pause

Vitesse :

383 phrases

Si les phrases sont trop courtes ou trop longues, cliquez sur Edit pour les ajuster.

Every year, the average person spends 860 hours scrolling on social media.

For reference, that's equivalent to non-stop scrolling 24 seven for 36 days straight.

But that level of consumption doesn't just steal your time and your life,

it also rewires your brain,

shortening your attention span, and the saddest part,

making the rest of real life feel kind of boring and flat.

You sit at dinner with friends and feel kind of bored,

you go for a walk and your hand reaches for your phone automatically,

And you even bring your phone with you to scroll on the toilet because going without just feels too boring.

The hobbies that you used to love feel dull and unappealing.

And so you keep scrolling just a bit more just to feel something.

And this is the exact vicious cycle that we get stuck in

because the thing that we reach for to feel something is exactly the thing making us numb in the first place.

If you're new here, my name's Izzy.

I'm a mum, tech co-founder and Cambridge trained doctor.

In this video, we'll walk through the neuroscience of how scrolling on social media makes real life feel flat and a simple,

actionable, three-part framework that I've been using,

which I call the three Rs,

to retrain your brain to actually enjoy real life again.

As a companion for this video,

I've also put together a completely free guide linked in the description down below.

So without further ado, let's dive in.

So what exactly is digital anhedonia?

Digital anhedonia can be defined as the diminished ability to find pleasure and enjoyment in real-world experiences after prolonged digital saturation.

Essentially what that means is our brains have become so saturated and bombarded with hyper stimulating,

fun brain candy in the form of social media,

but then real life kind of just seems a bit mid compared to that.

There are three key symptoms of digital anhedonia.

I'll go through each of them and see if any of them might be showing up in your own life.

Firstly, you start to feel bored by in-person events or activities or hobbies that used to genuinely interest you.

Secondly, and this is sort of the flip side of number one,

whenever you're not in front of a screen scrolling on social media,

you feel kind of flat.

And number Number three, you start to avoid tasks that require more effort.

So these are things that take a bit of work that don't give you an immediate gratification reward.

They just start to feel even more unappealing.

And this is called mismatched neural expectation.

Your brain has essentially been recalibrated to crave rapid dopamine hits

instead of investing time into actually putting in the effort for something that then has a delayed reward.

And all of this is governed by a fundamental principle in human biology called homeostasis.

is the process through which the body maintains balance through feedback loops.

One direct analogy from our biology is to imagine yourself at a loud concert where there's really loud banging music,

the bass is booming, and when you first get there your ears actually kind of hurt a little bit.

But the more time you spend at the concert,

the more your ears begin to adjust,

and music that was loud the first time now sounds actually okay or even normal.

Then after the concert when you go home,

you notice that everything sounds a little bit quieter.

It's harder to hear people,

things sound more muted and this is because your ears

and your auditory nerves and your brain has adapted and recalibrated itself to a new set point.

Using social media has a similar effect on the brain where

your brain gets used to all these quick dopamine hits and

so what I've drawn here is essentially a graph showing the reward stimulus that we get in our brains,

different levels of that for different activities such as having a meal or conversation or going for a walk,

doing a hobby or scrolling on social media.

Social media is one of the most stimulating and so the bar is as the tallest.

The rest are varying heights there, depending on the person.

If you're somebody who doesn't really use social media,

then your set point will calibrate around the midpoint of what you spend your time doing.

And so most of the daily activities actually exceed the threshold for you feeling enjoyment and stimulated by it.

Maybe some of them will dip below,

but that's only natural because that's how you maintain that set point there and that homeostasis.

However, once you introduce a hyper-stimulating stimulus like social media,

that increases your set point because you spend more time at a high level of stimulation and dopamine and reward,

your brain recalibrates to expect that and to need that in order to feel something.

And so then your bar for feeling like you're enjoying something rises.

And all of these things that you used to be able to find enjoyment from,

essentially a balanced, healthy, real life, now feel dull.

And it's actually kind of worrying how visible these effects are on brain scans,

because people who use social media often end up having reduced activation in two specific parts of the brain,

the nucleus accumbens and the orbitofrontal cortex,

which are both involved in reward and pleasure.

And so when these study participants were doing anything non-digital,

their brains were just less responsive and the internal wiring had actually changed.

And I just wanted to add one thing here because anhedonia is actually one of the symptoms of clinical depression.

And so if you feel like you resonate with anhedonia,

but it's not just in the digital context,

and you also have other symptoms of depression,

such as low mood or sleep disturbance,

that kind of thing, then please do get proper help.

And all of this was born out of essentially during postpartum,

I found that I was becoming addicted to social media.

In between waking up every three hours and feeding the baby and doing all of that kind of thing,

I found myself just reaching for the lowest hanging fruit dopamine hit,

which was social media.

And if I actually had wanted to spend my time like that,

that would have been great, fantastic.

But deep down, I actually knew that that isn't aligned with the life that I really want to live.

And so since then, I've been trying to figure out how actually can I live well with social media

and use it in a way that makes my life better rather than worse.

And one thing I found reassuring is that if you find yourself mindlessly scrolling like I was,

it's almost certainly not about you.

It's actually about the system.

Because mindless scrolling is actually the result of how our neurobiology has been extensively studied to engineer algorithms

that can push all of our reward systems buttons perfectly.

But once we recognize this,

the good news is that we can actively reverse this engineering ourselves.

So let's talk about exactly how we can do that.

100

There are three R's, reduce, replace, and reframe.

101

And so the first R is reduce.

102

And here are six concrete tactics that you can apply from today.

103

You don't necessarily need to do all of them,

104

just pick the ones that feel actually achievable for where you are right now.

105

The first one is to turn off all your non-essential notifications.

106

Literally go through your phone,

107

turn off any app notifications that are just not useful.

108

I've turned off all my notifications for all my social media platforms

109

because those constant pings are part of this variable reward schedule that's actually keeping your brain on edge.

110

Just like how a casino slot machine is so addictive,

111

number two is to turn off autoplay if that option's available

112

because that feature is literally designed to continue to just feed you content to try to hook you in.

113

Number Number three is schedule the times that you actually check social media.

114

So maybe set two or three times a day that you actually sit down and you use social media.

115

This also means that you don't just let yourself check it throughout the day.

116

Maybe you just set a few times in,

117

let's say your lunchtime or your evening,

118

where you actually check social media and keep the rest of your day social media free.

119

Number four, and this one's been a game changer for me,

120

is set up some device-free zones.

121

For example, the bedroom or the dinner table or like the first hour of your day.

122

Maybe just pick one of them to start with.

123

And so one thing

124

that really changed the game for me was actually moving my phone charger out of my bedroom into my study.

125

And so then I would literally have this ritual of putting my phone to bed

126

and saying goodnight to my phone and then going to bed.

127

And this improved my sleep massively and prevented that scrolling first thing in the morning and also last thing at night.

128

Number five is to put your phone display on grayscale mode.

129

Because our neurobiology is designed to find color more enticing and interesting and stimulating.

130

And so by stripping all of that back and turning it into a black and white phone,

131

you maintain all the functionality,

132

but it makes it much less appealing and reduces the dopamine hit that you get.

133

And number six is a slightly more intense version,

134

which is dumb phone mode.

135

So apps like Freedom let you cut down your smartphone to simply just calls and texts for a chosen window of time,

136

essentially keeping the basic core functionality, but removing everything else.

137

Now there's one trap that I want to flag,

138

which is that it's easy to assume that reduce means just digital detoxing,

139

where they completely disconnect from their devices or social media for a set period of time.

140

And there is actually evidence that these digital detoxes make you less dependent on your phone and social media.

141

But the same research also highlights that as soon as you return to using social media,

142

you can fall right back into the same old pattern.

143

So essentially the detox just gives you a little breather from that pattern.

144

But as soon as you go back into your old environment without changing anything about your system

145

or the way that you approach it,

146

everything just snaps back into place and the social media dependence and digital anhedonia resumes.

147

Because you're left with this sort of void where you used to scroll on social media,

148

You used to find enjoyment from it and now you kind of have nothing.

149

And that brings us to the second R, which is replace.

150

And actually during my time studying medicine and then working as a doctor,

151

one of the things that we really focused on was helping patients to either manage addictions

152

or create health forming habits that were beneficial for them and their wellbeing.

153

And one similar example is patients who were,

154

let's say trying to quit alcohol and drinking.

155

Often one of the hardest things for someone who was trying

156

to reduce how much they were drinking is going out to dinner with friends and seeing all their friends having drinks.

157

And obviously seeing all your friends drinking,

158

enjoying themselves, you kind of want to drink as well.

159

That's so tempting, but you know that for you,

160

you're on a mission to actually reduce how much alcohol you're having,

161

whether that's for an actual health condition you have,

162

or just you want to have the health benefits of not drinking.

163

It can often end up really tempting to just slip back into old habits.

164

Because by removing drinking, you've almost left a void where let's say you're at dinner,

165

you're getting some food with friends,

166

everyone's going, cheers, and you have nothing.

167

And so one thing that we would advise here is to think of something that can fill the void.

168

And so instead of maybe ordering a gin and tonic,

169

they could maybe order a sparkling water with lime

170

and make a point of actively ordering something that is non-alcoholic for themselves to enjoy.

171

This means that instead of just blocking that activity,

172

blocking that energy, you're redirecting it into something else,

173

which is a lot easier and smoother than just trying to live with the void.

174

And so the same applies here.

175

And let's dive into ways that we can actually replace social media and actually fill that void for social media with slower,

176

more sustainable ways of enjoying ourselves and finding fun and meaning.

177

Before we get into what to fill that space with,

178

I quickly want to share about something that's been quite a game changer for creators who want to make money

179

and earn online.

180

Because when using social media,

181

we're in a consumption mode.

182

But one of the best things

183

that we can do is flip from just consuming to also creating and to create as much as we consume.

184

So what if instead the same attention

185

that has gone into passively consuming social media instead went into actively creating and building something of your own?

186

And that's the foundation of what a creative business is.

187

And you probably already have the knowledge to do it,

188

even if you don't know it yet.

189

For me, the biggest barrier was friction because I had all these separate tools for various online courses,

190

my newsletter, my community, but none of them were really designed to connect to each other.

191

And that's where Stan comes in,

192

who are very kindly sponsoring today's video.

193

Stan's store is essentially an all-in-one creator storefront with courses,

194

digital products, coaching calls, bookings,

195

newsletter, communities, social links, all within one customizable link in bio.

196

The setup process is intuitive and straightforward,

197

so it cuts out a lot of the faff on your end.

198

And I can honestly say this is exactly what I wish that I had at the start of my creator journey.

199

This didn't exist at the time,

200

and honestly would have saved me a ton of time and energy.

201

And if you've already got things set up elsewhere,

202

so let's say through Beehive or ConvertKit,

203

Stan connects to those too so you're not starting from scratch.

204

And with Stan's store, your storefront can pretty much go live in as little as five minutes.

205

You can try it completely for free for 14 days using my link in the description down below.

206

Now let's get back into the video.

207

Our ancestors were primarily hunter-gatherers and they spent literally hours every single day walking,

208

gathering food, sitting around fires,

209

talking in conversation, making things with their hands.

210

And so our reward systems over hundreds of thousands of years have naturally and automatically learned to regulate with that rhythm.

211

And so in step two,

212

replace, the four capacities

213

that I'm about to walk you through are what those activities were actually doing for the brain and for the nervous system.

214

And through it all, I'll share a bit about how this links into one of my hobbies I picked up in lockdown,

215

which was organic vegetable gardening.

216

Skill number one is what I'm calling weight.

217

And this is the capacity for delayed gratification.

218

You've probably heard of the marshmallow test.

219

It's that famous Stanford experiment from the 1970s where kids were made an offer.

220

They were offered either one marshmallow right now or they could be given two if they could wait just 15 minutes.

221

Scientists kept track of these children over the years as they grew up

222

and they found that the ones who were able to wait for

223

that second marshmallow were more cognitively and socially competent as teenagers.

224

They got better grades and also coped better when it came to frustrating and stressful situations.

225

And the skill that that test was measuring,

226

which is being able to delay gratification,

227

is one of the first skills to be affected when everything is delivered instantly.

228

That muscle of being able to wait and delay gratification just kind of atrophies

229

and withers away because nothing is asking us to wait anymore.

230

We can literally get Deliveroo in five minutes.

231

We can instantly get social media dopamine hits.

232

All of this is at the tap of a finger.

233

So the activities that really help to restore this are the ones where you have to wait before you get a reward.

234

Things like reading novels where there's a buildup to the end.

235

Things like cooking where you have to plan out a meal,

236

get the groceries, prepare everything until you finally get the finished piece.

237

And this was something I experienced firsthand in lockdown when I picked up this organic vegetable gardening habit.

238

I remember going to the store,

239

selecting different packets of seeds,

240

going home and preparing the seed trays,

241

putting the seeds in them,

242

putting them in the right conditions,

243

watching them grow, preparing the soil outside to finally have organic vegetables and fruits come from all of this.

244

The second skill is a work or what neuroscientists actually call effort proportional reward.

245

What happens here is that when you're doing something with your hands and your engagement is sustained over a stretch of time,

246

your brain releases dopamine in a kind of slow and steady drip.

247

This is a completely different release pattern from the spikes that a social media feed produces.

248

And this essentially means that when you're actually doing something that takes some effort,

249

you should get a proportional reward to it.

250

And so our brains learn that in order to feel a sense of reward,

251

we need to put in some work,

252

we need to be ready to overcome some level of faff and put in some effort.

253

The problem with social media is that it short circuits this whole thing.

254

When reward becomes completely effortless,

255

all it takes is picking up our phone,

256

tapping on an app, and then it sometimes even scrolls for you.

257

We don't need to put in any effort for reward.

258

And so then our brain loses this ability,

259

this skill of actually knowing that,

260

okay, we're ready to put in some effort to feel a reward.

261

And so activities here to heal this are all about hands-on making,

262

things that take effort maybe things like pottery,

263

calligraphy, embroidery, and again, linking to the gardening hobby.

264

I literally spent days digging up the earth,

265

preparing everything to only then feel a sense of reward.

266

Skill number three is grow.

267

And this is the capacity for what's called effort-based mastery.

268

Heavy screen use and social media specifically underuses a region of your brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

269

And so the part of your brain

270

that is designed to pursue working on skills that are hard to acquire kind of wastes away over time.

271

And so the activities that really restore this skill are anything

272

that has a learning curve that you can feel across the sessions.

273

So things like learning an instrument or learning a language.

274

And so to bring it back to the gardening example,

275

every single week I was learning more about how the seasons work,

276

how soil chemistry and the whole soil microbiome works.

277

And so try thinking of some activities that really stretch you to actually engage your brain or learn some kind of skill.

278

And number four is move.

279

And this is essentially making the most of your body's exercise neurochemistry.

280

This one actually works through a completely different mechanism from the other first three.

281

But essentially when you exert yourself physically,

282

your brain releases something called BDNF,

283

which stands for brain derived neurotrophic factor.

284

This sounds like a scary long word,

285

but essentially what it means is a chemical that encourages new nerve connections

286

and new nerves to grow and it's in the brain.

287

So kind of like a fertilizer for your brain because it kind of makes it grow.

288

And so the activities here that you could bring in is anything that gets you moving.

289

For me, I personally love yoga and I'm obsessed with yoga,

290

swimming, that kind of thing.

291

But you could do running,

292

cycling, hiking, brisk walks, strength training.

293

You could do martial arts, rowing.

294

You could even just go for what the internet loves to call a hot girl walk or maybe dancing,

295

salsa, hip hop.

296

And again, to bring back the gardening example,

297

here I would be outside carrying pots,

298

carrying soil, digging the ground,

299

getting active, sometimes getting sweaty.

300

And so I'd almost always feel really good at the end of it.

301

These four things aren't actually fixed to specific activities.

302

They're actually about the way that you engage with an activity.

303

And so I love this framework for thinking about how we can incorporate activities in our lives

304

that actually help our brain rot and our brains to heal and recalibrate.

305

And so trying to make sure

306

that we have a good balance across all four quadrants is

307

very helpful for actually rewiring our brain again to be able to enjoy real life.

308

And so that brings us to the third R, which is reframe.

309

And this is all about reframing

310

and redesigning our relationship with how we integrate social media

311

and digital stimulation into our lives so that it turns into something

312

that helps us to honestly just live a life that we love.

313

The first part of this is actually falling in love with being bored.

314

Because fundamentally at the heart of all of this is us escaping boredom by going to social media or the digital world.

315

And the reason why boredom is so crucial is because it allows our default mode network in our brain to activate.

316

When we're bored and not getting any external stimulation or doing something,

317

our brain is actually processing and incubating all the ideas

318

and thoughts that it's had and trying to connect them in new and interesting ways.

319

This is why our thoughts kind of wander.

320

This is the default mode network winding its way through all the things

321

that have come up in our day and our lives and trying to make sense of it all.

322

And this is part of the reason why so many scientific discoveries or moments of creative breakthrough happen during being bored.

323

Even JK Rowling apparently came up with the idea for Harry

324

Potter during a four hour train ride where she had nothing to do and was just sitting there with her imagination.

325

And so to embody this first step,

326

next time you feel bored,

327

don't necessarily view that as a problem,

328

actually view it as a gift.

329

Lean into actually embracing the boredom,

330

allowing yourself to feel bored and not trying to fix it immediately.

331

This might mean going for a walk without headphones and without your phone,

332

or even just going to the bathroom without your phone and just sitting and thinking about life for a moment.

333

The next thing is to curate for eudaimonia.

334

And essentially eudaimonia is this ancient Greek concept of thriving,

335

living a life well lived.

336

And this doesn't mean joy in the sense of hedonic dopamine hits.

337

It's actually deeper than that,

338

a sense of holistic thriving, holistic flourishing in life.

339

And so what I'd recommend you do here is actually audit your social media.

340

One thing I like to put everything on my feed through is almost this good mental nutrition filter,

341

where I basically ask myself,

342

is this good food for my mind?

343

Is this actually what I want to be feeding my mind?

344

Is this actually helping me to live a better life?

345

So if there's anything that reliably makes you feel worse afterwards,

346

so like unnecessary comparison, urgency,

347

shame, feeling bad about yourself, that immediately goes.

348

There's no space for that here.

349

Hit unfollow, mute them, or click not interested,

350

and do not engage with it,

351

don't like it, don't leave a comment, just leave it be.

352

Because if you engage with it,

353

that tells the algorithm that you want to engage with more of that kind of content.

354

On the flip side, anything that produces real learning,

355

connection, inspiration, that actually flows into action in your real life, that stays.

356

And by doing this over time and curating the garden of your social media,

357

this helps to turn it into a place that actually nourishes you and helps you to actually live your best life.

358

And the third step is to use social media as a bridge, not a destination.

359

And what I mean by this is to use it to connect you to activities

360

or ideas or real life in-person connections rather than using it as a one-stop destination.

361

So use your DMs to schedule actual meetups with people,

362

not necessarily using them as the conversation in itself.

363

Maybe reply to a friend's story with,

364

let's actually meet up when are you free,

365

instead of just replying with an emoji.

366

Join groups or communities through social media and then actually go in person.

367

So now that we've gone through the neuroscience of digital anhedonia

368

and the three Rs to retrain your brain to enjoy real life again,

369

I'd like you to choose two action points that you'll commit to this week.

370

Write it down on a sticky note,

371

pop it in your notes app,

372

WhatsApp it to a friend,

373

write it in the comments below.

374

The most important thing is that you actually write down your action points and you take action.

375

If you enjoyed this video,

376

I think you'll like this one over here where I share ways

377

that you can romanticize your precious 50,000 hours after work instead of scrolling on your phone.

378

Feel free to hit subscribe for more self-development videos every single week.

379

And as always, thank you so much for watching.

380

Take care of yourselves.

381

And remember that the journey is the destination.

382

I'll see you in the next video.

383

Bye.

TRENDING

Populaires

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Le Shadowing est une technique d'apprentissage des langues fondée sur la science, développée à l'origine pour la formation des interprètes professionnels. Le principe est simple mais puissant : vous écoutez de l'anglais natif et le répétez immédiatement à voix haute — comme une ombre suivant le locuteur avec un décalage de 1 à 2 secondes. Les recherches montrent une amélioration significative de la précision de la prononciation, de l'intonation, du rythme, des liaisons, de la compréhension orale et de la fluidité.

☕ Offrez-nous un café

ShadowingEnglish reste 100% gratuit grâce à votre soutien. Les coûts des serveurs et de l'IA sont élevés — votre café nous aide à continuer ! 🙏

Faire un don via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – Pratique du Shadowing en Anglais

Parlez anglais couramment grâce au Shadowing. Écoutez des vidéos YouTube de locuteurs natifs, répétez phrase par phrase et développez une vraie prononciation et fluidité — utilisé par les candidats IELTS du monde entier.

Pratique du Shadowing: Life is too short to be scrolling 860 hours a year - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

Populaires

Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?

Pratique du Shadowing: Life is too short to be scrolling 860 hours a year - Apprendre l'anglais à l'oral avec YouTube

Télécharger l'application

Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

Qu'est-ce que la technique du Shadowing ?