Karl Puschmann: This week I wasted my life, don't make my mistake

Re-enactment of how the author spent his free time this week.

Usually, in this space, I like to talk about the best - or worst - from the week that was in the wonderful world of entertainment. But not this week. No. Today I come with a warning.

On Sunday night I discovered the absolute worst possible way to spend my time. And because I am a slow learner I discovered it again on Monday night, Tuesday night and, yes, on Wednesday night as well.

Last night, however, as I mindlessly stared at my phone for the fifth night running I had what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. Something clicked and I saw my addiction for what it was and vowed to stop clicking altogether. Let me explain.

It's widely accepted that Facebook is garbage. Yet, aside from a few true believers, most of us haven't bothered to delete our accounts and are still regular users. While the company may get up to all sorts of no good with our personal data, turn a blind eye to the worst congregations of humanity and allow propaganda and misinformation to flourish it's still a convenient way to keep in touch with friends and family or engage with groups and communities relevant to your hobbies and interests.

Like most people I know, I rarely bother to post on FB anymore but I still log in every day to chat with friends and keep up with the various groups I'm in. It was while scrolling through these on Sunday night that my troubles started.

I noticed a little icon of a TV screen at the bottom of the Facebook app. It was labelled Watch and had a bright red notification button glowing.

Curious, I pressed the icon. Friends, do not make this mistake. In fact, do not, under any circumstances, press this icon. Because pressing it sucks you into an attention-numbing vortex, where the outside world ceases to exist and hours scroll past in tiny attention-grabbing videos.

Having not received this prior warning I innocently pressed the button and immediately entered a trance-like state. I snapped out of it hours later, befuddled and bamboozled, and vaguely annoyed at wasting my evening. I'd planned on watching a movie but it was well past time to turn off all the lights and go to bed.

Lying in bed I thought about what I'd spent all those hours watching. I'd initially been sucked in by some exciting action. Chugging along on a small boat in Africa, a tourist was taking a phone video when their guide pointed out bubbles far away, then a small ripple moving fast, and then a large wake right behind them. Worried, the guide suddenly floored it, roaring the engine to life to surge forward out of the way of a surfacing hippo's snapping mouth just in the nick of time. It's jaw-dropping how fast a bulky hippo can move in the water and crazy how close this moment came to fatal disaster.

At under a minute, I watched it three or four times before letting the next video scroll up. This was equally as terrifying, showing a shark circling a diver frantically scrambling through the water to get back to the safety of their boat.

Just when the novelty of people escaping certain doom was beginning to wear thin a compilation video of late comedian Norm Macdonald's best one-liners popped up before I got shown some life hacks.

Who knew if you put your half avocados in a bowl of water in the fridge they stay completely fresh? Not me. Then I watched some card tricks, found out what people who drove expensive cars did for a living and watched more shark attacks.

That's what I could remember but there must've been more because I've described roughly 20 minutes of video content and that night I stared at my phone's screen for hours. And again the next night, the next night and... well, you get the idea.

It's incredibly insidious. The Facebook algorithm pulling in Instagram reels and TikTok videos and putting them in front of you as it constantly evaluates and adapts to keep feeding you videos that tickle your brain and keep you glued to your smallest screen.

On Facebook, Watch is its own thing I'll now be ignoring, but those dedicated user-generated video apps can only be labelled as attention-span destroyers.

What started off as something quick to look at to pass the time rapidly became an addiction that spiralled out to engulf whole evenings. These short little videos were momentarily entertaining but there was no escaping how empty and unrewarding it felt hours later when I finally, somehow, broke free of the algorithm's clutches.

While the avocado tip has been a game-changer, the cost has proved too high. This last week has been completely wasted in a blur of BS minute-long social media snippets with no redeeming value or worth.

Watch out for the "Watch" button is what I'm saying.