Everything became clear to me last Tuesday about what I had to do—something I hadn’t done in over a decade, something harder for me than giving up my half-and-half coffee creamer.

I got home feeling frazzled from my afternoon economics lecture in which I attempted to clarify that aggregate demand is a macroeconomic concept involving the total spending on goods and services, not—as some students confidently insisted—when you ask your viewers to “like and subscribe.”

Hoping for a shift from academic work, I had an itch to do something hands-on and practical—something that smelled like sawdust.

Maybe I’ll finish the walnut dresser I’ve been working on or maybe just fix that loose door hinge.

But first, just a quick check of my phone and….POW

90 minutes go by and I’m sitting, zombie-like, scrolling through a video—and we’ve all been here—of a guy from Lithuania teaching his sequined-loafer-wearing goose to moonwalk.

Another lost evening unproductive with my DIY project list untackled and a door that still sounds like a haunted violin every time I open it.

Constant pings, advertisements, and algorithmic “you might also like” suggestions have worn down my attention span like a devious Batman villain.

Me: “You’ll never get away with this, Algorithm!”
Algorithm: “Oh, I already have, Professor. Remind me—what are you watching?”
Me: “A forty-five-minute video of synchronized swimming goats… but it’s educational.”
Algorithm: “Right. And you picked up your phone to check how old Mr. T is.”
I decided to take a stand. I turned off the video and Googled “signs you’ve been trapped in a social media maze” And I began taking notes.

You can’t remember what you picked up your phone for. (I was looking up recipe…..or maybe the lyrics to “Juke Box Hero”? )
You watched so many short videos that you can’t remember what you just watched.
Wait, was I making a list? I think there was a third one. No, hang on—it’s gone. Oh well lets check Instagram…..
I tried to resist, but each swipe was like stepping deeper into a cartoonish trap—POW! ZAP! SCROLL! The sinister scroll ray had me.

Somewhere in the distance, I could hear his henchman, Push Notification, cackling and whispering, “Somebody liked your post from 2014…click…click…”

Clearly, I needed a plan. But it’s hard to avoid screen distractions while, you know, staring at a screen Googling “how to avoid screen distractions,” then getting distracted by a pop-up about “5 fun distractions that will make you distraction-free.”

This wasn’t an accident. Social media didn’t just stumble into becoming a time-sucking vortex—it borrowed its playbook from casinos. Not the fun parts, like free shrimp cocktails, but the mind-control architecture that if you make every hallway curve gently, people will keep wandering because they never have to make a decision. No right-angle turns, just endless curves. In Vegas, that means forgetting you were on your way to the bathroom. Online, it means forgetting you were checking the weather and somehow ending up watching that moonwalking goose.

I turned off the laptop and reached for one of those old-fashioned things people used to read—what’s the word? Right. Books. This one was called “Digital Minimalism.”

I began learning that skeptics about the costs and benefits of digital communication aren’t new. There have been critics since 1844.

That’s when Samuel Morse, initiating a demonstration of his new invention in the Supreme Court Chambers in Washington D.C. that, according to primary sources, was intended to “unite the distant parts of our nation in instantaneous correspondence,” stood before an audience who observed in hushed anticipation as he tapped out a coded electrical signal across 40 miles of copper wire to his colleague Alfred Vail in Baltimore, sending those now famous first telegraphed words: WHHATTTZZZZ UP!

To which Alfred Vail responded with a series of dashes, dots, and shorter dashes that historians now agree meant “eggplant emoji.”

The book also suggests a challenge: 30 days without social media.

And I decided to try it.
So stay tuned, citizens!
Will our frazzled professor escape the sinister scroll of the Algorithmic Overlord?
Will the haunted violin door hinge ever be fixed?
Will anybody laugh at the Morse Code WHHATTTZZZZ UP joke?
And what mysterious fate awaits our hero when he attempts… Thirty Days Without Social Media?!
Find out in the thrilling conclusion in part 2. Same Scroll Time, Same Goose Channel!”