[Editor's Note: This essay was originally a newsletter feature. To receive our monthly newsletter, you can subscribe here.]
I’m in Pablo’s Coffee off 6th, trying to understand how I can feel this hungover without having a drink all week.
The world attacks me with the racket and flash of a pinball machine. Sure, the shop's busy, but I’m used to that. In fact, I tend to work better in noisy places. But today my defenses are down, and every sound drills deeper into the membrane than normal.
This is all to say that I feel very, very dumb. Doped, in fact. But there's only one drug I've been using this week. And that's Instagram. More than two hours a day, alas, of Instagram.
Anybody on the app can track their usage. The metrics aren’t too front-facing—kind of like McDonald’s nutritional info. But they are there, the fifth item under “Settings and Activity,” "Time Spent."
As with many of the toxins accepted in our American marketplace, there are plenty of caveats to be found in the small p…
