You're not behind, You're just online
The one thing you need to read this Sunday.
Welcome to the Unfollowed Sunday series: one idea each week to help you reclaim control over your attention, your time, and your sanity in the age of endless scroll.
This week’s idea?
It will never feel like enough.
And that’s not your fault.
It’s by design.
The internet — especially social media — is built to make you feel like you’re always behind. Like you haven’t read enough. Learned enough. Scrolled enough. Shared enough. Bought enough. Kept up enough.
There’s no natural end point.
No “you’re done for the day” screen. No sense of fullness — just the nagging hunger to keep going.
This is true whether you’re trying to keep up with:
• The latest AI tools (because you might fall behind professionally)
• The news (because what kind of citizen would you be if you didn’t know how democracy was crumbling at that very moment?)
• Pop culture (because who wants to be irrelevant?)
• Your group chats and friends’ lives (because connection matters, right?)
But here’s the kicker: none of these ever end. There’s always more. And the interface was built to make sure you never feel done.
In 2006, a designer named Aza Raskin invented the infinite scroll. You know the one: where the bottom of the feed never comes. He thought he was helping users. Years later, he realized what he’d done. He now calls it “behavioral manipulation,” and he regrets it.
"If you don't give your brain time to catch up with your impulses, you just keep scrolling… its as if [you’re] taking behavioral cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that's the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back." - Raskin, in an interview about the scroll.
Let’s talk brain science for a second.
When you eat food, your body uses clear chemical signals — hormones like leptin and ghrelin — to tell you when you’re full. It’s a closed loop system: stimulus, satisfaction, stop.
But with social media?
You’re not dealing with nourishment.
You’re dealing with dopamine loops — which are about wanting, not satisfaction.
Dopamine isn’t the “pleasure” chemical. It’s the anticipation chemical. It makes you chase, not chill. Which is why even after 30 minutes of watching “just one more video,” you often feel worse than when you started.
You didn’t fail. The design succeeded.
It’s time to reverse the game.
Soooo - here are 3 ways to outsmart the “never enough” loop:
1. Set a firm stop time, not a screen time.
Try: “After 8:30 p.m., I don’t scroll.” Not when I feel like it, but a real boundary. It feels GOOD to have rules. I promise!!
2. Make your limits social.
Tell a friend. Tell your partner. Tell your friends. “Hey, I’m off IG after 9 this week. Ask me how it’s going.” Tiny bit of public commitment = big psychological shift.
3. Move the scroll to your laptop only.
Make it harder to doomscroll. No Instagram, no LinkedIn, no infinite feed apps on your phone. Train your brain to associate your phone with life, not loops.
Here’s the truth:
You’re not behind. You’re not missing something. You’re just caught in a system that profits from your discomfort.
It’s not your job to keep up with everything.
It’s your job to decide what enough means — and then protect it.
So this Sunday, let’s start there.
Pick one boundary. Try it for a week.
Then come back next Sunday, and we’ll build from there. I’m rooting for you,
Rachel
PS - if you’re enjoying reading my essays, please forward Unfollowed to a friend. I’d love to bring more people into this space where we think about how to use tech mindfully. No matter who you are, what you do for work, whether you’re a parent or single or employed or unemployed, how you show up online and offline matters and has a huge impact on your wellbeing.
And if you’re REALLY ready to make some habit changes, I’m inviting you to reply to this email. Tell me why you want to change how you scroll, and I’ll send you my 7 day tech habit reset challenge.