Nobody is owed your evening

It is late in Dubai, and a woman on her sofa has been scrolling for forty minutes. She has learnt about a stranger's divorce, an argument between two people she does not follow, a disaster in a country she cannot help, and a man shouting about a football referee. She feels worse than she did at nine o'clock and could not say what she gained.

None of it was an accident. The order of those posts was chosen by systems whose job is to keep her there. Things that make her anxious or annoyed hold her longer than things that make her calm, so that is mostly what she gets.

What is easy to forget is how much of this she controls. In ten minutes she could unfollow the accounts that only ever make her angry, mute the words that drag drama behind them, and follow the people who teach her something, make her laugh, or show her work she admires. She could put the generous voices at the front of her day on purpose, and leave them there.

That is not hiding from the world. News that asks her to do something, give, call, check on a neighbour, is worth keeping. Noise that only changes her mood, and changes it for the worse, is not news. It is somebody else's product, made from her attention.

She has no duty to help that product meet its numbers. The phone in her hand belongs to her. So does the evening.