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to Before Breakfast, a production of

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iHeartRadio. Good

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morning. This is Laura.

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Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's

0:46

tip is that old photos

0:48

can make for good scrolling. If

0:51

you are looking for something to do when you

0:53

don't have much energy, a

0:55

little reminiscing can feel more fun

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than checking social media. So

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a few weeks ago, my iPhone XS, which

1:04

I believe I purchased at the end of

1:06

2018 or the beginning of 2019,

1:09

finally gave up the ghost. When

1:12

I went to buy a new one and transfer

1:14

my data, I realized

1:16

I had somehow turned the backups

1:18

off. This made the

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process of pulling my information off the

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old phone rather tedious and

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incomplete. The good

1:27

news is my photos and contacts made

1:29

it. My apps did

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not. I decided

1:34

to conduct a natural experiment to

1:37

see what would happen when I didn't put

1:39

any of the usual social media apps back

1:41

on my phone. I

1:43

am not committed to abstinence and they may be

1:46

back on by the time you hear this, but

1:49

I thought I would try it for a few weeks. How

1:52

would my time change? The

1:55

answer is that I still spend

1:57

a lot of time on my phone. The

2:00

truth is that we all have low energy time

2:03

when it is hard to do much else. I

2:06

have read a few books on the Kindle

2:08

app, which I did reload, and I have

2:10

been more responsive on email. I've

2:12

read a lot of the New York Times. But

2:15

I sometimes don't even want to read anything.

2:18

So what then? Well,

2:20

it turns out that old photos make

2:23

for good scrolling. I

2:26

have been fairly impressed with Apple's photo

2:28

features, where they pull together shots of

2:30

you and a certain other person over

2:32

the years, or show highlights from a

2:34

trip to Disney in 2016 or whatever. It's

2:38

like a slideshow that I actually care about.

2:41

But I often then use that as a jumping off

2:43

point. Let me search for

2:45

photos from upstate New York in fall of 2021.

2:49

Let me look at photos from that visit to the

2:51

Orchid Show at Longwood Gardens in February of 2017. This

2:56

can fill a few minutes, which is

2:58

basically what social media scrolling does, and

3:01

requires very little energy. But

3:04

unlike Instagram, where I am looking

3:07

at someone else's carefully curated life,

3:09

this is my own curated life.

3:12

Hey, look how cute my kids were in

3:14

2017, or wow, remember when

3:16

we used to carry the kids in that backpack? Or

3:19

oh, that's the time I made that gigantic

3:21

sandcastle. My

3:24

little experiment has reminded me that boredom

3:26

is a powerful force. We

3:28

will seek out something that can fill

3:31

it. What that

3:33

thing is will vary based on what is available.

3:36

Obviously, 30 years ago, no one had

3:38

smartphones or social media, so

3:40

we filled the time with something else. I

3:43

do remember reading a lot of early

3:45

internet forum posts back in the day.

3:48

Before that, I probably reread a lot of

3:51

magazines or something. But

3:53

if you have ever enjoyably spent an odd

3:55

15 minutes looking through a random photo album,

3:58

then you will know that it has a lot of fun. a

4:00

lot in common with scrolling. But

4:02

no one's trying to sell you something, convince

4:05

you that the world is falling apart, or

4:08

make you feel bad that you are

4:10

not making your own blueberry jam. Old

4:13

photos make for good

4:15

scrolling. So they

4:18

might be worth substituting for

4:20

a little scrolling time. In

4:23

the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks

4:26

for listening. And here's to

4:28

making the most of our time.

4:36

Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If

4:39

you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,

4:41

you can reach me at

4:44

laura.lauravandercam.com. Before

4:52

Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For

4:55

more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit

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the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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