This essay was originally written in November of 2024. Since then, I've had nearly two years of experience with Media Mondays, and this is my revised essay.
Introduction
The best thing about the internet is we have access to media and information 24/7. The worst thing about the internet is that we have access to media and information 24/7.
With a technology that gives us so much yet also takes so much away, we cannot be reactive to how it is incorporated into our lives. We need to set guardrails to ensure we can squeeze out the good, without being overwhelmed by the bad.
This essay is my attempt at doing so.
The default mode of consuming media today is to simply consume whenever our brains decide that that’s what they want to do. Any time, any place, for any amount of time. If we have the thought to scroll, we’ll scroll. It is completely reactionary.
By this point, we all know this is bad, and we’re all guilty of it to a degree. But, what are we supposed to do about it? The modern world runs on social media, and if we simply opt-out entirely, we’re giving away a huge part of the modern human experience.
Before we look at my proposed solution and how I arrived there, we need to explore why this issue is even worth confronting.
There are three problems with allowing yourself to consume any media at any time of any day for any amount of time: (1) the overconsumption of media, (2) the ‘24/7 Communication Expectation’, and (3) the opportunity cost of the first two problems.
The overconsumption of media
Let’s look at the first. The human brain, whether you believe it was designed by God, evolution, or a mix of both, was not – in any way, shape or form – supposed to absorb the extreme onslaught of media the modern world demands of it.
There are two issues with this constant bombardment. The first is that low-quality media leads to low-quality thoughts. This is quite self-explanatory. Low-quality media, otherwise known as ‘Brainrot’, well…I think the name mostly speaks for itself. It’s not rocket science.
The second issue is what happens when we consume media rapidly, with constant context-switching and an endless stream of novelty. Dopamine is often called the brain’s ‘feel-good chemical’, which doesn’t really do it justice. Dopamine isn’t pleasure itself. Rather, it is one of the brain’s central mechanisms for motivation, learning and goal-directed behaviour.
It helps drive us towards things: eating food, going to the bathroom, working towards a goal, finding a partner, running a marathon, and so on.
Experiments on dopamine-deficient animals have shown how powerful this system is when hijacked. In one instance, mice with severely impaired dopamine production became so inactive and unmotivated to seek food that they had to be artificially supported to survive.
They basically couldn’t be bothered to stay alive.
That doesn’t mean dopamine is simply the ‘motivation chemical’ either. The brain is obviously more complicated than that. But a better way of thinking about dopamine is that it helps your brain learn: ‘That was quite valuable. I should probably pay attention to what caused it, and do it again.’
Think about scrolling TikTok, as an obvious example. Every swipe might reveal something funny, interesting, outrageous, useful or completely unexpected. Most videos might be mediocre, but you never know when the next one is going to be brilliant, so your brain wants to keep swiping. It’s exciting, and it’s exactly how slot machines work.
The problem with this – other than being perfectly analogous to the pokies – is that your brain is learning that an almost effortless action can repeatedly produce novelty and reward.
Doing anything meaningful with your life takes time and effort, often without much progress in the beginning of your endeavour. But, your phone can offer you something interesting in less than a second.
So why would your brain naturally choose the harder option?
I can remember lying in bed scrolling TikTok for an hour or two while becoming progressively more hungry, thirsty and desperate to go to the bathroom, yet still somehow struggling to put the phone down, get out of bed and leave the room before simultaneously dying of starvation, dehydration and kidney failure.
Our motivational system wasn’t designed with categories called ‘productive’, ‘meaningful’, ‘worthwhile’ and ‘complete waste of your life’. Identifying those differences was never part of its job description, and it’s sure as hell not going to start working above its pay grade without additional compensation.
For most of human history, obtaining something interesting or rewarding generally required doing something. You had to explore somewhere, build something, hunt something, talk to someone, practise a skill or solve a problem.
Now we can access an effectively infinite supply of novelty without moving anything other than our thumb.
The danger is that, if you repeatedly reach for immediate stimulation whenever you experience boredom, difficulty or discomfort, you become extraordinarily well-practised at choosing the easiest available reward. Eventually, slower and more demanding activities can start feeling disproportionately difficult by comparison.
And if your brain knows that boredom can be eliminated instantly by pulling out your phone, opening YouTube, scrolling TikTok or choosing something from Netflix, then you are going to be constantly fighting an uphill battle against your limited willpower.
So, by constantly having access to media, we’re requiring our brains to manage an experience it was never designed to manage. And – if left to our own devices (no pun intended) – we will succumb to the endless onslaught, become addicted and dependant on it just to get by, and won’t have the desire to do anything else with our lives. Terrifying.
The ‘24/7 Communication Expectation’
The second problem is what I call the ‘24/7 Communication Expectation’. In short, this is another new phenomenon to the modern brain where, because we have the capability to stay up-to-date and in communication with others all hours of the day, every day of the week, we’ve collectively agreed that this capability should become the expected standard.
Whether texting or watching someone’s stories on Instagram, there’s an unwritten rule that we should be keeping up-to-date with everything everyone else is doing, and that if someone wants to chat via text or on a call, no matter the time or day, then you should oblige and answer that text or call so as to not be seen as ignoring someone and anti-social.
It isn’t difficult to see how this can become problematic. Simply because we can be connected 24/7, doesn’t mean we should be. We must break this expectation of ourselves and for others. Once again, our brains were not designed to meet this expectation. For all of human history, if you couldn’t physically see someone, you couldn’t immediately communicate with them. This meant there were very clear boundaries around what ‘communication mode’ you were in. You were either available to communicate, or you weren’t. This provided an escape, and a way to switch off guilt-free.
With the advent of the mobile phone and the internet, this is no longer possible. Even if you don’t see a person for a year, the expectation is that you’ll stay updated with their lives whether through looking at their social media profile or by texting or calling them. I’m not sure when or why we as a society collectively agreed that this was required to be a good person, but we’re here nonetheless.
This may not seem like a big deal if you’ve never experienced (or can’t remember) what it’s like to not be capable of communicating to anyone you can’t physically see, or be communicated to by anyone you can’t physically see, but it really is a completely different experience to what we’re used to today. We’ll explore this more when we get to the solution.
The opportunity cost
Now, the third and final problem: the opportunity cost of being beholden to the first two problems. Watching content is inherently interesting. Living life isn’t. For the average person today, if you removed their ability to watch content, whether it be social media, YouTube, Netflix, or some other media channel, they would quickly realise their day to day is unfathomably boring and mundane.
This is the default state of the world, and for all of human history our ancestors knew that you can’t just let life happen. You had to go out into the world, work on projects and build communities with real people in real places. As Steve Jobs said, "life can be much broader once you discover you can poke life and something will pop out.”
If you just sat around watching life go by and your only responsibility was to stay fed and hydrated, you had no reason to be surprised that your life was extremely boring. Put simply, you had to make your own fun. The world provides the raw materials only, and says ‘Here. Do as you wish’.
Today, because of the first two issues outlined earlier, we aren’t committing any time or effort into building out our own lives in our own world. We’re too busy watching other people do it in their lives in their world. The problem is, watching others live their lives will never be as satisfying and fulfilling as building out your own. You’re effectively placing an artificial ceiling on the potential enjoyment of your own life.
‘Connecting’ online is far easier than connecting in real life, but it will never be able to fulfil you in a way that real world friendships and communities will. It’s an artificial ceiling.
Watching other people build businesses, complete projects and chase their dreams is a lot easier than building your own business, completing your own projects, and chasing your own dreams, but it will never fulfill you in the way that doing it yourself will. It’s an artificial ceiling.
And as described above, our brains don’t care how it can release dopamine, it just wants the easiest and quickest method of doing so. This means if we give it the option to take part in these fake substitutes for real life, it will always take the easy road.
So, what’s the solution? Go cold turkey? Well, unlike smoking crack, we can actually get away with a little bit of the good stuff (media) every now and then, assuming the correct guardrails are in place.
The obvious rebuttal to going cold turkey is that there are actually some useful sources of information on social media and other media platforms. And that’s completely true.
The following is a simplified version of the journey I went through over the course of a couple of years to somehow manage to have my cake and eat it too. Let’s begin.
My first attempt at a solution
The first method involved limiting my media consumption to 30 minutes per day. This was usually some time in the morning. While I believe this is better than having free reign, I came up against a new issue. Because I knew that – after my 30 minutes was up – I only had to wait another 24 hours (8 of which I would be asleep) until I could feed the media craving once again. I had no reason to contribute to building my own world, or go out and do something productive. I would just ‘wait it out’ because the time till my next hit was fairly short.
I realised I needed a new approach.
My second attempt at a solution
The second method ended up being known as ‘Media Mondays’.
So, how does Media Mondays work? It’s very simple. Rather than having a 30 minute window each day to consume media, you collect those 30 minute windows across the seven days of the week and group them all together on Monday. From here, I just expanded the ‘media-consumption’ window to be all of Monday. And that’s it.
So, the rule is simple. You do all of your scrolling, YouTube and Netflix watching on Monday’s, and then you don’t consume any visual media from Tuesday to Sunday.
This 6 day gap between ‘hits’ is long enough – in my experience – to not be able to ‘wait it out’. You are forcing yourself to build out your own life, as 6 days is way too long to just sit around doing nothing every spare moment you get, waiting for Monday to arrive again.
Now let’s get into the details about what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. At the end of the day, it’s up to you, and the more you do it, the more you’ll know what works and what doesn’t, but here’s what I do.
On Mondays, you are free to consume whatever media you want. Social media, YouTube, Netflix, podcasts, whatever. From Tuesday to Sunday, I still consume podcasts, watch live sport, and the occasional movie. Books and articles (e.g. Substack) are very common for me too. I’ll also allow myself to watch a YouTube video, for example, if I know there’s only one that I want to watch because it’s directly related to whatever project I’m working on. It’s educational.
The reason I’ve found this works is because, regarding how media consumption affects my brain, there’s a big difference between passive consumption, i.e. you’re bored, trying to pass idle time and you’re hoping the algorithm can serve you up something good, and active consumption, i.e. there’s an exact video you want to watch because it’s going to help you with whatever project or task you’re working on.
Mondays are for passive consumption, Tuesdays to Sundays are for minimal active consumption.
What’s the verdict?
So, after doing Media Mondays for about two years now (as of the end of 2026), how would I describe my experience? Firstly, you couldn’t pay me to go back. By Monday night, after a full day of media, I can’t wait to wake up on Tuesday morning. If you’ve never experienced the feeling of knowing that passive media consumption isn’t an option for you for a considerable amount of time, you are genuinely missing out.
Before doing Media Mondays, I assumed that there was no difference in the feeling of not being on my phone, but still having the option to be on my phone if I chose to, and not being on my phone because it’s not an option at all. In reality, they are two totally different feelings and the latter is far superior.
The best way I can explain it is that even if you’re not consuming media at that very moment, the fact that it’s still an option causes your brain to be in a constant state of decision fatigue about what it wants to do at any given point in time. The internet and social media is infinite. Technically speaking, if you have access to these tools, you have an endless list of novelties to explore, and as described earlier in the essay, your brain simply wants the quickest and easiest way to feel like it achieved something.
So, even if you’re not consuming media at that exact time, the fact that you could if you wanted to places an unnecessary burden on your brain as it’s being pulled in endless directions. You need to cut out the option entirely. The human mind doesn’t like having many options. Being able to consume media whenever you want is like a constant, never-ending example of The Paradox of Choice.
Have I broken Media Mondays at times? Of course. There’s no point going into this with the expectation that you’ll do it perfectly. Try your best, but don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
There are also times when I believe it’s okay to break it. Sometimes, there is something happening in the world that is incredibly consequential and I’ll break the rule, turn on the news and watch what’s going on. I don’t regret those times. But, during the average week where nothing of note is happening (which should be most weeks), I try my best to stay clean.
Common rebuttals and why they’re wrong
The most common rebuttal I get for Media Mondays is that it’s really not that big a deal and that I’m looking too far into it, putting unnecessary restrictions on myself. To that, I bring attention a famous little parable I probably heard on a podcast at some point:
Two young fish swim past an older fish who says, "Morning, boys. How's the water?" After they swim on, one young fish looks at the other and asks, "What the hell is water?"
Another rebuttal I get is that they can’t go six days in a row without keeping up to date with their friends on social media. This of course is a silly expectation we’ve placed on ourselves and each other, not based on any self-evident truth (see ‘The 24/7 Communication Expectation’ above).
I’ve not had Instagram or TikTok for a few years now, and not knowing what random people – or people that I used to know – are doing with their lives every second of every day has not only not made my life worse, but it’s made it better. There’s no reason to be constantly up to date with every person under the sun and no reason to keep every person under the sun up to date with you. It’s completely unnatural and your brain really doesn’t care. This, also, wasn’t part of its job description.
Another is that they need to use social media for work. This is a fair point, and if you need to use social media or any kind of media for work, then of course you should do it. But remember, active consumption is not the same as passive consumption simply because you’re bored and trying to escape reality.
This brings me to probably the most realistic and painful rebuttal. People will more or less say that they ‘love’ social media and it makes them happy because their lives are really boring. What they are really saying – with or without realising it – is that they’ve become so dependant on constantly consuming media of some sort (usually TikTok) that they couldn’t possibly live without it, and if they were to get rid of it six days per week, their lives would be so utterly miserable that they’d lose their marbles.
As mentioned earlier in the essay, this is a consequence of becoming so dependent on escapism that our real lives are too boring to even engage with. But, as we’ve discussed, the world gives us the raw materials, and our job is to use them to build our own world. Your life won’t be fun and exciting for no reason. If you let your life and your world just happen without your input, entropy will do its thing and you’ll be extremely bored with nothing interesting to do.
If you aren’t regularly contributing to and building out your world, how can you expect it to be exciting, interesting and meaningful? If every idle moment you have between sleeping, showering and working is spent mindlessly consuming media, how can you expect to come back to an engaging reality when you finally break free?
From my own experience, I definitely had withdrawals from social media (which quickly went away - thankfully TikTok is not the same as meth), and my initial thought on the first Tuesday morning is that my life is actually pretty boring.
This is normal.
If you’ve spent the past decade spending every idle moment consuming media, you should definitely expect to be in for a bit of a shock when you finally come back to reality. But, it’s necessary. Like I mentioned earlier, you can stay in fantasy land every opportunity you get, but you’ll always be hitting that artificial ceiling and always be dependent on the novelty of others’ lives rather than being able to engage with your own. Choose wisely.
Final notes based on my personal experience
My first note is that your brain will rewire itself pretty quickly. At first, it will be extremely difficult. You’ve spent years feeding your brain pure crack and now you’re asking it to be happy with a sugar-free donut. But remember, prior to social media and the internet, humans weren’t walking around saying to each other “Man I really could do for an endless stream of short-form vertical brainrot-style content. If I don’t get it right this second I think I’m going to freak out.”
Experiencing something as ‘boring’ or ‘exciting’ is a relative experience. When I’m deep in the week, reading a book or just sitting on the lounge listening to music is genuinely a really satisfying activity. It probably sounds crazy, but remember the fish parable…
My second note is that this is supposed to be – and is – a good thing. Lots of people have seen what I’m doing and think I’m just trying to be disciplined for the sake of it, as though I’m willingly putting myself through pain as part of some self-sadistic exercise. This notion couldn’t be further from the truth.
Drug addicts aren’t sitting around sticking needles in their arms thinking about how grateful they are to be addicted to meth. Ex-drug addicts aren’t sitting around wishing they could go back to the days when they needed their fix just to not feel suicidal, let alone just okay.
I’m still doing this two years later because it works and it feels great. If it didn’t work, I wouldn’t do it. Those who know me in real life can attest to this attitude of mine.
Conclusion
Media Mondays is a perfect example of the Network Effect, in that the more people within your life participating in Media Mondays at the same time, the more enjoyable it will be. Imagine living in a community where everybody did Media Mondays. Think about how much closer and more engaged you’d be with the people around you, simply because you all have no other option if you want any form of stimulation and social interaction.
I currently live alone, but I can imagine one day having a family and all of us doing Media Mondays together. It would be amazing. I’d then hope to extend it to other families in the neighbourhood, and it would be even better. The sad thing is that this is just what life was like up until about 20 years ago. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle, but we can at least lock him away six days a week and pretend he’s not there. Something is better than nothing!
You really have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from trying Media Mondays. A good way to start might be a watered down version for the first month where you do the 30 minutes per day method, or maybe you’re only allowed to consume media between certain hours of the day. This way, you won’t have a total shock to the system.
It really is up to you what you do with this information. Personally, I can’t stand the thought of being dependent on social media or any form of media just to get through life, especially knowing that nefarious characters are profiting off my addiction.
Should you choose to accept this challenge, you will – at some point – start to feel really proud of yourself. You’ll feel like you’re in control of your life, being proactive to the world around you rather than reactive to whatever media is being shoved in your face without your consent. You’ll probably even start to feel like a kid again, which is pretty cool.
Good luck, and happy Media Monday-ing.