From My Desk: Feb. 4

2-4-26

By Lauren Royce, Editor

I’m getting better at consistently keeping a column. This may be the first time I’ve kept a resolution past January. But it’s been easy, because of the insanity that has become a daily occurrence and the outrageous back-and-forth happening on the world stage.
A friend and I were just discussing the largest stage on the Internet, which is the TikTok app. She just up and deleted it cold turkey since the new terms and conditions updated after America bought part of the app. Videos by my usual posters are being suppressed, old ones I liked weeks ago resurface, and the quality is poor. Nothing is all that funny. I’m about to jump ship too. Ashamedly, I almost can’t remember what life pre-TikTok was, because I’ve had it for the last six years. While the instant gratification has definitely done its damage to my and everyone’s brains, I won’t say it made me dumber. I learned a lot on there. I discovered new music, new insights on politics I hadn’t been aware of, new tips and tricks for daily living. But scrolling from cat videos to footage of people dying isn’t healthy. One can only take so much reviewing of graphic images, if for the sake of being informed, and I say this as someone who has been on the Internet a while.
I had a thought while talking to my friend: might this be the tipping point for everyone gripped by the endless stream of videos on that app? Maybe this is what’ll do it. Maybe this is how we get back to being on our phones less, or at least migrating back to heavier use of Instagram, which smartly implemented reels to keep up with TikTok. I think if we’ve evolved to this speed of media consumption, maybe we can slowly devolve by going back to slower-paced things in the order they were popular: back to Instagram, then back to YouTube or TV, to podcasts and radio shows and a long way down the line, physical media. CDs and VHS tapes still have some foothold in my age group, because now two decades on we all are feeling nostalgic. Wishfully thinking, print could come back like vinyl did. Whatever happens, a shift is a-comin’.