It’s honestly so bad. No matter how hard I try, I find myself re-downloading TikTok or Reddit (Apollo) every month and then wasting away all my free time for a week or two before re-deleting them out of disgust. I truly don’t know what the solution is. I would just get rid of my smartphone if life wasn’t quite inconvenient without it.
If you must use Reddit, set up an account that's unsubscribed from all subreddits. Then only add small, niche subreddits and never any of the default or popular subreddits. At worst, you'll get a homepage that updates with new content maybe once or twice a day, drastically reducing the chance of scrolling your free time away. It's preferable to just not use it at all if you can, though.
You can do that in Apollo (iOS) paid version, the client I use the most. Although, I will have to check again, but I am sure you can set the same on Sync and/or Boost (Android) on the free version, as I have a multireddit set as default on launch. On the browser, you can use RES + old reddit and change default behaviour. I find it easier to keep a very small number of frequently used subs for the home feed, and stick the rest in multi, as it helps to make them portable and easily shared. You can also find lists in r/multihub -- compiled and shared by others e.g. cars.
I had the same issue with the Reddit app so now I just use the neutered web app and consider the frustration stemming from its brokenness to be feature that keeps me from spending too much time on it.
I think the first step is admitting that, even with any incidental value you get out of these services, it is an addiction and you are addicted. I don’t say this with negative connotation to your character. Digital media has made me realize how powerless addiction makes one feel, even if one is well adjusted otherwise. The reality is you binge, much like a binge drinker, and wake up a week later with the app hangover.
The same thing happens to me and I think the OP provides one good solution: stick to mobile UI in a browser. Generally, increase friction wherever you can. This only really works if you can stick to the worsened experience and not crack/redownload the app. One way to tackle that is to perhaps set a daily or weekly reminder to purge the apps you have a problem with (or all apps you don’t need) from your phone. Maybe you will redownload them again, but giving yourself that extra moment where you can go to the App Store will surely make you quit halfway once or twice, then consistently, before you fall for the trap.
I have an inadvertent example. I frequented a website on my phone for a while that relied heavily on a certain file format for videos. I switched phones and (by accident) got a new phone that doesn’t support the format and would require me to download external apps to watch it. That friction of needing a third party app, paired with a decision to only use mobile websites when possible, meant by browsing time on that site dropped precipitously and I’ve now almost entirely cut the bad habit.
Another habit is screen time. It is easy to go overboard and delete limits but you’re setting friction points where you need to think about what you’re doing.
> cocaine although a Selective Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor (SDRI) is illegal
I know you were discussing recreational cocaine, but fun fact: cocaine can be prescribed legally in most countries including the US. For relatively obvious reasons it's an uncommon prescriber choice, and it's generally applied topically (including to the nose) rather than snorted.
Legal methamphetamine pills are also available by prescription, and of course also an uncommon prescriber choice when alternatives work well, although its chemical relatives in the amphetamine family are very much among the commonly prescribed ADHD drugs.
Nothing would surprise me, but clues are given out like the cocaine & morphine mix given to one the British Royals on the throne at the time.
This is where education, schools are used to monitor behaviours because if someone later expresses an interest to become a GP or Dentist, their behaviour will be used as part of an evaluation to see if they can be trusted. The educational system is just part of the state's intelligence estate.
I'm not joking, it's the best antidote to the thought-theft of "social media". Pick a subject in which you're interested, find a representively excellent text, and read. And then re-read, because unless you're a genius you won't absorb everything first time.
Also it's wonderful to just curl up with a book and a cup of tea and let time pass you by as you ... learn the considered thought of others! This is civilised!
Normally I'd recommend history but around these parts Category Theory in Context by Emily Riehl is probably acceptable :)
About re-reading, especially textbooks: it takes time and trouble to appreciate the difficult and often esoteric ideas represented in a text and understand the underlying deep thought. The author(s) wrote and re-wrote every damn phrase in terms of their imagined audience. The first pass yields a basic familiarity, but try every chapter again in light of the later insights.
I remember the first time I read Introduction to Metamathematics by Kleene, and I remember the fourth time so much better. I can feel the cloth binding, I can hear his voice clearly.
I would love to do this, but years of mindlessly browsing social media has seriously shortened my attention span. I used to read books all the time. I remember staying up late as a kid just to read the new Harry Potter book.
Nowadays I pick up a book, read a few pages, then immediately lose interest and go do something else. Anybody know how to get back into reading?
To me, nothing on the popular subreddits or in TikTok has satisfied my desire for depth and nuance. There are smaller subreddits that I like, but there's no way to specify what you want on TikTok, so I no longer use it. By shaping your philosophy of pleasure explicitly around stuff that only longform content can satisfy, I've been able to easily discard parts of social media that don't align with my personal actualization. I think it does take some deliberate and repeated introspection to harden this impulse.
As much as I want to say this advice is terrible and useless… yeah. Move the things that aren't books far away, and read a book. When it's boring, put it down, but don't let go of it. Wait a few minutes, then move it back in front of your face and keep reading.
It's possible you picked a bad book, but it's more likely that it isn't engaging enough. It normally takes me a few days (after half a year book-free) to get back into reading, but it's worth it.
I'm sorry but I have to ask this every time I see it. I have yet to receive an answer.
What is the point of censoring 1 letter in an otherwise extremely obvious word?
You are not redacting the word. People reading the word don't bleep it out in their head. You know you are saying 'fucking', we know you are saying 'fucking'. HN doesn't block posts with "naughty" words in them.
So what are you trying to achieve? Please tell me.
I suppose it's a nod of the head in the direction of "civilised discourse" without actually being so. It's lighthearted, not to be taken seriously, my apologies if it irritates you.
I've had some luck by going back to "simpler" books for a while - page-turner scifi, bestsellers, YA literature. For a while I only read things that really grabbed my attention, and I think that is gradually re-training my brain.
I'm not back to being as avid of a reader yet, but I'm optimistic I'll get there. I'm reading more now than I have in a few years.
I first kicked myself into it by starting the Discworld series of books. Pratchett is a great author (imo), the text has a certain kind of easy charm, I don't need to go in sequential order, the books are cheap to buy, and none are terribly long or dense.
I've also added some longer, more serious stuff to my reading list and bookshelf, but those are things I'll get to in time. I try to make myself read 100 pages per week, and if I don't like doing that with a certain book, I'll pick up another one. I can manage that at a leisurely pace in 2 to 3 hours on a weekend, or grab 20 pages a few times per week.
I can empathise with you. Warning : some armchair psychology ahead :
I think it's the age old "less dopamine kick" syndrome. Your brain is used to getting a steady stream of dopamine when you watch/react/post on social media. A book simply doesn't give it (yet). From personal experience, I experience "Aha!" moments when I read once in about 15 days. What I'd recommend is to re-read some of your old favourites and pick up adjacent ones (example : re-read Harry Potter - Prisoner of Azkaban (my favorite ;) and pick up some Greek mythology . ) Finding unexpected connections is one source of joy I experience. Good luck!
I found it helpful to put myself in situations where the book is the best alternative. Leave your phone, get the book, walk to a park, sit down with a beer. Every time you get bored and restless, you'll put the book down, remember you have no phone and pick it up again.
Also, write. I find it easier to remember things if I’ve written them down, so when I mix writing in with reading, I feel like I better retain the things I read.
Start with a quote you liked when you were reading and just let your thoughts flow into the paper, you might go for many pages and an hour or more before coming up for air.
I like to call the activity of reading and writing “conversing with the universe.”
Conversely, I find that I can dump hours into social media and not remember anything when I finally snap out of it. It’s junk food for the mind.
Ooh yes anecdotally im with both of u on this. Found it very hard to quit but category theory by emily riehl was a great offramp to begin "thinking more seriously"
I'm a huge book reader and I usually read very gripping novels. For me, TikTok is much healthier, because 1. it's easy to put down when I need to do other things 2. it's easy to refrain from opening it. Books however are very hard to put down, and very hard to refrain from picking up again. For me, starting a book = no life for a week.
If you're looking for a book I wrote one specifically about this
problem. Some of you may like it. It's short and has short chapters
you can read in one "boredom chunk" of about 10 mins.
One reason for making it an old fashioned paper book is that some of
the ideas it presents would simply be censored on what the internet is
becoming.
It's not really written as "self-help", more as philosophical musings
for intellectual self-defence. Many people who have read it tell me
they successfully quit their smartphone.
As ongoing research in modern critical technology studies I'm trying
to keep a list of ones I read and at least found interesting (below).
Good luck finding the courage to take back control of your technology.
Jenny Oddell How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Paul Kingsnorth Life versus the machine
Roger McNamee Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
Siva Vaidhyanathan Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us
Virginia Eubanks Automating Inequality
Sophie Brickman Baby Unplugged
Mike Monteiro Ruined by Design
Thomas Kersting Disconnected: Protect Your Kids Against Device Dependency
Nicholas Kardaras Glow Kids
Jaron Lanier Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media
Douglas Rushkoff Team Human
Carissa Véliz Privacy is Power: Why You Should Take Back Control
Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" is easier going than I thought it would be, and I'm doing even better than a chapter at a sitting, and sometimes have to make myself put it down. I think he wrote it for people with diminished attention spans - and that's a compliment.
It doesn't help that they now won't even let you read many subreddits without the app on mobile.
Once you're logged in, just to read that one thing, it can't hurt to engage on that one issue, can it?
Before you know it, you're 23 increasingly angry comments into a thread about sand, people are still wrong on the internet, it's 3am and you hate everyone, everything and yourself.
I use the Reddit website. It's slow and horrible enough that even though I visit every day, but don't get sucked into spending hours on it.
I also watch YouTube instead of TikTok. YouTube is slower paced and hasn't (yet) fallen into the trap of continual submersion in content without a break. You have to consciously choose to watch another video. I can also tell myself that I'm watching content that is pseudo-educational in nature (like Jay Foreman, Stuff Built Here, Jazza or Mark Rober).
I've started using TikTok a couple of times and it just seems like the perfect engagement machine. It's like a machine that drip-feeds dopamine. Pure evil, in my opinion.
Life isn't that inconvenient without a smartphone, it's only been something people have had for a couple of generations at the most.
You just have to plan things in advance a bit more. It's liberating in a way. You plan dinner with someone on Thursday at 6:00 and it's set. You don't have to think about it, tweet about it, post it on Facebook, or anything else. Just show up.
Thought I'm not much on social media but I figured out that if I can restrict myself to browse between 11am and 4pm, work will certainly automatically force me off the 'scroll treadmill'. I wrote about that in this post[1] recently.
An exception: I find Duck Duck Go's infinite scroll quite pleasant, and find paginated results quite cumbersome.
Elsewhere it's just annoying. Especially when a misclick makes you lose the position. Dilbert's website is a good example of this. For Reddit or Twitter I don't know, I read them using libreddit and nitter when I occasionally land on them from a link or a search result. TikTok and Facebook I have never tried.
Point. I should qualify that to "non-terminating infinite scroll." E.g. DDG is likely neither hoping nor expecting their users to infinitely scroll through search results all day, without clicking anything.
Also, where does DDG have infinite scroll? I just checked (it's my default) and Firefox on Android shows a "More Results" footer button.
A very hacky solution that I've found to combat TikTok's infinite feed is to scroll up instead. I skip to the 20-th video in the feed, watch each video, and then exit once I'm done with the 20. Hitting the top gives you an off-ramp to get out of the app.
For other things I make use of the "work offline" mode, to see what's loaded in and then leave. I'd like it if browser devs stopped pushing that future further away and maybe gave it a hotkey.
If you enjoy the product, this risks skewing the input to the recommendation algorithm. Presumably they use time spent to determine what content you enjoy.
Not sure I follow, it doesn’t sound like any particular post would be on screen any longer than normal, unless you’re suggesting that time since load is what is measured instead of time on screen (or time since last scroll), or that they use overall duration of the app session to infer things about all the posts that were loaded.
Small request. If you are a developer and you are forced to implement infinite scroll and you can't quit your job, at least make sure the back button works.
Without this it's so frustrating to infinite scroll down to the equivalent of 12 pages, leave the page and want to go back to roughly where page 12 is another time. Instead you have to start from the top and scroll down.
You'd likely save a good amount of server compute power just using push state to update the page in the URL as you go so folks can copy / paste it and jump right back to that page later.
That's kind of tricky. I assume the list is allgorithmically generated. So simply having the back button go back to the list, and down to item 50, might give you a list that looks completely different.
Even HN might have this problem a bit. If you visit the homepage you click an article, spend some time reading it, then click back, the homepage might have changed, and even post you were reading might not even be on the homepage anymore. HN is much less bad than infinite scroll sites, because HN's homepage is the same for everyone, and doesn't change nearly as often.
One way to to solve this might be to store a session ID as a query parameter that gets automatically added when you visit the homepage, and store the complete state of each session either serverside or locally in the browser. Then when you navigate back to that session ID, you get the same page. There are a number of downsides to this though. The session ID in the URL is ugly, there's a lot of storage needed for all these session, sessions likely need to be pruned at some point (so the back button will stop working at some point), and it's very difficult to figure out what to do when multiple tabs open the same session ID.
This is also my struggle. I've come up with a million ways to cope, but it makes me sad to think of the wasted potential: all the projects I never started, hobbies I never picked up, courses I never finished, books I never read
For me, the important part is to actively commit your time. IE I am actively deciding to spend X minutes doing Y. If that is doomscrolling/TV/games, that's fine.
The problem only comes when that time limit is breached. And THEN you can review and figure out whether that time got you what you wanted. IE usually doomscrolling is to zoneout/relax/catch up with friends news, etc.
But this requires dedication to think in this way.
> Everyone knows how bad it is now, there's no excuse.
I disagree. Ask any 20-30 year old and I don't think many will say that TikTok, Instagram, etc is "harmful to your health". Maybe a "bit addictive", maybe a few people who say "I have a problem with it". But never "I know this is very harmful for my attention span, my mental health, etc".
> But never "I know this is very harmful for my attention span, my mental health, etc".
Early 20's here, and avoid TikTok, Instagram, etc and know Reddit and the like are all of those things listed - though the worst affected for me personally is attention span.
I usually just like to chime in when people mention stuff like "no one young <does|knows|cares about> $THING", because I've noticed a trend where the fact that there are young people who care is ignored which I think hurts the case more.
Most of my peers don't care however, at least, not as much as I do though I've made some inroads.
By "everyone" I really meant people building things. IE: If someone builds something with infinite scrolling that's like putting caffeine/alcohol/cocaine in a drink.
Ah okay, I agree. Unfortunately it's really easy for PMs to hide that behind flowery language like "to increase retention rates", "improve user experience", etc.
Sounds like the same mentality which lead to "cause cancer in California". All of the hysterical bullcrap with no sense of proportion leads to being ignored completely. It seems like even with the rise of drug legalization support they learned nothing from the failures of DARE and "scare them straight".
I have a friend early 40s who says I have to download tiktok its so good he spends his evenings in bed with his wife texting links to each other. Not doing a good job marketing it to me
You removed all of it from your life with no negative impact.
On the other side there's all the people who live with it with no negative impact either.
The existence of these two groups seem to me a reasonable enough argument to keep it as it is and find alternative solutions for the people who can't remove it from their lives yet are harmed by that. At least, removing it for everyone doesn't seem to be the right call.
I also struggle with this. As such I've tried doing little things to stop the infinite scroll. I don't use reddit anymore unless it is something I am actively looking into (e.g. a tech subreddit or something). I went through and unfollowed every friend and product on facebook. Luckily, I think that's all I use that has infinite scroll.
The only way I’ve defeated infinite scroll is with the sword of purpose, and the shield of time-boxing. All other load outs aren’t that effective at this boss.
I even have this problem when just sitting in front of my laptop to look something up - I end up on completely different websites procrastinating a lot . Another behavioral hack was told to me by someone els: write down on a piece of paper what you want to look up/do on the computer before you sit down in front of it and check if you have done it as much as possible.
I use a sort of inverse tactic. While working, I often find that trivial questions pop into my head, and I get tempted to look up the answers and distract myself for a while. Stuff like "what does the word 'ducky' mean" or "what are the lyrics to the verse of that Blur song" or "what is the capital of Albania". I keep a text file open on my computer called "later", and when one of these questions comes up, I write it in the file, promising myself that I can look it up later. The truth is that I hardly ever do. The questions seem so burning when I want to be distracted. When I have the free time to look them up, I realize how silly they actually were.
Switch to using chrome without ublock origin, and you’ll find the web experience to be so intolerable that you’ll only use it for what’s absolutely necessary.
I'm still young so maybe my mind hasn't matured enough to where I can combat this well. So I went heavy-handed - I have a button on my desk that when I press it, my server's DNS server (through which all my devices and router resolve) begins rejecting requests to reddit, instagram, twitter, hackernews, news.google.com, etc.
For the next two hours, there is nothing I can do outside of SSH'ing through my mobile device (purposefully don't have an app for it) and resetting the countdown on the DNS server and restarting the server, to allow these DNS requests. It denies all SSH connections from my home network, and doesn't even resolve its own subdomain (dns.my-domain.com for the DNS dashboard) for me to reset it.
It isn't the push-button setup that you've built, but PiHole is a decent option for this purpose as well.
Occasionally I add social media sites (including HN) to the block list.
It's very easy to bypass when I really want/need to, but it does cut down the more unconscious "CMD + T - news/redd/face - enter" moments that happen when I'm bored.
Prevents the occasional unnecessary mindless scroll by creating a couple extra steps.
That's exactly right - It's always good to put roadblocks and increase resistance to bad habits, and take away roadblocks and decrease resistance to good habits. It works better for me than cold turkey.
I’m all for tangible, tactical solutions to problems that are currently enabled by software. For example, a phone tells the time, but it’s not always as straight forward as looking at a clock.
This exists as a commercial product (e.g. Freedom App), but you can just as easily add buttons and switches to a Home Assistant setup that does the same thing.
While it's not exactly the same, there's an app called "Self Control" on macOS that blocks selected websites for chosen amount of time, and after it is engaged it is virtually impossible for you to disable the block until the timer runs out. I use it a lot.
The DNS server is set in my phone as well. But even if it wasn't, I live in a third-world country that still has crude data caps (the United States) so consuming video would probably quickly approach it.
A small push button attached to a Raspberry Pi. It runs a bash script that sends the network request to my AdGuard Home server, adding a list of domains to the blocklist. After two hours, it undoes the changes.
I usually review the DNS requests in the two hours after, to look for other time-suckers, and have since added every single non-productivity-related website to the blocklist. Apparently I compulsively check the weather dozens of times whenever I can't access my normal procrastination sites.
Do you have more info about the button and how that works? I’d love to read about it.
I’ve built a simple slot machine and loaded it with a raspberry pi. Now I’m building some rudimentary slot software for it, but I also need to wire up the buttons to the GPIO pins.
I've seen some people have actually repurposed those useless things to something actually useful. I never did stop to read up on how/what they did to repurpose, just filed it away as one of those things that could/might be interesting to look into when my long list of other interesting things gets low.
I'm 40, so when I was a teenager the internet did not have so much different distractions. My mind was great at focusing. I'd read books, cover to cover, and tune out everything else. I'd sit hours and hours straight and make websites for IE4.
today I struggle to read a chapter in a book without getting distracted.
It's pretty disheartening to notice.
I'm much better at other things, but I wish I could still read like I used to.
I think the worst ones for me right now are YouTube and hacker news. I'll have a look at the procrastination settings here, but for some &£@£# reason my phone won't uninstall YouTube.
> I think the worst ones for me right now are YouTube and hacker news.
Same thing.
If anything, any strategy I tried just made me replace awful content with more quality content.
But you can still be addicted to "good" content. And it’s harder to block because the FOMO is harder with sites like HN and interesting YouTube content.
The DNS server is set in my phone as well (still works over data). But even if it wasn't, I live in a third-world country that still has crude data caps (the United States) so consuming video would probably quickly approach it.
Typical DNS-level blocking software like pihole also functions as a DHCP server, allowing all devices on the network to share the DNS settings with no additional configuration necessary.
The Freedom app has similar options where you can disable turning it off during a session or even disable Task Manager / Activity Monitor while it's active too.
I eventually found the pricing section...the green bit at the bottom, after 'try for free', behind 'freedom premium'.
Thanks to my off button (and several comments herein), i now so much more appreciate how my off button is free.
As in cost to use, and availability.
My guess is that changing the DNS server is work - enough work that your brain can say "oh wait I kinda didn't actually want to go to that time-wasting site, did I?" and find something less soul-sucking to do. Maybe some kind of work you're glad to do, maybe some kind of amusement that leaves you feeling better than getting lost in an infinite scroll of Content.
This is like saying "I cured my alcoholism by throwing all the liquor out of my house". The problem isn't the availability of the stimulus, it's the lack of control over your desire for it.
You can't cure a need for distraction by blocking domains. There isn't a cure. You have to learn to live with it, like alcoholism.
The good news is that major life events tend to be great for breaking the distraction seeking pattern. At some point you'll get married or have kids or change careers, etc. And then your life will be so different that looking back on a dns kill switch button will seem silly.
Until then, just keep pushing the button I guess. We all have to make it through somehow
This is colossally bad advice when literally a fundamental part of the playbook to defeating alcoholism is getting it out of the house... Getting it out of the house and blocking domains are extremely valid tactics for getting over an addiction.
The “alcoholism is an incurable disease” trope came from a religious organization peddling snake oil. Not the best foundation to build your argument on. Studies indicate that many people are cured of their alcoholism and addiction. Generally through “aging out”. Additionally, just like alcoholism, the problem is the result not the cause. Alcoholics who don’t drink also don’t run over kids. People who don’t endlessly scroll don’t waste 5 hours a day. It doesn’t matter how it’s achieved
> The problem isn't the availability of the stimulus, it's the lack of control over your desire for it
…
> pushing the button
It’s possible you just didn’t recognize the way they’re exercising control over their desire for it. If you’re framing it in terms of alcoholism—speaking from experience here—you don’t come up with convenient ways to get away with not drinking, just convenient ways to go right on drinking even when you know you shouldn’t and wish you wouldn’t.
Having a kid made my internet addiction 100% worse. When your free time only comes in brief, unpredictable snatches, and your smartphone is right there in your pocket and can be held while rocking a baby who can't quite sleep, guess what happens...
My (crude) version of the same thing requires that I go 1000 meters from my house to press the button to enable the DNS for another 30 min of browsing (button is on a custom phone app, distance measured using phone GPS).
One feature that I want to implement is to have the system randomly enable for 10 minutes - and to signal this by changing the color of light from a desk lamp (Phillips Hue). The idea is that when this happens, I would drop what I was doing and leap for my phone to get some bonus browsing in. Me being controlled by the system like this might be fun?, or at least illustrate something?
Related to this but somewhat tangentially, I’ve been trying to figure out how I could programmatically determine if I look “busy” and engage Do Not Disturb for a period of time (roughly pomodoro interval) so that emails and alerts can’t distract me. The problem is that when I’m doing rudimentary code my interactions can be rather intense and obvious, but the more technical the problem the more I slow down, mulling things over in my head or wondering why we wrote code this bad and why it hasn’t broken before. I can be pretty deep in thought at this point and not showing my tools much to go off of.
In the end I think just making a pomodoro tool that automatically disables alerts until break is by far a simpler and more accurate prospect.
Seems like it would be ineffective while traveling. Unless you could configure it to be 1000 meters from current location! I'm interested in doing something like this. I've been playing way too much Elden Ring this week and I'd like to cut back in general on consumption of anything.
Before I read "custom phone app", I was imagining a mysterious physical red button somewhere up a telephone pole you had to climb, which through some abuse-of-job-privileges-or-connections you had wired directly into the telephony wires leading into your house. Or perhaps a comically large high-voltage pull switch labelled "reddit" which sparks a bit for no reason. Maybe a series of such pull switches, one for every major distracting website.
Just coming here down to note that despite, or because the lizard part, our brains are wonderful creation machines. All the comments up to this parent, including the mysterious physical red button, are great.
On my part, I think the trick is being selective with the addictions we indulge in. Exercise, reading, having sex, cooking, going on walks, writing, 3D modelling. A good mix of addictions is great in life!
People who still build magical red buttons and DNS blockers aren't that far gone, they can still build stuff. Most of us are completely paralized on our couches, drooling at the telescreen while a steady dose of soma is administered. Writing a comment is a chore and building a custom app is a distant dream project. We have plenty of daydreams, but are no longer capable of executing them.
My /etc/hosts file on the machine I work on all day blocks 68k hosts 24/7. No social media sites at all except Twitter. No ads.
Meanwhile, the Leechblock browser add-on stops me from using the few things I do otherwise (bits of Reddit, HN) allow between 09:00 and 17:00 which is not perfect but it's a start. Except ... I disable it a lot :(
Not sure if you know, but there are advanced options to put various roadblocks in your way, such as disabling access to the options menu, or disabling access to the add-ons menu entirely.
I don't _need_ it but using a smartphone instead of navigating via a physical map and taking photos of memorable events throughout the day sure is nice.
The car has a map + navigation already, and I care very little about documenting events... although I do use the phone during tear downs for the purpose. Still the prime use of the (my) phone is actual phone calls.
Interestingly I find that while you can doom scroll on a laptop for me it doesn’t “work”.
Perhaps because my laptop is work territory (both actual work and hobby) so I automatically don’t doom scroll there or maybe it’s just that lots of content is optimised for mobile and the experience is “better”.
Also, I always carry my phone, I don't carry my laptop most of the time. Pulling out your non-work laptop in a boring meeting is also something you don't do.
I got the new iPhone SE (small screen) in 2020 so I limit my screen time. It has worked but not as well as I'd hoped for.. maybe I need to go back to my razr.
most tools are multi-use. A smart phone is currently the best "convenient world remote control" you can have. It is also the best "distraction toy" you can have...
...self-discipline does not come easy, especially if supply and demand are strongly in favor of distraction...
I used to scoff at things like Windscribe's ROBERT which does similar things for social sites, clickbait, gambling sites, porn etc...
Thinking it's more like a child blocker. But I've had battles with addiction and issues myself with keeping focused. Being able to have some kind of actual switch for what I can access often acts as a mental toggle. It changes my mode so to speak and I end up getting more done.
There's tons of cool free filters or blockers etc but I love your method. A physical button could be great for that mental switch aspect I was talking about.
Sorry mate. Missed this. My ability to get distracted with physical things have a limit. I'll tidy up, do some chores, then once I've expended that I'll get on with whatever I need to focus on.
I’ve tried it and even closed all my social media accounts. It sort of worked. For social medias… But it changed nothing, I found other addictions on the internet. It’s just … the smartphone. I blocked a little portion of the infinity that is the internet, but my lizard brain is smart enough to know that infinite content is still there, more easily accessible than letting my mind wandering.
I think I should speak about it to a psychiatrist but I’m not even sure it’s a topic they can handle nowadays.
Infinite scrolling feels just like eating only pure sugar.
It’s not quality food but really addictive. To fight this addiction physical blocking is one part of the solution. The other part is psychological and thus personal. What works for me and make me change might not me the same for you.
That is why reading a book like Atomic Habits might help, but maybe you’ll need a few others to understand what needs to be changed to fight this.
For me, one day I tried to remember what content I saw and what I got from spending tens of ours scrolling. The answer was nothing. I learned nothing and got nothing from it. Just like eating pure sugar all evening vs going out a bit walking and feeling refreshed or biking or whatever.
I don’t want to be filled with empty stuff anymore. I don’t want socials to steal hours of sleep anymore.
I don’t want to have the feeling that I’m giving McDonald’s every day to my brain. I found the ratio to feel satisfied is more like 10-5% rather than 80% of my free time on it. I deleted every single social app and I never ever missed it. Because they provide really nothing for my life and I have so much better to do around me or with other sources of content.
That’s just me
> The answer was nothing. I learned nothing and got nothing from it.
I actually now have the inverse issue : now that I blocked "pure sugar content", I consume a lot of more interesting content. Like, HN is interesting to read, I have only subscriptions I like on YT and I feel like they make me learn. I still watch/read a lot of shit but I've also found a lot of gems I'm glad I found.
I'll read Atomics Habits since a lot of people recommended it to me.
Then it’s a matter of equilibrium I guess. Even if you love biking it’s harder to do it safely at night. So we « naturally » wait for sunlight.
When things we love are accessible at all times and this barrier is removed the equilibrium have to be imposed maybe by introducing other thing like, maybe, more social interactions, talking to people etc. Whatever fits in the cycle to maintain an equilibrium.
I've not managed it completely yet but something that decimated (oo, literal usage) my social usage was to get rid of all the apps
The mobile web interface equivalents are usually decent enough to sate the addiction but the quirks and oddnesses that try to push you to the apps will stop you falling into doom scrolling
Also of course when you're up against an algorithm, get rid of the data. All the page likes, groups, friend-of-a-friends, etc you don't need - unlike. Or go nuclear and create a new account
Facebook for example has no content that keeps me coming back on my new account -- it even says that I need to add more friends to get more content, nothing at all on the home feed. I gave it up by accident :)
Thats a good point, up until now I've assumed this is an issue of willpower. But the app is a consumer too, if I can cutoff its food supply, it'll be much weaker.
Essentially just an AdGuard Home installation on my VPS. I then added all the URLs and blocked them all in the web interface, and sniffed the network request in the browser console. Then, I unblocked them. For each one of these, I saved the corresponding "copy as CURL" command. When the button is pressed, the "blocked" command is called; after waiting 7200 seconds, the "unblock" command is called.
Nothing to do with age, I'm afraid - I'm over 40, and far more scattered and subject to the lure of the endless internet than when I was 20. In my personal situation, my best hope is that it is mommy brain, and that I'll outgrow it as my kid gets further from infancy.
I'm a couple of years short of 40 and feel the same. But these infinite feeds simply didn't exist, or at least weren't nearly as prevalent and well tuned to hijack human psychology, when we were 20.
I remember downloading and picking over the content of newsgroups in my mid-late teens and before that endlessly rolling through different TV stations.
My mind has always craved the distraction of the infinite scroll, it's just modern social media has perfected it.
I have something similar except that it's permanent and only in software (although I love the idea of a red button). I use NextDNS with a huge list of blocked websites. I set NextDNS as my dns server on windows and android so they're blocked on my laptop and phone.
To use one, I have to go to next dns and enable it, then when I'm finished I disable it again. I find this is mostly enough to make my usage mindful.
It's essentially just an AdGuard Home installation on my VPS, which is a DNS server that all of my devices use as the DNS server. I then added all the blocked URLs and blocked them all in the web interface, and viewed the network request that it made in the browser console. Then, I unblocked them. For each one of these saved network requests, I saved the corresponding "copy as CURL" command. When the button is pressed, the "blocked" command is called; after waiting 7200 seconds, the "unblock" command is called. This just calls the server to not resolve those URLs.
I keep setting things like this up (Current: Pi-hole) but my problem is I break through it virtually instantly because I'm the one that set it up (Current bypass: Log in to pihole, disable)
Anyone know of a way that could thwart someone who's ~20 years in to computing? Doesn't have to be clever, just needs to be enough of a road block to not be worth the effort bypassing. If there's an exploit past the roadblock I'll find it haha
"Just be more disciplined", etc: I know but it turns out we're fighting ADHD here, working on that front separately
I had a scheduled task to turn of my desk top at 21:50. then multiple tasks but they were subject to the whim of just disablin them. Turns out if it's a random moment between 21:30~22:30, I dont get the urge to disable it. but then it has to non nullable when it happens.
Otherwise, the block is sometimes just enough to make you second-guess your browsing habit. There's only a uBlock rule between me and reddit, and no limits on my iPad, but the extra effort is a reminder that I don't want to visit that website.
My method is super simple but does require a wee bit of self discipline. I "HALT!". I even have "HALT!" written on a post-it on my monitor. Whenever I notice that my (valuable) attention is wandering, I yell "HALT!" in my head or out loud (depending who is nearby). This makes me snap out of it, to break the pattern. Ideally, I return to what I should be doing but very often I can only do the minimum. The minimum being sitting there doing nothing, thinking of nothing (except the thing I should be doing), until I get bored and want to do something ... but only allowing myself to do what I should be doing otherwise I must continue to sit doing nothing (being halted). It's often too hard to halt AND switch do what I should be doing, so this method breaks it into two steps. Halting alone is much easier to force myself to do since doing nothing is easy. Once in halt-state, the only possible exit is to the proper do-state.
What would be cool is to flip it. Press the button to get a few minutes of browsing allowed. Then, make the button deliver an electric shock upon being pressed. I bet you'd soon stop pressing it
On the other hand, why does every shopping, manufacturer, parts supplier, etc. Have to paginate everything?
That only makes sense if you are trying to increase page views with ads. It is frustrating to have to click next, re load all the background clutter, sometimes every ten items.
Oftentimes it is so that you have to interact with the website which subsequently allows the webpage to autoplay media with audio or track engagement with a particular piece of content.
I much prefer pagination, because I can get back to where I was. There are technical ways to make infinite scroll deep-linkable but I almost never see it in practice.
It is most likely just a relic from slower internet connections. Anyone who was browsing in the early 2000s didn't want an unknown number of images downloading all at once, especially on a mobile device. It does have little value these days but keep in mind some people are still on slow connections, and some categories of search results can be quite large.
You might as well ask why Google results paginate but you probably answered it (ads).
Aza Raskin, who improved and popularized infinite scroll, has repeatedly apologized for it. He co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, and has a podcast about perverse incentives that drive tech companies to make users' lives worse. https://www.humanetech.com/podcast
I think he can sleep easy that it wasn't entirely his fault. We already had infinite scroll before social media, it was probably just a matter of time before it made it's way over there.
I've reached the stage where I no longer even enjoy social media consumption, I'm just doing it out of habit. I feel like a heroin user who no longer gets high and just uses it to feel normal.
And I'm not even talking about the usual social media ratholes. I pretty much bounce between HN and NYT at this point. And I feel close to dropping even those two entirely, out of sheer boredom. Because on the bright side, it's probably a lot easier to quit than heroin.
Trying to cut down on phone time/doom scrolling has been a focus of mine the past few weeks. I've been able to help mitigate but not get rid of it with the following:
1. Apollo for Reddit on iOS has a toggle for infinite scrolling, I have infinite scrolling off
2. Most of my time on my phone is spent either in bed, or in transit. Transit has a definite end, so being in bed was my main target. I now leave my phone so far away from my bed at night that I need to get up to get it. Instead of using it before bed, I read.
I do #2 in moderation, for example weekends, I just run free but my sleep is way better the nights I read and keep the phone away! I hope this helps some folks.
Oh but there are - and if we're being honest with ourselves we already know it. If you can't defeat it head on (and you can't) you have to take extreme actions - ditch your smartphone for something dumber, block the sites using something like nextdns. Maybe you could go even further, see Popey's brilliant blog entry on his command line only laptop - https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/command-line-only-laptop/
I love the focus the terminal brings, besides the solid benefit of scriptability/automation that’s not possible with most GUI apps.
I’ve recently rediscovered emacs and now use it as my primary tool for development. I already loved working in the terminal for git and xcodebuild so it’s felt natural.
Moving editing and workflow into emacs has been great so far. I’m already customizing things. Even using eshell! Excited to look into other things like a music player or email app. Or even slack like the author: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack
Lately I've become convinced that video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol. They're a pretty fun way to kill time, but some people are predisposed to doing too much, and too much is dangerous.
Also similar to drugs/alcohol: it seems to affect some people more than others. I know people who can check FB/TikTok for a couple minutes and then they're done, and I also know people who continue to scroll Instagram while cooking. It's very similar to how some people can knock down some beers a couple times a month socially, but some people end up in a vicious spiral of drinking every single night.
Every single thing you do involves dopamine. The difference with drugs (of which alcohol is one) is that they directly manipulate your brains neurochemistry. Nothing you perceive with your normal senses does that. Even sex doesn't have the same addictive effects as direct chemical manipulation of the dopaminergic neuronal populations. The idea that they are the same is very dangerous for society and will lead to the use of violence to control people where it is definitely not warranted.
The question is if these vectors of addiction are compounding or if it always affects people who were prone towards addiction anyway. My hope is the latter. Not that having a population of 10%(?) addictions isn't tragic, but it's better than eventually having a population of 90% addicts because we eventually offer personally tailored addictive products at scale.
I don't see anything wrong with talking about a video game or social media addiction. Of course it's nowhere near the same level of danger as a heroin addiction, but if it's counter-productive and there's the same kinds of behaviors involved, it can be a useful model.
Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a drug. It's not expensive, and it's not known for tearing families apart, but it builds a tolerance, it produces a withdrawal, and people will change their behavior to get access to more coffee, may become aggressive when they can't get access to it, etc.
If you think that you waste too much time on social media, then just like with drug addiction, there's a question of first realizing/accepting that this is even a problem at all. Then, once you've realized that there's a problem, you might want to think about coping strategies, replacing social media with other activities, developing healthier habits, etc. And just like with a drug addiction, you might find quitting cold turkey difficult.
> physical vs psychological dependence is kind of outdated
I wouldn't say outdated, but I do agree it is 100% up for debate.
Kurzgesagt did a really similar video[0] on addiction, but the basically walked it back from such a hard line stance in a correction/update video[1]. It's not so easy to tease apart the social vs the physical vs the pure mental.
> Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a drug.
Right, I think you're agreeing with me. That they have similar aspects, but to treat them the same - like putting caffine on Class 1 - would be insane.
I'm assuming you mean schedule 1. Nobody is suggesting that coffee should be placed in that category.
I don't think there's a problem in society with people equating coffee or videogames with highly addictive drugs. It's more the opposite. People don't realize that addiction is something that could happen to them, or that they have an addiction to something. Alcoholics and drug addicts often live in denial, even when it has really damaging consequences in their life. So, if someone is addicted to something that's not widely considered addictive, it's even easier to deny that this is even a problem.
When the idea of an addiction to porn or videogames is brought up in an online discussion thread, people are quick to dismiss that this even is a real problem. Consider though that gambling addiction is very much real, and a lot of gambling takes places with machines that are effectively simple videogames. Addiction to video games isn't as devastating, because you're not losing huge sums of money, just time, but presumably, the addictive mechanism is more or less the same.
You are conflating two terms here. Addiction (which is what the video is talking about here) is a set of behavioral patterns. I agree that the line between psychological and physiological in addiction is blurry. But addiction is not the same as dependence, which is about tolerance and withdrawal and is purely a physical phenomenon.
To give some examples, when a person misses work because they are drunk or when they spend their rent money on heroin, that is addiction. When a person has seizures because they haven't had a drink in two days, that's dependence.
I agree with GP, video games may be addictive but there is no physical dependence like there is with alcohol or, as you pointed out, even caffeine.
What about the way that people who scroll a lot lose their attention span, can't sit still without stimulation etc? Maybe dependence isn't exactly the same thing, but there is some kind of physical change happening in the brain, no?
Are you kidding me? Have you not seen people die from selfies?
Anyone can become addicted to anything and suffer the same consequences peddled by religion for "drugs". There is no argument against this, humans can programme themselves just as opiates, pathways are pathways.
My ex-wife was a Doctor with PTSD from being raped (she was raped by a doctor who was drunk, then raped by a physcologist who treated her, got her pregnant, then forced her to give up her kid) (med school, what a cesspool!)
She was addicted to gaming AND social media. They were the only way she could stop thinking about her PTSD which haunted her everyday. She is a functioning Senior ER doctor. She had all the same symptoms as my mate who was raped by an uncle when he was a child and consequently took up drugs in adolencence. he gave up drugs. She hasnt given up gaming, or scoail media, and she is only a trigger away from killing someone on the ER table due to it.
FYI i found out we were getting a divorce because she unfriended me from FB. Are u kidding me? What an ADDICT! Threatened to kill herself unless i had a baby with her. That was my last straw. She couldnt do a sh*t in the morning without scrolling. Somehow FB status was more real to her then life. Least she have a moment to recollect her trauma.
I mean things can be addictive. I used to smoke hella weed and was dependent on it to function. Basically I was addicted to wake and bake and just be high all day. I was still “functional” to others but to myself I was miserable and a husk. I was going to the dispensary every couple days and spending forty bucks. I’m not saying weed is bad, but like anything else moderation and control are required. Now I just smoke on very special occasions like my bday or getting a promotion/raise. But let’s be real while accepting that some people (like me) can get addicted to some things.
I never got hooked on nicotine or alcohol. Nor on video games. But I’m sure some people do get sucked in and feel like crap.
Very few drugs have life threatening withdrawal symptoms.
Alcohol does but you have to abuse it to an extreme degree to reach that level. Most people with issues around alcohol are a huge distance away from getting dangerous withdrawal symptoms.
I will never understand how people moralize behaviours rather than outcomes. Drinking every night is fine if you don't do it to excess. A beer or two, or a glass of wine with dinner, or a nightcap, doesn't hurt anyone. Drinking every night to the level where you're damaging your health is a problem.
Having a few beers a couple of times a month is great. Binge drinking a couple of times a month to the point where you harm yourself or others is a problem.
It doesn't matter how often you do it. It matters what happens when you do. The time frame is essentially unrelated.
All I can say is that mindset is more important than amount consumed. Just look at depressed people drinking, a single beer already makes the person more likely to become an alcoholic. yet two or thee beers every evening wouldn't suddenly create an alcoholic out of me.
Two drinks each night versus one is quite a difference. It's double the amount of alcohol!
Current recommendation from the Netherlands Nutrition Centre:
> It is advisable to refrain from drinking alcohol, or to consume at most one glass a day. This advice applies equally to men and women.
> Moderate consumption of alcohol at one glass a day may reduce the chance of getting certain chronic diseases, but also raises the chances of getting breast cancer for women. Drinking more than one glass a day, is not beneficial at all, and has negative effects on health. It increases the risks of having a stroke; and getting breast, intestinal, or long cancer.
> The potential benefits of alcohol do not outweigh the negative effects on your health.¹
(Personally, I drink only in the weekends; usually one glass, occasionally two. It prevents making a habit out of it.)
How are you calculating that? One standard 330ml bottle of beer at 5% has a little less alcohol than a standard pour (150ml) of 13% wine. As soon as you move to a pint or 500ml can of beer you go over it. This is why a glass of wine and a bottle of beer are taken as roughly equal in terms of alcohol content.
That would get you exactly three glasses from a bottle. That's… not a normal pour of wine in any country.
A standard size bottle of wine (750ml) serves five or six glasses, but the hospitality industry usually goes for five out of a bottle. 150ml (or 5oz) is what you can reasonably expect in restaurants and bars for the average glass of wine.
Do you honestly pour a third of a bottle at a time for wine?
In the UK that is a 'large' glass of wine. The NHS¹ calls 175ml 'standard' (slightly more than usual) and 125ml 'small'.
For the UK this is all not that relevant, because there the concept of the 'alcohol unit' is much more ingrained and used in public health campaigns, so you would work with those. E.g., with the recommended upper limit of 14 alcohol units, you could drink a standard glass of wine (175ml) six days of the week (12.6 units), or have a bottle of lager six days of the week and a pint of Guinness on Saturday (13.2 units).
Unless I've made an arithmetic error, those two American-sized beers (12oz each, 700ml of beer total) contain 35g of alcohol, and the American glass of wine (6oz, or 175ml) has 22.75g. Less alcohol than the two beers, but still more than most people should have on a daily basis.
First of all, drinking alcohol every day is too much if you count your alcohol units.
Second, first you start with a drink every week, then every day, then every hour,... that is how you develop your addiction.
Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People who are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and complete abstinence is the way to go.
first you start with a drink every week, then every day, then every hour,...
Unless you don't. I've had a glass of wine with dinner several nights a week for the past 20 years, and I haven't progressed to drinking during the day.
People use alcohol as a form of self-medication when they have other problems. If you don't have the other problems then limited regular alcohol consumption is probably fine (I'm not a doctor so I can't say it actually is.)
I agree with you. I do not have that problem either. But it is well known that some people are more prone to addiction than others. So general arguments like "one or two beers every day" is fine, are a bit dangerous.
> Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People who are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and complete abstinence is the way to go.
And people who are not addicted to alcohol argue that this approach does work for us with no effort, and that blanket advocacy for complete abstinence is moralising based on behaviours rather than outcomes.
Some people have an innate risk of alcohol addiction and should absolutely practice complete abstinence. Some people are at a risk of alcohol addiction due to their personal circumstances and the culture they live in and, while abstinence is not the only solution, it's probably the only feasible one. Some people have a tendency overdrink on occasion due to their personalities and social lifestyles, but they do not need complete abstinence to keep this under control and can do with intentional moderation. Some people enjoy social drinking and even getting a bit tipsy sometimes, but outright drunkenness feels so terrible for us that we are at no risk of alcohol addiction and see no point in practising complete abstinence ourselves.
The problem with that is that, different to drugs, social media is not regulated (in terms of UX and manipulation of behavior/emotions).
Social media is allowed to make their platform as addictive as they possibly can. You’re not allowed to create and sell a drug that is perfected for addiction.
Social media and video games are sort of a Wild West in terms of regulation, and I think we’ll have to see some in the next years to combat this.
Offline video games are healthier than social media IMO. They need focus. They leave you feeling rewarded after playing; the ones that don’t aren’t addictive (for me, at least). Either they have some finite (and usually short) content, or they become boring after playing many hours in a short period of time. (I guess this isn’t true for some people, and they should stay away from such infinitely playable games.) They leave you with fond, distinct memories. They don’t influence your worldview and politics overmuch. They can inspire your creativity and imagination. …
Use a trick they teach you to manage anger: Count to 10. 10 posts, 10 seconds, whatever. And if the first 10 didn't stop you, restart and count to 10 again. These artificial "pages" are low-effort but always do the trick for me.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadIm just happy its not smoking or drinking. Would make life a lot harder.
The same thing happens to me and I think the OP provides one good solution: stick to mobile UI in a browser. Generally, increase friction wherever you can. This only really works if you can stick to the worsened experience and not crack/redownload the app. One way to tackle that is to perhaps set a daily or weekly reminder to purge the apps you have a problem with (or all apps you don’t need) from your phone. Maybe you will redownload them again, but giving yourself that extra moment where you can go to the App Store will surely make you quit halfway once or twice, then consistently, before you fall for the trap.
I have an inadvertent example. I frequented a website on my phone for a while that relied heavily on a certain file format for videos. I switched phones and (by accident) got a new phone that doesn’t support the format and would require me to download external apps to watch it. That friction of needing a third party app, paired with a decision to only use mobile websites when possible, meant by browsing time on that site dropped precipitously and I’ve now almost entirely cut the bad habit.
Another habit is screen time. It is easy to go overboard and delete limits but you’re setting friction points where you need to think about what you’re doing.
This is legal dopamine, and cocaine although a Selective Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor (SDRI) is illegal. You choose.
I know you were discussing recreational cocaine, but fun fact: cocaine can be prescribed legally in most countries including the US. For relatively obvious reasons it's an uncommon prescriber choice, and it's generally applied topically (including to the nose) rather than snorted.
Legal methamphetamine pills are also available by prescription, and of course also an uncommon prescriber choice when alternatives work well, although its chemical relatives in the amphetamine family are very much among the commonly prescribed ADHD drugs.
This is where education, schools are used to monitor behaviours because if someone later expresses an interest to become a GP or Dentist, their behaviour will be used as part of an evaluation to see if they can be trusted. The educational system is just part of the state's intelligence estate.
I'm not joking, it's the best antidote to the thought-theft of "social media". Pick a subject in which you're interested, find a representively excellent text, and read. And then re-read, because unless you're a genius you won't absorb everything first time.
Also it's wonderful to just curl up with a book and a cup of tea and let time pass you by as you ... learn the considered thought of others! This is civilised!
Normally I'd recommend history but around these parts Category Theory in Context by Emily Riehl is probably acceptable :)
About re-reading, especially textbooks: it takes time and trouble to appreciate the difficult and often esoteric ideas represented in a text and understand the underlying deep thought. The author(s) wrote and re-wrote every damn phrase in terms of their imagined audience. The first pass yields a basic familiarity, but try every chapter again in light of the later insights.
I remember the first time I read Introduction to Metamathematics by Kleene, and I remember the fourth time so much better. I can feel the cloth binding, I can hear his voice clearly.
Nowadays I pick up a book, read a few pages, then immediately lose interest and go do something else. Anybody know how to get back into reading?
It's possible you picked a bad book, but it's more likely that it isn't engaging enough. It normally takes me a few days (after half a year book-free) to get back into reading, but it's worth it.
Right now I’ve got one going in science fiction, autobiography, technical and… oh, another autobiography (I’ve been really into those lately).
What is the point of censoring 1 letter in an otherwise extremely obvious word?
You are not redacting the word. People reading the word don't bleep it out in their head. You know you are saying 'fucking', we know you are saying 'fucking'. HN doesn't block posts with "naughty" words in them.
So what are you trying to achieve? Please tell me.
I'm not back to being as avid of a reader yet, but I'm optimistic I'll get there. I'm reading more now than I have in a few years.
"Expeditionary Force" by Craig Alanson if anyone else is curious. I'll check it out, thanks!
I first kicked myself into it by starting the Discworld series of books. Pratchett is a great author (imo), the text has a certain kind of easy charm, I don't need to go in sequential order, the books are cheap to buy, and none are terribly long or dense.
I've also added some longer, more serious stuff to my reading list and bookshelf, but those are things I'll get to in time. I try to make myself read 100 pages per week, and if I don't like doing that with a certain book, I'll pick up another one. I can manage that at a leisurely pace in 2 to 3 hours on a weekend, or grab 20 pages a few times per week.
It won't be easy because you'll be changing some habit. But with time you'll learn how to appreciate books again.
Start with a quote you liked when you were reading and just let your thoughts flow into the paper, you might go for many pages and an hour or more before coming up for air.
I like to call the activity of reading and writing “conversing with the universe.”
Conversely, I find that I can dump hours into social media and not remember anything when I finally snap out of it. It’s junk food for the mind.
It's https://digitalvegan.net
One reason for making it an old fashioned paper book is that some of the ideas it presents would simply be censored on what the internet is becoming.
It's not really written as "self-help", more as philosophical musings for intellectual self-defence. Many people who have read it tell me they successfully quit their smartphone.
As ongoing research in modern critical technology studies I'm trying to keep a list of ones I read and at least found interesting (below). Good luck finding the courage to take back control of your technology.
Jenny Oddell How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Paul Kingsnorth Life versus the machine
Roger McNamee Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
Siva Vaidhyanathan Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us
Virginia Eubanks Automating Inequality
Sophie Brickman Baby Unplugged
Mike Monteiro Ruined by Design
Thomas Kersting Disconnected: Protect Your Kids Against Device Dependency
Nicholas Kardaras Glow Kids
Jaron Lanier Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media
Douglas Rushkoff Team Human
Carissa Véliz Privacy is Power: Why You Should Take Back Control
David Shenk Data Smog
Paulina Borsook Cyberselfish
Once you're logged in, just to read that one thing, it can't hurt to engage on that one issue, can it?
Before you know it, you're 23 increasingly angry comments into a thread about sand, people are still wrong on the internet, it's 3am and you hate everyone, everything and yourself.
I also watch YouTube instead of TikTok. YouTube is slower paced and hasn't (yet) fallen into the trap of continual submersion in content without a break. You have to consciously choose to watch another video. I can also tell myself that I'm watching content that is pseudo-educational in nature (like Jay Foreman, Stuff Built Here, Jazza or Mark Rober).
I've started using TikTok a couple of times and it just seems like the perfect engagement machine. It's like a machine that drip-feeds dopamine. Pure evil, in my opinion.
You just have to plan things in advance a bit more. It's liberating in a way. You plan dinner with someone on Thursday at 6:00 and it's set. You don't have to think about it, tweet about it, post it on Facebook, or anything else. Just show up.
[1] https://qwertyloop.com/posts/doomscrolling
Whenever I am thinking of redownloading it, I think about why I deleted it in the first place.
Apollo for Reddit has a feature to disable infinite scroll.
Why would you interact with a company that believes that?
Elsewhere it's just annoying. Especially when a misclick makes you lose the position. Dilbert's website is a good example of this. For Reddit or Twitter I don't know, I read them using libreddit and nitter when I occasionally land on them from a link or a search result. TikTok and Facebook I have never tried.
Also, where does DDG have infinite scroll? I just checked (it's my default) and Firefox on Android shows a "More Results" footer button.
But yes, even if they did so, this is the important bit:
> DDG is likely neither hoping nor expecting their users to infinitely scroll through search results all day, without clicking anything.
TikTok is ridiculously captivating. I just don’t use it because it sucks me in.
- be pausable, allowing to reach the page's footer
- be resumable from the latest viewing point on page reload
- modify current URL periodically
- preload new data slightly before reaching the end of last page
- auto-pause at some point to prevent mental overload
- be switchable, in part to "Click to continue" state, in options
This is a big one.
Without this it's so frustrating to infinite scroll down to the equivalent of 12 pages, leave the page and want to go back to roughly where page 12 is another time. Instead you have to start from the top and scroll down.
You'd likely save a good amount of server compute power just using push state to update the page in the URL as you go so folks can copy / paste it and jump right back to that page later.
Even HN might have this problem a bit. If you visit the homepage you click an article, spend some time reading it, then click back, the homepage might have changed, and even post you were reading might not even be on the homepage anymore. HN is much less bad than infinite scroll sites, because HN's homepage is the same for everyone, and doesn't change nearly as often.
One way to to solve this might be to store a session ID as a query parameter that gets automatically added when you visit the homepage, and store the complete state of each session either serverside or locally in the browser. Then when you navigate back to that session ID, you get the same page. There are a number of downsides to this though. The session ID in the URL is ugly, there's a lot of storage needed for all these session, sessions likely need to be pruned at some point (so the back button will stop working at some point), and it's very difficult to figure out what to do when multiple tabs open the same session ID.
I doubt any product of consequence would allow this to happen.
Doing your job as a rogue quasi-saboteur probably isn’t a better option than quitting.
The problem only comes when that time limit is breached. And THEN you can review and figure out whether that time got you what you wanted. IE usually doomscrolling is to zoneout/relax/catch up with friends news, etc.
But this requires dedication to think in this way.
I disagree. Ask any 20-30 year old and I don't think many will say that TikTok, Instagram, etc is "harmful to your health". Maybe a "bit addictive", maybe a few people who say "I have a problem with it". But never "I know this is very harmful for my attention span, my mental health, etc".
Early 20's here, and avoid TikTok, Instagram, etc and know Reddit and the like are all of those things listed - though the worst affected for me personally is attention span.
I usually just like to chime in when people mention stuff like "no one young <does|knows|cares about> $THING", because I've noticed a trend where the fact that there are young people who care is ignored which I think hurts the case more.
Most of my peers don't care however, at least, not as much as I do though I've made some inroads.
On the other side there's all the people who live with it with no negative impact either.
The existence of these two groups seem to me a reasonable enough argument to keep it as it is and find alternative solutions for the people who can't remove it from their lives yet are harmed by that. At least, removing it for everyone doesn't seem to be the right call.
For the next two hours, there is nothing I can do outside of SSH'ing through my mobile device (purposefully don't have an app for it) and resetting the countdown on the DNS server and restarting the server, to allow these DNS requests. It denies all SSH connections from my home network, and doesn't even resolve its own subdomain (dns.my-domain.com for the DNS dashboard) for me to reset it.
[0]: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
Occasionally I add social media sites (including HN) to the block list.
It's very easy to bypass when I really want/need to, but it does cut down the more unconscious "CMD + T - news/redd/face - enter" moments that happen when I'm bored.
Prevents the occasional unnecessary mindless scroll by creating a couple extra steps.
They take a larger cut but are much more hands on with the marketing, and this kind of project would be right up their alley.
Couldn't recommend them more after my own experience with them as a 21 year old fresh grad.
[0] https://selfcontrolapp.com
I usually review the DNS requests in the two hours after, to look for other time-suckers, and have since added every single non-productivity-related website to the blocklist. Apparently I compulsively check the weather dozens of times whenever I can't access my normal procrastination sites.
I’ve built a simple slot machine and loaded it with a raspberry pi. Now I’m building some rudimentary slot software for it, but I also need to wire up the buttons to the GPIO pins.
Plus, what else that is small form factor and can execute ssh scripts when triggered by a smashable button are there?
A giant plush enter key allows for smashing as needed.
https://flyingtiger.com/products/enter-key-3015609
https://bikerglen.com/blog/usb-big-red-button/
I'm not sure this changes as you age, it certainly hasn't for me. :(
Same thing.
If anything, any strategy I tried just made me replace awful content with more quality content.
But you can still be addicted to "good" content. And it’s harder to block because the FOMO is harder with sites like HN and interesting YouTube content.
https://freedom.to/
Anything that pisses me off works. Usually that's fully logging out of an app in a browser and not using any mobile apps.
Would be interested to learn more about this approach.
You can't cure a need for distraction by blocking domains. There isn't a cure. You have to learn to live with it, like alcoholism.
The good news is that major life events tend to be great for breaking the distraction seeking pattern. At some point you'll get married or have kids or change careers, etc. And then your life will be so different that looking back on a dns kill switch button will seem silly.
Until then, just keep pushing the button I guess. We all have to make it through somehow
Still have a 68k line /etc/hosts from the Steven Black list.
Most alcoholics do need to keep all the liquor out of their homes. This is a necessary but insufficient condition for many of their recoveries.
…
> pushing the button
It’s possible you just didn’t recognize the way they’re exercising control over their desire for it. If you’re framing it in terms of alcoholism—speaking from experience here—you don’t come up with convenient ways to get away with not drinking, just convenient ways to go right on drinking even when you know you shouldn’t and wish you wouldn’t.
One feature that I want to implement is to have the system randomly enable for 10 minutes - and to signal this by changing the color of light from a desk lamp (Phillips Hue). The idea is that when this happens, I would drop what I was doing and leap for my phone to get some bonus browsing in. Me being controlled by the system like this might be fun?, or at least illustrate something?
In the end I think just making a pomodoro tool that automatically disables alerts until break is by far a simpler and more accurate prospect.
I wish you hadn't clarified.
On my part, I think the trick is being selective with the addictions we indulge in. Exercise, reading, having sex, cooking, going on walks, writing, 3D modelling. A good mix of addictions is great in life!
Meanwhile, the Leechblock browser add-on stops me from using the few things I do otherwise (bits of Reddit, HN) allow between 09:00 and 17:00 which is not perfect but it's a start. Except ... I disable it a lot :(
Not sure if you know, but there are advanced options to put various roadblocks in your way, such as disabling access to the options menu, or disabling access to the add-ons menu entirely.
Host lookup should be O(1) and entirely in memory, so I see zero issue perf. wise to begin with.
I gave up my smartphone a decade ago. It's only "inconvenient" when people expect me to have internet in my pocket.
Exploring the option of getting a feature phone but do I really need to carry it?
I also tried a Linux phone but it wasn't very good in terms of usability and it soon became unusable due to hardware failure.
The HW failure was largely my fault because I didn't take good care of it.
The new PinePhone Pro looks very promising, looks like it can be a daily driver and I would like to try it out as soon as Mobian runs on it.
Edit: I'm not clear if Mobian runs on PinePhone Pro already? Looking at this link it seems it does https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2021/12/28/pinephone-pro/ but looking here, it seems we're not quite there yet: https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro_Software_Releases...
How do you even mindlessly watch youtube vid after youtube vid on such a tiny screen?
...self-discipline does not come easy, especially if supply and demand are strongly in favor of distraction...
Thinking it's more like a child blocker. But I've had battles with addiction and issues myself with keeping focused. Being able to have some kind of actual switch for what I can access often acts as a mental toggle. It changes my mode so to speak and I end up getting more done.
There's tons of cool free filters or blockers etc but I love your method. A physical button could be great for that mental switch aspect I was talking about.
I’ve tried it and even closed all my social media accounts. It sort of worked. For social medias… But it changed nothing, I found other addictions on the internet. It’s just … the smartphone. I blocked a little portion of the infinity that is the internet, but my lizard brain is smart enough to know that infinite content is still there, more easily accessible than letting my mind wandering.
I think I should speak about it to a psychiatrist but I’m not even sure it’s a topic they can handle nowadays.
I actually now have the inverse issue : now that I blocked "pure sugar content", I consume a lot of more interesting content. Like, HN is interesting to read, I have only subscriptions I like on YT and I feel like they make me learn. I still watch/read a lot of shit but I've also found a lot of gems I'm glad I found.
I'll read Atomics Habits since a lot of people recommended it to me.
The mobile web interface equivalents are usually decent enough to sate the addiction but the quirks and oddnesses that try to push you to the apps will stop you falling into doom scrolling
Also of course when you're up against an algorithm, get rid of the data. All the page likes, groups, friend-of-a-friends, etc you don't need - unlike. Or go nuclear and create a new account
Facebook for example has no content that keeps me coming back on my new account -- it even says that I need to add more friends to get more content, nothing at all on the home feed. I gave it up by accident :)
My mind has always craved the distraction of the infinite scroll, it's just modern social media has perfected it.
To use one, I have to go to next dns and enable it, then when I'm finished I disable it again. I find this is mostly enough to make my usage mindful.
Anyone know of a way that could thwart someone who's ~20 years in to computing? Doesn't have to be clever, just needs to be enough of a road block to not be worth the effort bypassing. If there's an exploit past the roadblock I'll find it haha
"Just be more disciplined", etc: I know but it turns out we're fighting ADHD here, working on that front separately
Otherwise, the block is sometimes just enough to make you second-guess your browsing habit. There's only a uBlock rule between me and reddit, and no limits on my iPad, but the extra effort is a reminder that I don't want to visit that website.
Oh, I just noticed something. HALT!
You might as well ask why Google results paginate but you probably answered it (ads).
And I'm not even talking about the usual social media ratholes. I pretty much bounce between HN and NYT at this point. And I feel close to dropping even those two entirely, out of sheer boredom. Because on the bright side, it's probably a lot easier to quit than heroin.
1. Apollo for Reddit on iOS has a toggle for infinite scrolling, I have infinite scrolling off 2. Most of my time on my phone is spent either in bed, or in transit. Transit has a definite end, so being in bed was my main target. I now leave my phone so far away from my bed at night that I need to get up to get it. Instead of using it before bed, I read.
I do #2 in moderation, for example weekends, I just run free but my sleep is way better the nights I read and keep the phone away! I hope this helps some folks.
Oh but there are - and if we're being honest with ourselves we already know it. If you can't defeat it head on (and you can't) you have to take extreme actions - ditch your smartphone for something dumber, block the sites using something like nextdns. Maybe you could go even further, see Popey's brilliant blog entry on his command line only laptop - https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/command-line-only-laptop/
Good luck to anyone reading this! You can do it!
I’ve recently rediscovered emacs and now use it as my primary tool for development. I already loved working in the terminal for git and xcodebuild so it’s felt natural.
Moving editing and workflow into emacs has been great so far. I’m already customizing things. Even using eshell! Excited to look into other things like a music player or email app. Or even slack like the author: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack
Also similar to drugs/alcohol: it seems to affect some people more than others. I know people who can check FB/TikTok for a couple minutes and then they're done, and I also know people who continue to scroll Instagram while cooking. It's very similar to how some people can knock down some beers a couple times a month socially, but some people end up in a vicious spiral of drinking every single night.
Disagreed - one key aspect of the latter is physical dependance where withdraws are potentially life threatening.
It's similar sledge hammer approach to putting weed on class 1 or treating all wrong doings as 'sin'.
They are not the same things, should not be thought as the same nor treated the same.
I don't see anything wrong with talking about a video game or social media addiction. Of course it's nowhere near the same level of danger as a heroin addiction, but if it's counter-productive and there's the same kinds of behaviors involved, it can be a useful model.
Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a drug. It's not expensive, and it's not known for tearing families apart, but it builds a tolerance, it produces a withdrawal, and people will change their behavior to get access to more coffee, may become aggressive when they can't get access to it, etc.
If you think that you waste too much time on social media, then just like with drug addiction, there's a question of first realizing/accepting that this is even a problem at all. Then, once you've realized that there's a problem, you might want to think about coping strategies, replacing social media with other activities, developing healthier habits, etc. And just like with a drug addiction, you might find quitting cold turkey difficult.
I wouldn't say outdated, but I do agree it is 100% up for debate.
Kurzgesagt did a really similar video[0] on addiction, but the basically walked it back from such a hard line stance in a correction/update video[1]. It's not so easy to tease apart the social vs the physical vs the pure mental.
> Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a drug.
Right, I think you're agreeing with me. That they have similar aspects, but to treat them the same - like putting caffine on Class 1 - would be insane.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdJAQZxJ6vY [1] https://youtu.be/JtUAAXe_0VI?t=224
I don't think there's a problem in society with people equating coffee or videogames with highly addictive drugs. It's more the opposite. People don't realize that addiction is something that could happen to them, or that they have an addiction to something. Alcoholics and drug addicts often live in denial, even when it has really damaging consequences in their life. So, if someone is addicted to something that's not widely considered addictive, it's even easier to deny that this is even a problem.
When the idea of an addiction to porn or videogames is brought up in an online discussion thread, people are quick to dismiss that this even is a real problem. Consider though that gambling addiction is very much real, and a lot of gambling takes places with machines that are effectively simple videogames. Addiction to video games isn't as devastating, because you're not losing huge sums of money, just time, but presumably, the addictive mechanism is more or less the same.
You are conflating two terms here. Addiction (which is what the video is talking about here) is a set of behavioral patterns. I agree that the line between psychological and physiological in addiction is blurry. But addiction is not the same as dependence, which is about tolerance and withdrawal and is purely a physical phenomenon.
To give some examples, when a person misses work because they are drunk or when they spend their rent money on heroin, that is addiction. When a person has seizures because they haven't had a drink in two days, that's dependence.
I agree with GP, video games may be addictive but there is no physical dependence like there is with alcohol or, as you pointed out, even caffeine.
No, it isn't. Only a pretty small fraction of drugs that can have physical symptoms of withdrawal have potentially life threatening withdrawal.
Anyone can become addicted to anything and suffer the same consequences peddled by religion for "drugs". There is no argument against this, humans can programme themselves just as opiates, pathways are pathways.
My ex-wife was a Doctor with PTSD from being raped (she was raped by a doctor who was drunk, then raped by a physcologist who treated her, got her pregnant, then forced her to give up her kid) (med school, what a cesspool!)
She was addicted to gaming AND social media. They were the only way she could stop thinking about her PTSD which haunted her everyday. She is a functioning Senior ER doctor. She had all the same symptoms as my mate who was raped by an uncle when he was a child and consequently took up drugs in adolencence. he gave up drugs. She hasnt given up gaming, or scoail media, and she is only a trigger away from killing someone on the ER table due to it.
FYI i found out we were getting a divorce because she unfriended me from FB. Are u kidding me? What an ADDICT! Threatened to kill herself unless i had a baby with her. That was my last straw. She couldnt do a sh*t in the morning without scrolling. Somehow FB status was more real to her then life. Least she have a moment to recollect her trauma.
I never got hooked on nicotine or alcohol. Nor on video games. But I’m sure some people do get sucked in and feel like crap.
Alcohol does but you have to abuse it to an extreme degree to reach that level. Most people with issues around alcohol are a huge distance away from getting dangerous withdrawal symptoms.
Having a few beers a couple of times a month is great. Binge drinking a couple of times a month to the point where you harm yourself or others is a problem.
It doesn't matter how often you do it. It matters what happens when you do. The time frame is essentially unrelated.
Current recommendation from the Netherlands Nutrition Centre:
> It is advisable to refrain from drinking alcohol, or to consume at most one glass a day. This advice applies equally to men and women.
> Moderate consumption of alcohol at one glass a day may reduce the chance of getting certain chronic diseases, but also raises the chances of getting breast cancer for women. Drinking more than one glass a day, is not beneficial at all, and has negative effects on health. It increases the risks of having a stroke; and getting breast, intestinal, or long cancer.
> The potential benefits of alcohol do not outweigh the negative effects on your health.¹
(Personally, I drink only in the weekends; usually one glass, occasionally two. It prevents making a habit out of it.)
1: https://www.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/alcohol.aspx
2 bottles of 5% abv beer has a little less alcohol than 1 normal sized glass of 13% abv red wine.
A standard size bottle of wine (750ml) serves five or six glasses, but the hospitality industry usually goes for five out of a bottle. 150ml (or 5oz) is what you can reasonably expect in restaurants and bars for the average glass of wine.
Do you honestly pour a third of a bottle at a time for wine?
175ml and 125ml are also UK standards but in a lot of places if you order wine by the glass you'll get 250ml.
For the UK this is all not that relevant, because there the concept of the 'alcohol unit' is much more ingrained and used in public health campaigns, so you would work with those. E.g., with the recommended upper limit of 14 alcohol units, you could drink a standard glass of wine (175ml) six days of the week (12.6 units), or have a bottle of lager six days of the week and a pint of Guinness on Saturday (13.2 units).
1: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/alcohol-support/calculating-alc...
Second, first you start with a drink every week, then every day, then every hour,... that is how you develop your addiction.
Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People who are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and complete abstinence is the way to go.
Unless you don't. I've had a glass of wine with dinner several nights a week for the past 20 years, and I haven't progressed to drinking during the day.
People use alcohol as a form of self-medication when they have other problems. If you don't have the other problems then limited regular alcohol consumption is probably fine (I'm not a doctor so I can't say it actually is.)
And people who are not addicted to alcohol argue that this approach does work for us with no effort, and that blanket advocacy for complete abstinence is moralising based on behaviours rather than outcomes.
Some people have an innate risk of alcohol addiction and should absolutely practice complete abstinence. Some people are at a risk of alcohol addiction due to their personal circumstances and the culture they live in and, while abstinence is not the only solution, it's probably the only feasible one. Some people have a tendency overdrink on occasion due to their personalities and social lifestyles, but they do not need complete abstinence to keep this under control and can do with intentional moderation. Some people enjoy social drinking and even getting a bit tipsy sometimes, but outright drunkenness feels so terrible for us that we are at no risk of alcohol addiction and see no point in practising complete abstinence ourselves.
Everybody is different.
The problem with that is that, different to drugs, social media is not regulated (in terms of UX and manipulation of behavior/emotions).
Social media is allowed to make their platform as addictive as they possibly can. You’re not allowed to create and sell a drug that is perfected for addiction.
Social media and video games are sort of a Wild West in terms of regulation, and I think we’ll have to see some in the next years to combat this.