Day in the Life
Story by Zoe Burke
Published Sept. 24, 2026
You wake early in the day to the dreaded ring of your iPhone alarm, ready to start another shift at your local Fred Meyer. Rolling over, you open your phone to check if your recent video has gone viral, or at least surpassed your last video’s meager 42 views. It hasn't. By opening TikTok, you have now condemned yourself to spend your first minutes of the day scrolling past meaningless creations and involving yourself in debates on influencers who you never have, and most likely never will, see in real life.
It’s now 8:30; you wasted half of the time allotted to get ready glued to a glowing box you hate. Peeling yourself out of the comfort of the warm blankets on your bed, you stagger your way into a day that already feels it’s gone wrong. You don’t know why because you’ve already forgotten the posts of the recent victims of ICE’s terror. The note surfacing was written by a scared little boy who cries himself to sleep out of fear of being taken. It made you sad as you read it, but that doesn’t matter, because it quickly slipped out of sight as you scrolled on and shortly after escaped your muddled mind.
Desensitization to violence through its prevalence in the media is a growing issue, or at least that’s something that Media Exposure and Sensitivity to Violence in News Reports: Evidence of Desensitization? stated. However, the next post was showing off a bag you’ve been eyeing recently and you spend your time instead pondering if you can afford to buy it new or instead find a secondhand option. A now untraceable sense of doom lingers.
You drive to work, playing music as loud as you can to distract your mind. Though unaware of this, you haven’t given yourself a single silent second since waking up, seeing as you started your day with TikTok, and switched to YouTube as you got ready.
A group of protesters catch your eye as you drive, today’s signs reading “No Kings” and “The Only Orange Monarch I Care About is The Butterfly.” Your Americanized brain immediately agrees with the statements, vaguely remembering the horrific tales of monarchy, and how “we” so bravely broke from it. The content of those tales remains a mystery but the following history after we left was taught often in school. You even got an A in those history classes, though you can’t seem to recall any of the details.
You park at work and sit in your car, savoring the last moments of stimulation before stepping into the job you dread. It’s now 9:30 – the day has barely begun, and you have already consumed and forgotten nearly a hundred videos.. In fact, remembering even a single video would pose a difficult task.
You’ve now spent the first part of your shift slinging boxes and restocking aisles, losing count of the Cheerios boxes you move hand over hand onto the shelf, placing the delicious poison at eye level of the Pavlovian customers.
It's now time for lunch, and to de-stress you instinctively reach for your phone. Once again you are sucked in, before you even realize you’ve opened TikTok, you’ve already scrolled through five videos. Phone still in hand, you mindlessly scroll as you eat. Posts of murder and others of designer bags blend together until your lunch break has slipped through your preoccupied fingers.
You zone out for the rest of your shift, and soon enough you’ve wasted another day stocking shelves with cereal boxes. Don’t worry, you had an AirPod in during the shift, so your brain hasn’t missed a moment of quick dopamine, and it certainly doesn’t now as you turn up your car stereo for the drive home.
There’s been no break from your phone throughout the day, something keeps it glued to your hand, or when out of reach, glued to your mind. You’ve heard of phone addiction before. You know the definition. “An insatiable need to use or log on to social media, excessive concern for social media, and spending so much time and energy on social media that it interferes with other crucial aspects of life,” according to Dr. Thangavel in Nomophobia in India. But you work a full time job, so this could not possibly be you.
In your dream that night, you’re visited by an odd stranger. He is one of the men who built the pyramids. At first you only observe him as he lays in a hut nearly the size of your studio apartment. He does not have anything to focus on besides the moment. His back is sore, you recognize by the position he rests in — the same one your body is currently twisted into under the covers. He stands and slowly walks towards you, asking not your name, but what brings you here. You reply that you don’t know. You watched a YouTube video on ancient Egypt that morning, but your cluttered mind couldn’t be bothered to remember that. You ask how a slave can have a house, for they are under the rule of another. He says that the Pharaoh had huts made for the men.
“But that can’t be,” you remark. “For all I know of slavery is how cruelly the slaves were treated and how overworked you must be.”
He replied, “My back may bend and ache, but I know my place. I see my class reflect off the bricks I spend my day laying. I know I am a slave, but do you?”