This is kind of an incomplete thought that I’ve been thinking as I see people boycotting very convenient things like Amazon and Target and even TikTok: I think it is an incredibly good thing that people are doing this.

Yes, it’s mostly political, and I do agree with the politics behind the boycotts. But, beyond that, I think it’s really good for our mental health.

Right now we live lives of incredible convenience. Everything that comes out is designed to introduce more and more instant gratification. And that’s a really nice thing… to a point.

I see so many stories of people, daily, talking about how people (especially students) today have worse and worse attention spans and patience than ever before, and I think that’s the result of our world working as designed. We’ve made people addicted to instantly getting the object they want, the food they want, the information they want, the answers they want, to the point of them not being willing to do their own research or wait just a bit longer for… anything. We’re lazy about seeking answers and unhappy with having to wait for results. We can’t be bored.

This is a sweeping generalization, of course, and I’m also guilty of this. I do still occasionally ask a question on Stack Overflow, but it’s nice to get a potentially incorrect instant answer from an LLM instead. I do still occasionally order something from Amazon if I want it quickly, and scroll the mindless video feeds of the internet for a quick dopamine hit. But… I really am trying to be better in general at this, and move a bit more slowly.

Being a parent has definitely helped me in this regard. I want kids to learn to work for things, and I want to see my daughter take in the world without an algorithm deciding how she should think. So, because I want that, I have to change my own behavior (which is easier said than done, but worth the effort). I’ve been picking up a book more often than my phone, and letting myself “be bored” instead of filling every waking moment with shopping or scrolling or getting angry about the up-to-the-minute headline in the news that pops up in my feed.

Anyway. I think we could all benefit from a bit more friction in our lives, whether it’s via boycotting something, adding limits to something, cutting something out entirely, or just stepping back before letting ourselves succumb to the addictive feeds of the world. There’s strength in numbers, so if you don’t mind the call to action: Let’s work on that, together!