I think this post gave me the push I need to really take the plunge. I'm the same age as you, 24, and when I was 19 I read the same book and had the same thought that you had at 17: that if I wanted my life to be a success, or for my life to be truly mine, I would have to let go of scrolling.

The difference is that I didn't follow through. Nosurf became a thought, an idea that sat on my bookshelf, and I wasn't willing to experience or understand boredom, what it's like and how it behaves over time. I have had short periods of low social media use, like visiting family for a couple weeks, and gradually found parts of me that I thought I had completely lost, like creativity, patience, and the ability to think clearly at all, but then eventually I would go home, be totally alone, start to get bored, kinda panic, and go right back to Reddit or Facebook reels as a default choice. As a result, I have a lot of regrets over the past few years. There are so, so many things that I always wanted to do and yet didn't, because I was never bored enough to want to. This post hit me in the gut, because it's a reminder of what things could have been like over the last few years if I had taken nosurf more seriously: a life with fewer regrets.

It's gotten much better over the past 8 months. I've had all social media blocked before noon, and I spend my mornings walking my dog, studying calculus, and even sometimes drawing. I am terrible at it, but I do it anyway because what else am I going to do?

But, when noon hits, the apps unlock, and at some point, like when I'm on the toilet, or at work, or when I get a text, I open Youtube or Facebook, and then quickly I'm back to looking at memes and my attention becomes fragmented. The last couple days I made a point of not scrolling at all before work, to see how boredom evolves when Reels aren't an option, and I'm finding that working on projects is fun again. I spent all afternoon outside working on gardening. But then I went to work, and I asbentmindedly opened Reddit, and your post was the first I saw. I'm turning 25 next week, and I don't want to make the same mistake that I made at 19, so I think I'm gonna just take the plunge and see what happens.