Recently my coworker asked me if I could recommend any physical alarm clocks. He said that phone alarm causes him to pick up the phone the first thing in the morning and he wants to break away from this habit. I guess at some point the society as a whole will start fighting back.
"no it's dumb in all the right ways, which is the point"
Notably I have notifications but can't act on them, which prevents me from picking up the phone just to check notifications and then be drawn into doing actions. YMMV.
Agreed. My Garmin fenix is one of the most useful things I own. It's just 'smart' enough in the ways I need it to be (mostly for exercise/health), and 'dumb' enough not to bother me with useless dopamine nudges from apps from my phone. It's a delightful piece of technology that improves my life in subtle ways rather than detracts from it or saps it.
I've tried that, but found them to be too easy to sleep through unless my watch wrist is very close to my head (without a pillow between it and my ear). The sound isn't particularly loud and the vibration is similarly shallow. Useful for reminder alarms when I'm awake though.
My current success is using the Amazon branded wiretap for alarms. Interacting with the dumb cloth-eared irritation sometimes annoys me into being awake rather than hitting the virtual snooze yet again, and it doesn't have the doom-scroll potential of my phone.
Can you explain what the "Amazon branded wiretap for alarms" is? I did some searches with those terms but can't really understand what you're referring to.
I refer to the Echo Dots that can control my lights and a few other things (so I don't have to move the cats when I need to switch something, but have left the phone that otherwise has control out of reach), and occasionally read audiobooks, as my “Amazon branded wiretaps”.
To use them for alarms I just have to say “Computer, set an alarm for 8 in the morning” repeatedly until the damned things understand (I swear they understand a snarky tone far better than when I speak more neutrally (except when Lt Cmdr Data is on TV, they listen to him first time every time!)).
I had a feeling I was missing out on a joke or something haha. I thought you might be referring to a silent alarm type device. I'm really interested in finding an alternative that doesn't involve me scrolling through twitter until my brain fog clears up. I don't know if I could cave into buying a Amazon device like that though...
if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway? if it was a bit smarter you can quickly act on it, but using a smartwatch is so uncomfortable you wouldn't want to use it for anything unnecessary.
>if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway?
Not necessarily. My smartwatch is basically a beeper. I see messages come in, then I mentally prioritize them. 90% of the time, it can wait at least an hour, maybe longer. It's conditioned me (and people around me) that instant reachability is neither necessary nor desirable. It makes it easier to focus on what's in front of me instead of constantly tickling a slab of glass.
I don't know how true this really is, but I read somewhere there is a generational divide now, where older people are happy to see an SMS and leave it to respond later, perhaps days later, while the younger generation would consider "being left on read" as an offence and therefore would feel compelled to immediately act on it to not offend.
Things you read as notifications don't show up as read, even if you dismiss the notification.
As for the watch, I look at the thing and immediately can classify as truly urgent, needs immediate action or non-urgent and leave it piling as a todo list.
As a consequence I've begun to regularly forget where I put my phone, which is honestly quite liberating.
I've also started to aggressively cull away badges and notifications privileges from many apps.
oh interesting, how do you define older here though?
I'm a bit skeptical because i read a similar comment about answering calls immediately vs. letting it go to the answering machine already being such a divide.
Makes me feel old for thinking anyone offended by my taking hours if not days to respond to a non urgent text is welcome to go be someone else's friend.
I don't think I'd handle a wearing a watch anymore, smart or not.
For waking up, something not technological but working 99% of the time for me: pets (or kids) though you'd want other reasons as well to have those beyond waking you up early in the morning...
Most of my life I've had cats or dogs and their internal clock is amazingly on time. They are actually smart and try different things if you don't wake up at first, adapting to their owner. They include waking mechanisms such as sound, touch, light pain, emotional rewards and possibly guilt tripping/punishment to keep you accountable if you fail to wake up. Birds can work too but I wouldn't recommend keeping a rooster in your bedroom for an alarm unless you're blaring-alarms-levels of hard to wake up and don't have neighbours or a partner, these guys don't have an indoor voice.
Point is you're then forced to care for the pet, wether it wakes you to go out, get food or get cuddles and bob's your uncle: your chances of picking up your phone and doomscrolling first thing in the morning are much lowered.
It comes with other benefits as well. Not even the cheapest alarm clock has ever failed me. Sure, it can run out of battery power but the low power icon shows up months before it runs out of juice. Phone alarms on the other hand? I had them not triggering at all, or the vibration motor in the phone being stuck (?) and thus not working temporarily, etc... Hence I also prefer physical alarm clocks without software that have one job and one job only.
I've had strange time issues lately with iOS and macOS.
Initially I thought it was a TZ issue because of automatic location but the offset ended up being inconsistent with any TZ. Looks like a mix of RTC and NTP issue, the latter hiding the former when it works but revealing it when it fails.
Not really relevant but I'm going to say it anyway. I hate devices that tell me about "low" battery long in advance of actually going flat, it simply trains me to ignore the notification and then it unceremoniously dies on me at a later time.
In this particular case it's my use of NiMH batteries, which have a different discharge slope than normal Alkaline batteries. So it's not really a "feature" of the device but rather a limitation of the type of batteries used. With my alarm clock the signs when to charge the batteries are very obvious (the LCD starts fading away so it becomes hard to read, but the device is still functioning perfectly for some more weeks even then - it just doesn't much power at all).
My wife and I recently watched the HBO Dune miniseries (it’s great!) and I was thinking how bizarre it would be if people in that universe were spending their days passive scrolling the screen on their pocket computers.
Wall-E depicted a future like that, but I can’t really think of any other books or movies that imagine that kind of future for humanity. Surely this is a phase we are going through, right?
Fahrenheit 451 has the wife mindlessly listening to airpods all day, even while having conversations (requiring skill in lipreading to avoid interruption). The airpods are described as Seashells or ear thimbles, small radios with speakers that sit in the ear canal.
"Super Sad True Love Story" has that and some other interesting insights into potential evolution of existing media landscape, where watching full Narnia movie makes you movie buff and reading books makes you an icky old man. Book is fairly sad as the title suggests, but mostly due to world it portrays. Some of the trends were captures pretty well; some likely won't age that well.
Yes we are trying to fight back, but sadly I'm starting to think it will only be the next generations, the ones not even born yet that will fully internalize the lessons of our mistakes.
I use a physical alarm clock, but what distracts me is I have to pick up my phone multiple times a day for stupid MFA prompts. It's so easy to have a quick check of an app.
I would really like a product for like £40 that's essentially a very small (4" screen maybe? maybe smaller?) locked down android phone that's entire purpose is to run 2fa apps (maybe including banks), this would not only separate my banks from my phone so I can flash whatever OS I want to it, solve the convenience issue of needing 2 big phones to do this otherwise, and stop 2fa apps from leading to distraction.
Siri home-pod mini “Hey Siri- set alarm for…” or “Hey Siri- what is the time”. Added benefit of now glowing LED in your bedroom and you can play relaxing sleep sounds if needed.
I wonder if there's a "minimum viable connectivity threshold" in modern life - you literally cannot function below a certain baseline of digital access. You could model the failure of "delete everything" strategies as hitting against this hard constraint: banking, authentication, and basic services simply assume browser availability.
Maybe the key insight here is the pivot from prohibition to differential friction. By architecturing high activation energy for distractions (black UI, location blocks) while maintaining low friction for utilities, you've essentially created a "price spread" between productive and unproductive uses of the same capability.
I suspect we're seeing an inevitable arms race: platforms driving activation energy toward zero (think TikTok's frictionless feed) versus commitment devices manufacturing artificial friction. Perhaps the sustainable equilibrium isn't digital abstinence but rather carefully engineered friction differentials that respect our inescapable need for connectivity.
There was a great UX principle around alternative mechanisms or backups. You can't have two rolls of toilet paper easily accessible in a public bathroom because people will naturally use them up at a similar rate.
You need to make ONE OF THEM more inconvenient to use, so that overall your bathroom experience remains useful and convenient. (You'll see this often with a sliding door between two installed rolls of paper, usually with a visible window showing the amount remaining)
Introducing "artificial" inconvenience can be a very powerful usability improvement.
> I wonder if there's a "minimum viable connectivity threshold" in modern life - you literally cannot function below a certain baseline of digital access.
Homeless people can't get access to govt. services if they don't have phone or callbacks in case they next in line to receive benefits. The following guy documents such problems that seem so obvious in retrospect.
Thankfully there are already gap fillers here, like (US) govt programs and private charities that give out cell phones with prepaid plans. They're not perfect by any means, but there are people and programs trying to solve these problems.
Quitting is easy. I just remember the Before Times and how peaceful my life was when I gave zero fucks about outrage headlines that I couldn't do anything about even if I wanted to.
I don't think so. Pain exists as a signal to tell you that something is wrong with the body. Removing the pain doesn't help diagnose the condition. Though I agree that once a sound diagnosis has been found then pain relief can be pursued. Before then, though, you are throwing away a signal.
The only thing that ever really sucked me in like that was Tumblr. The stigma-less repost culture where most of what you encounter is reposted made it feel like I was building something by being on there and reposting things. It really just tickled the right part of my brain. My wife and I would spend literal hours every night scrolling Tumblr.
I've never really gotten anything near that level of enjoyment from another social network.
I still go on from time to time but knowing my friends are never going to see my feed kind of discourages major time investment.
I’ve actually found using screentime limits on my phone for specific apps (which is essentially self limiting) to be very effective. Once time is up, there’s only a single button click stopping me from continuing doomscrolling, but that’s just enough friction that I’m able to say “oh right I don’t need to be doing this”.
"The wanting to not doom-scroll should be intrinsic"
For me, it is, but I would still automatically open Reddit or Twitter when compiling code, and then get stuck in a loop of looking at interesting and/or annoying stuff.
The solution was easy, though, I just put all of these sites, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc. into my hosts file and pointed them to localhost. It took about a week for this automatic behavior to stop. Instead, I have a language learning app, so now I go through some flashcards while my code compiles.
Or open news.ycombinator.com. Maybe the next addition to my hosts file.
I do the same. There's also the bonus that, even if you want to quickly remove the block, it'll take a few minutes to apply unless you go through the bother of wiping the DNS cache.
This is just short-term vs long-term gratification and competing desires. That's not intrinsic, except insofar as newly formed habits are compulsive.
Choice and opportunity-cost is all "self-limiting", the only difference is perspective. It's better to have an additive-mindset, i.e. replace a habit with another that provides value rather than merely focusing on restricting something. This works for everything, including diet. In the words of Allan Carr, if you view your actions as sacrifice, you won't succeed.
I do think having your phone in another room helps tremendously. I fight every morning to not take my phone into the bathroom for my morning ritual and waste 15-20 minutes of dooms scrolling.
I can relate on so many levels, tried so many techniques and tactics and often returned back.
Now I have similar system in place, however I kept the Chrome installed because of the bank authentications just like you said. But I'm using the Wellbeing app (Pixel) to block all the social media domains so even if out of habit I start typing twitter, it does not load.
The daily game I play is rotaboxes that's super relaxing and exactly, has an end.
I really enjoy reading someone else who is going through the same struggles overcomes them. Good luck sticking to them.
What are you guys reading from your infinite scroll suppliers? Are you really that dumb to cease reading (e)books for observing some stories written by no-names? And do you consider your pictures' ability to move as a superiority? How can you know at least anything about the world, the Nature and the agressive nature of the Government, how are you supposed to obtain this knowledge from your infinite scrolling devices?
Do you really want an answer to your questions, or do you just want to flaunt some misguided moral superiority? Insulting people isn’t an effective way to get them to do something for you.
Are you really that lacking in empathy that you’re incapable of understanding your fellow humans are being constantly bombarded with addictive messages and technology which—surprise!—makes them addicted? Are you really that cruel that instead of encouraging those trying to leave a bad situation, you find it more amusing to pile on and ridicule their efforts? Are you really that disconnected from society and the human experience that you have never even so much as skimmed any of the countless articles and books on the subject?
I am incapable of understanding why our follow humans are constantly bombarded with proprietary software. I am encouraging those to read a printed word, not the capitalists' burp, how can I ridiculate their efforts if "the efforts" is nothing?. The books I have "skimmed" are from Psychology which is a pseudo-science, sorry.
What's doom scrolling for you is user engagement for the company, and by their definition you're not wasting your time, you're increasing their revenue by seeing and clicking on ads. That's the only thing that really matters to them.
Moderation is a high form of discipline. Keep the apps, learn to limit usage. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Keep food in the house, learn not to pig out on the sweets. Works in other areas of life where removing access is not an option.
Moderation is more difficult than abstinence because it means you are fighting an activated dopamine loop in real time.
I wonder: are there any good games where the game is literally to escape dopamine loops in various ways? That would actually be a novel and interesting game mechanic. You could make it a puzzle type game or even work it into a role playing or fighting game where sneaking you into some kind of addictive game loop is how the enemies get you.
I guess the problem is twofold:
some of your mental faculties rather want to drown in digital distraction
while you engage other mental faculties to stop the former
While some people can engage in moderation, abstinence has it's place so that you don't spend double your energy just to stay on track.
Imagine someone made a fresh cooked BBQ steak and puts it close to your work place and tells you "it's alright, moderation buddy! Keep working!".
So everything has it's place and time, it's usually the blending of different places and times that makes things difficult
I've been trying to switch from scrolling to reading my Kindle.
I aggressively curate who I do follow; on Twitter, I mainly use lists. At this point, I'm mostly just interested in AI news. I'm also subscribed to an AI newsletter, but it isn't as tightly scoped as my set of feeds.
I guess I could apply AI to this problem. I'd like a tool a bit like Yahoo Pipes, with email and Twitter integrations, and LLM transformation boxes for summarizing and making decisions.
I was trying to do that, then stumbled on the api costs for accessing anything other than your own posts. In the end, I don’t care going on Twitter again.
I have always deleted apps off my phone but still suffered from access via web.
My solution for X is to logout. This is enough since un-authed has no content and the login screen is enough to stop me.
Then for Youtube/Reddit I blocked on personal and work laptops by adding to /etc/hosts file. If I still had access to un-authed Youtube/Reddit homepage I would still find a way to enjoy it. Also Unhook is too easy to disable for me.
Then for my iPhone I have added both Reddit and Youtube to restricted sites via the iOS settings.
Does everyone really mean doom scrolling when they talk about these issues? For me personally, it's definitely about dopamine and not about negative emotions, yet everyone uses the phrase doom scrolling - am I the odd one out?
For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
Yeah, unless not stated in this article, this is not doom scrolling. This seems more like an addiction issue, which is great that it’s being addressed. But it wouldn’t fit the definition of doom scrolling, which is an obsessive compulsion for searching of negative news.
Personally, this seems like an out of touch definition akin to Gen Z’s version of “dirty laundry”. When I first began to see doomscrolling appear in the digital vernacular it was almost exclusively in reference to scrolling with no end in sight, mindless scrolling, wasting inordinate amounts of time scrolling, etc. with no reference to the tone or themes of content consumed other than that it was short-form and ultimately unfulfilling.
But that is exactly how I expect a dictionary definition of a relatively new and tonally ambiguous term to present itself.
The definition listed online in dictionaries reads as though it was defined by someone who did not really know what “doom scrolling” was - they understood what “doom” and “scrolling” were independently, so they made the claim that the “doom” in doom scrolling had to do with the themes and tone of the content, where in my experience online the “doom” in doom scrolling actually represents then endless and mindless consumption of vapid content. Existing in a state of mindless repetitive dopamine scrolls equivalent with being “doomed”, the stagnation of other pursuits for the nothingness of scrolling, I could go on. This is all my opinion of course.
I think the proper definition for doom scrolling has been mentioned multiple times by others in this thread and it would be something like:
Rapid consumption of mobile short form content for extended periods of time, often with no end goal in mind.
Others have done better than me, but that’s my two cents.
No. I think it's one of those situations where the word has changed meaning for certain groups of people, like a game of telephone, because dopamine scrolling and doom scrolling are semantically close. It's kind of like how gen alpha has a different view of what "preppy" means than what previous generations would have thought.
> We all know what the word preppy means, right? It’s the word we use to describe those rich kids that look down on anyone whose shoes cost less than a car. It’s the perfect word to describe the pompousness and snootiness of the crustiest of the upper crust.
AFAIK - "Doomscrolling can also be defined as the excessive consumption of short-form videos or social media content for an excessive period of time without stopping"
I don't think you necessarily have to be searching for bad news to be doom scrolling. The problem is with most of these services (this website included) is that even if you're trying to read limited topics, you'll still get bombarded with bad news
Take currently for example, every corner of the internet is saturated with US politics, even for those of us outside of the US. I just want to read about interesting technology.
Fully agree. I've been searching, in vain, for sites that just give me fascinating/interesting science/tech/..., and failed to find anything that doesn't get me in a negative spiral.
I understand the "doom" in doom scrolling differently.
You're right that in general it's about getting those random dopamine hits when something nice appears in the news feed.
However, after some time, you got a lot of the nice stuff and no exciting stuff appears anymore. At that point, you're still scrolling, hoping for a dopamine hit. It does not come because you are satiated, desensitized and the algorithm no longer has good stuff to offer you.
I get it here on Hacker News. After coming too often and scrolling too much, I already clicked on all the good links. All that is left is either not interesting, or stuff I've looked at before. I still scroll, doomed to find nothing. And yet I scroll.
I definitely associate negative emotions with my doomscrolling behavior. Angst is the best word I can find to describe the feeling. For me it usually focuses around some major news cycle (war, politics, catastrophes, etc.).
> For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
In history, what was the equivalent to this? I think a lot of the negative connotation is related to "it's new and therefore it's probably bad compared to whatever humans used to do".
Interesting all the interpretations of the meaning of 'doom' in this context. I thought it was because the never-ending feed meant that you'd scroll until the end of time, which is called 'doom' (or judgement day or doomsday) in older literature.
I feel the phrase came into common use during COVID pandemic, so things certainly felt more doom and gloom then. The connotation I think is with the type of negative content being consumed, which exasperates your own feelings.
It initially referred to spending too much time scrolling through negative content, e.g. bad news, politics. But the term has at this point completed a transformation to meaning any excessive time-wasting scrolling.
I think doom scrolling is used to convey that you keep scrolling with no purpose or intention. It's that you want that dopamine or visual stimulation to keep going.
I personally use it to mean "there is bad news in the world and I'm obsessively watching it hoping for some glimmer of good news." If I use too much social media I just say literally that, too much social media.
Yeah, to me the issue isn't "doom" scrolling, it's just scrolling in general. By which mean mind-numbing consumption of low value content - auto mechanics showing off "you won't believe what my customer brought to my shop", car chases/crashes, dogs playing around doing silly stuff, trains crashing into things, all those fake "interview" segments where some guy is asking hot girls "what's your body count" or "what's your favorite position", blah, blah, etc.
Some of the stuff is genuinely funny and entertaining, and it would probably be OK in very limited doses. But I have fallen into a habit of (occasionally) starting out watching on ofe those things, and then continually swiping to the next one and watching that crap like a zombie until a hour has gone by. No bueno.
"Doom" doesn't have to describe the content. It could be your state of mindlessness as you thoughtlessly iterate through your standard set of net waypoints and the content that's spoon fed to you therein.
yes, "distraction" but distraction from "what"? That's the subtle difference. Where basically back in the 1920s but instead of physical cocaine it's digital now
more like sleeping and dreaming I guess.
Do you think the more free people are the more they gotta somehow justify their freedom with simulated struggles?
tbh i have never been free all my life the cult is all I know idk how the mind of a free human being works
but if i had to guess it's the plotline of american psycho when basic needs are met people get bored maybe? and create struggles, games, simulate poverty
if you had a place to live, could work for minimum wage, are not being abused every day your biggest struggle would be scrolling whereas if you can't work, are being abused everyday, live with a bunch of cult fanatics scrolling even monitored feels nice
as a former sysadmin, dont mix work and personal profiles on same machine. treat your machine as not your property, please, unless you have a byod policy - it is simply bad practice. i understand the realities of super federated logins and am not innocent of some of this behavior, but if anyone interested cares to go digging, they probably can figure out exactly what you’re up to on a work device and that’s just not a situation I think people should be willingly entering into when you can just maintain separate, semi-isolated devices and accounts. if for some reason someone is making or encouraging you to use personal profiles for work stuff, treat that as a red flag.
This pretty much. The last time, I had a work machine, the only data there was my picture profile, that I needed for setting up account. I also needed to log in my github account. Apart from that, anything else I needed to do can be done on my personal computer or my phone.
The nature of programming means that there are a lot of small gaps while you work, for example as the code is compiling and deploying. These short breaks are not enough to pick up any long-term activity, so therefore the small bites of social media end up looking very appetising.
Other times you need to search for specific information. When you already have 25 tabs open, it doesn't seem that bad to open tab number 26.
The best solution that I've found was to work on cafés and libraries: places where I can easily let my eyes wander between blocks of focused work.
I am so f-in glad I deleted facebook like 10 years ago and never hoped onto anything else. I only hate that I visit HN every few minutes, when I get bored at cagie.
But apart from that, just don't use social media. It's really as simple as it sounds. The only hard thing is to find something to fill the free'd up time with.
The other hard thing is finding out that you now find out personal relationships are hard work. Quality relationships were always hard work, but with social media it was way easier to keep shallow relationships. With social media gone, you find out you need to put in way more effort to keep those valuable relationships going (and find out the hard way which relationships weren't valuable at all).
None of those ways are sustainable. Not only because there are good reasons to use those apps, but also because there are times when forcing yourself to work isn't going to work. I mean, if I am sick, tired, and just not feeling like working, I would go out of my way to beat the system I installed.
What has worked for me is: one-sec extension [1]. The extension asks you take a deep breath and confirms if I still want to open the app. What I have realized is I don't want to completely do away with time-sink websites, I only want to moderate my behavior of pressing Cmd-T and opening reddit/youtube/twitter in the middle of work. I have increased the length of the pause to 30 second and I am actively forcing myself to actually take the deep breath. Such a pause is enough to knock enough sense into me and return back to work. I think such kind of gentle nudging is better than being overly harsh on yourself.
I love the onesec extension and I've often thought society would be better off if this were the way Apple and Google implemented their app timer functionality on iOS and Android. If you could just mark certain apps as addictive and be given a simple few-second prompt before displaying each of them, it'd stop or soften a lot of the addictive loops, I think. I use onesec app on Android solely to do this to YouTube, but the fact that it isn't native introduces some weird bugs, especially when opening YouTube links from other apps (which I live with anyway, but alas).
I think any app that tries to minimize your usage needs to have mays to moderately allow that usage. Black and white thinking, particularly at the beginning, seems likely to fail.
I think you have to just treat this like any other addiction.
I feel like I compulsively play chess online. I had not slipped up from 1/1 until last night. Then I really fell off the wagon tonight and played about 10 games.
It sounds ridiculous but I just have to put that behind me and get back to not playing online chess. I can play in person for fun but not the mindless waste of time chess has become for me online.
For me at least, it is always much harder to moderate than to go cold turkey with basically anything.
oof same here brother. chess is killing me. i go cold turkey but i come back eventually. one idea is to replace it with something and then ditch the replacement. or just capitalise next time there’s enough momentum built up for wanting to get rid off of it. i did do it before though, went not playing for months. but when it’s it’s back for good
It's really too bad that you can't disable YouTube shorts. I like watching YouTube videos on my phone, but the shorts is too tempting and I find myself wasting so much time with totally useless content. I'll probably have to remove YouTube entirely.
This may not apply to you, but the way I consume YouTube is by turning off history and subscribing to the creators I want via RSS. That way I seldom even remember Shorts exist; they simply do not appear for me.
If that wouldn’t work for you, consider removing the app and accessing YouTube via the browser. I would be surprised it there’s not an extension or blocker which can disable those.
I do this as well but find it a bit of a pain to add/remove sources since YouTube doesn't offer any easily accessible RSS feed. Wish there was a way to sync subscriptions with the YouTube account but at the same time I would never allow third party access. I refuse Google login on third party sites.
If you're an android user, try the Revanced App. I use it to eliminate all ads and enable SponsorBlock on YT, but it also allows you to customize a lot of the experience. You can turn off shorts by[1]...
1. Open YouTube ReVanced
2. Tap profile picture (top right)
3. Tap Settings
4. Navigate to ReVanced > Layout
5. Tap "Shorts components" at the bottom of the list
As latexr said you can disable watch history. This means there is no home page (even when it should have known my interests, my home page was awful so this isn't so bad). You don't get watch-progress memory on videos, which is simple to adjust to. Recommended are less targeted and I get a lot of the typical ragey youtube stuff but it is mostly half relevant. I no longer watch any shorts which I kept clicking just to "see how bad they are" until it became a habit. And the UI keeps pushing it... If youtube makes the no-watch-history method not work, I'm just deleting the app and waiting until I'm bothered to configure revanced.
If you're on desktop, download the Chrome Extension called "Unhook". It lets you hide stuff like Youtube Shorts and makes Youtube less impulsive. Very helpful for focus.
I'm currently reading Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism". Something about his approach that I really appreciate is that he doesn't just recommend abstention and ways to disconnect from social media.
His approach is on the one hand to focus on other rewarding offline activities that are creative or which help grow deep in-person relationships. And on the other hand, to engage with technology in specific ways when that usage is justified by being the best way to solve a particular need.
For an example of the latter, one suggested practise is to always keep your phone on do-not-disturb (except for certain important contacts who may genuinely need to phone you in an emergency) and then to triage any notifications only at specific limited times of the day. Avoid the buzzes and pings, but carry on conversations when you aren't trying to focus on something else.
A little over a year ago I gave away my flagship samsung phablet and bought one of their flip phones, in an attempt to change my habits by consciously making myself doubtful/anxious about the longevity of the flip phone's infamous hinge. The idea was that the little front screen would do everything that a semi-dumb phone replacement could (notifications, camera, calls, timers, calculator, calendar), but I'd also have a 'real smartphone' whenever I needed one - it's just that with this one, using it came at a cost. Every time I'd go to use the big screen I'd remember there was an anxious moment that stood in the way, and the paranoia would make me just anxious enough to question whether I really needed to do what I was about to do.
It's been about 15 months, and I haven't really had to compromise or sacrifice anything: I haven't uninstalled any social media apps, my banking apps are all still there, I have contactless payments on hand, etc.. However, I can say with absolute certainty that my habits have changed _drastically_. Interestingly, I'm not even hesitant to use the phone when I need to, I use it all the time - but when I use it I now use it intentionally, and very briefly; gone are the days of catching myself somehow scrolling through instagram just because 5 minutes ago I opened a whatsapp notification from my mum. It's like night and day, and what's more I feel like I barely had to try.
This is obviously sample of one anecdata, but I'm genuinely surprised at how successful it's been. A real 'life hack'.
(And no I don't have any samsung coupon codes nor do I particularly care for them as a company. Worth mentioning though - the hinge on the zf5 is still really solid 15 months in)
I do the same thing (Motorola Razr rather than Samsung), and I've found that working on the smaller screen means I don't get sucked into things as it's useful for quickly checking on a limited set of apps but doesn't lend itself to a "open app => consume => next app" cycle.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 286 ms ] threadFrequent conversation:
"oh you have a smartwatch"
"no it's dumb in all the right ways, which is the point"
Notably I have notifications but can't act on them, which prevents me from picking up the phone just to check notifications and then be drawn into doing actions. YMMV.
I've tried that, but found them to be too easy to sleep through unless my watch wrist is very close to my head (without a pillow between it and my ear). The sound isn't particularly loud and the vibration is similarly shallow. Useful for reminder alarms when I'm awake though.
My current success is using the Amazon branded wiretap for alarms. Interacting with the dumb cloth-eared irritation sometimes annoys me into being awake rather than hitting the virtual snooze yet again, and it doesn't have the doom-scroll potential of my phone.
To use them for alarms I just have to say “Computer, set an alarm for 8 in the morning” repeatedly until the damned things understand (I swear they understand a snarky tone far better than when I speak more neutrally (except when Lt Cmdr Data is on TV, they listen to him first time every time!)).
Not necessarily. My smartwatch is basically a beeper. I see messages come in, then I mentally prioritize them. 90% of the time, it can wait at least an hour, maybe longer. It's conditioned me (and people around me) that instant reachability is neither necessary nor desirable. It makes it easier to focus on what's in front of me instead of constantly tickling a slab of glass.
As for the watch, I look at the thing and immediately can classify as truly urgent, needs immediate action or non-urgent and leave it piling as a todo list.
As a consequence I've begun to regularly forget where I put my phone, which is honestly quite liberating.
I've also started to aggressively cull away badges and notifications privileges from many apps.
I'm a bit skeptical because i read a similar comment about answering calls immediately vs. letting it go to the answering machine already being such a divide.
Makes me feel old for thinking anyone offended by my taking hours if not days to respond to a non urgent text is welcome to go be someone else's friend.
For waking up, something not technological but working 99% of the time for me: pets (or kids) though you'd want other reasons as well to have those beyond waking you up early in the morning...
Most of my life I've had cats or dogs and their internal clock is amazingly on time. They are actually smart and try different things if you don't wake up at first, adapting to their owner. They include waking mechanisms such as sound, touch, light pain, emotional rewards and possibly guilt tripping/punishment to keep you accountable if you fail to wake up. Birds can work too but I wouldn't recommend keeping a rooster in your bedroom for an alarm unless you're blaring-alarms-levels of hard to wake up and don't have neighbours or a partner, these guys don't have an indoor voice.
Point is you're then forced to care for the pet, wether it wakes you to go out, get food or get cuddles and bob's your uncle: your chances of picking up your phone and doomscrolling first thing in the morning are much lowered.
Initially I thought it was a TZ issue because of automatic location but the offset ended up being inconsistent with any TZ. Looks like a mix of RTC and NTP issue, the latter hiding the former when it works but revealing it when it fails.
Luckily I don't use alarms on my phone.
Wall-E depicted a future like that, but I can’t really think of any other books or movies that imagine that kind of future for humanity. Surely this is a phase we are going through, right?
Also, and slightly tangential, I added this to uBlock today:
www.linkedin.com#hashtag#main[aria-label="Main Feed"] .scaffold-finite-scroll__content
Which makes LinkedIn essentially write-only for content: I can share content I want to, but don't have to read brain-dead takes from other people.
Maybe the key insight here is the pivot from prohibition to differential friction. By architecturing high activation energy for distractions (black UI, location blocks) while maintaining low friction for utilities, you've essentially created a "price spread" between productive and unproductive uses of the same capability.
I suspect we're seeing an inevitable arms race: platforms driving activation energy toward zero (think TikTok's frictionless feed) versus commitment devices manufacturing artificial friction. Perhaps the sustainable equilibrium isn't digital abstinence but rather carefully engineered friction differentials that respect our inescapable need for connectivity.
You need to make ONE OF THEM more inconvenient to use, so that overall your bathroom experience remains useful and convenient. (You'll see this often with a sliding door between two installed rolls of paper, usually with a visible window showing the amount remaining)
Introducing "artificial" inconvenience can be a very powerful usability improvement.
Homeless people can't get access to govt. services if they don't have phone or callbacks in case they next in line to receive benefits. The following guy documents such problems that seem so obvious in retrospect.
https://www.youtube.com/@InvisiblePeople/videos
If I want to doom scroll, I have to open up the laptop.
I've never really gotten anything near that level of enjoyment from another social network.
I still go on from time to time but knowing my friends are never going to see my feed kind of discourages major time investment.
What you are doing is "self-limiting" which is not very effective. The devil on your shoulder will always fight this - "don't tell me what to do!"
The wanting to not doom-scroll should be intrinsic. I know that right now, for obvious reasons, it's easier said than done.
15 minutes on HN, then I'm out even if I still have a Chrome limit.
It's really interesting that we have to resort to little jails like this to get our attention back.
For me, it is, but I would still automatically open Reddit or Twitter when compiling code, and then get stuck in a loop of looking at interesting and/or annoying stuff.
The solution was easy, though, I just put all of these sites, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc. into my hosts file and pointed them to localhost. It took about a week for this automatic behavior to stop. Instead, I have a language learning app, so now I go through some flashcards while my code compiles.
Or open news.ycombinator.com. Maybe the next addition to my hosts file.
Choice and opportunity-cost is all "self-limiting", the only difference is perspective. It's better to have an additive-mindset, i.e. replace a habit with another that provides value rather than merely focusing on restricting something. This works for everything, including diet. In the words of Allan Carr, if you view your actions as sacrifice, you won't succeed.
a) Make your feeds more worthy and less attention grabbing by blocking anything that isn't one of your specific interests.
b) If you make good use of your time, you'll find doing stuff more interesting than scrolling.
I've written about this too: https://thisisjam.es/reflecting/on-information-diets/
I do think having your phone in another room helps tremendously. I fight every morning to not take my phone into the bathroom for my morning ritual and waste 15-20 minutes of dooms scrolling.
Now I have similar system in place, however I kept the Chrome installed because of the bank authentications just like you said. But I'm using the Wellbeing app (Pixel) to block all the social media domains so even if out of habit I start typing twitter, it does not load.
The daily game I play is rotaboxes that's super relaxing and exactly, has an end.
I really enjoy reading someone else who is going through the same struggles overcomes them. Good luck sticking to them.
Do you really want an answer to your questions, or do you just want to flaunt some misguided moral superiority? Insulting people isn’t an effective way to get them to do something for you.
Are you really that lacking in empathy that you’re incapable of understanding your fellow humans are being constantly bombarded with addictive messages and technology which—surprise!—makes them addicted? Are you really that cruel that instead of encouraging those trying to leave a bad situation, you find it more amusing to pile on and ridicule their efforts? Are you really that disconnected from society and the human experience that you have never even so much as skimmed any of the countless articles and books on the subject?
I always thought a good twist on The Matrix would have been that as a big reveal: humans are running it.
But hey thanks for your tip!
I wonder: are there any good games where the game is literally to escape dopamine loops in various ways? That would actually be a novel and interesting game mechanic. You could make it a puzzle type game or even work it into a role playing or fighting game where sneaking you into some kind of addictive game loop is how the enemies get you.
While some people can engage in moderation, abstinence has it's place so that you don't spend double your energy just to stay on track. Imagine someone made a fresh cooked BBQ steak and puts it close to your work place and tells you "it's alright, moderation buddy! Keep working!". So everything has it's place and time, it's usually the blending of different places and times that makes things difficult
I aggressively curate who I do follow; on Twitter, I mainly use lists. At this point, I'm mostly just interested in AI news. I'm also subscribed to an AI newsletter, but it isn't as tightly scoped as my set of feeds.
I guess I could apply AI to this problem. I'd like a tool a bit like Yahoo Pipes, with email and Twitter integrations, and LLM transformation boxes for summarizing and making decisions.
I should probably look at https://github.com/huginn/huginn
I have always deleted apps off my phone but still suffered from access via web.
My solution for X is to logout. This is enough since un-authed has no content and the login screen is enough to stop me.
Then for Youtube/Reddit I blocked on personal and work laptops by adding to /etc/hosts file. If I still had access to un-authed Youtube/Reddit homepage I would still find a way to enjoy it. Also Unhook is too easy to disable for me.
Then for my iPhone I have added both Reddit and Youtube to restricted sites via the iOS settings.
Works well so far.
For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
But that is exactly how I expect a dictionary definition of a relatively new and tonally ambiguous term to present itself.
The difference I see with the example you give is that “Dirty laundry” is a metaphor, not a definition of a phenomenon.
I think the proper definition for doom scrolling has been mentioned multiple times by others in this thread and it would be something like:
Rapid consumption of mobile short form content for extended periods of time, often with no end goal in mind.
Others have done better than me, but that’s my two cents.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/the-new-meaning-of-preppy/
I would guess there is some link between this trend and the word `pretty`, but I'm no linguist or tiktoker
I thought it was about stocking life supplies in the basement though.
> We all know what the word preppy means, right? It’s the word we use to describe those rich kids that look down on anyone whose shoes cost less than a car. It’s the perfect word to describe the pompousness and snootiness of the crustiest of the upper crust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling
Take currently for example, every corner of the internet is saturated with US politics, even for those of us outside of the US. I just want to read about interesting technology.
Would love to be proven wrong with an example :)
https://www.tomshardware.com/ (tech - computers, 3D printers, raspberry pi, somewhat consumer sales oriented)
https://phys.org/ (academia summaries)
https://arxiv-sanity-lite.com/ (arXiv papers recommended)
https://www.pewresearch.org/ (mostly interesting survey factoids, does covers politics, other negative inducement)
You're right that in general it's about getting those random dopamine hits when something nice appears in the news feed.
However, after some time, you got a lot of the nice stuff and no exciting stuff appears anymore. At that point, you're still scrolling, hoping for a dopamine hit. It does not come because you are satiated, desensitized and the algorithm no longer has good stuff to offer you.
I get it here on Hacker News. After coming too often and scrolling too much, I already clicked on all the good links. All that is left is either not interesting, or stuff I've looked at before. I still scroll, doomed to find nothing. And yet I scroll.
In history, what was the equivalent to this? I think a lot of the negative connotation is related to "it's new and therefore it's probably bad compared to whatever humans used to do".
It’s one of the lesser levels in Dante’s Inferno. We are in hell.
Some of the stuff is genuinely funny and entertaining, and it would probably be OK in very limited doses. But I have fallen into a habit of (occasionally) starting out watching on ofe those things, and then continually swiping to the next one and watching that crap like a zombie until a hour has gone by. No bueno.
Yes, that's doom scrolling
"Doom" doesn't have to describe the content. It could be your state of mindlessness as you thoughtlessly iterate through your standard set of net waypoints and the content that's spoon fed to you therein.
what if you are not a free human being? scrolling the only source of entertainment till death
grew up in a cult now prevented from getting any employment living in a house full of cult fanatics scrolling the only thing to do.
way cheaper than drugs. less side effects. idk nice to have something to entertain me on the road to dying
imo it's not as bad as people make it seem people just like coming up with struggle stories once they have jobs and life etc
but if i had to guess it's the plotline of american psycho when basic needs are met people get bored maybe? and create struggles, games, simulate poverty
if you had a place to live, could work for minimum wage, are not being abused every day your biggest struggle would be scrolling whereas if you can't work, are being abused everyday, live with a bunch of cult fanatics scrolling even monitored feels nice
Other times you need to search for specific information. When you already have 25 tabs open, it doesn't seem that bad to open tab number 26.
The best solution that I've found was to work on cafés and libraries: places where I can easily let my eyes wander between blocks of focused work.
But apart from that, just don't use social media. It's really as simple as it sounds. The only hard thing is to find something to fill the free'd up time with.
Like going outside, doing trips, enjoying nature? Oh boy...
What has worked for me is: one-sec extension [1]. The extension asks you take a deep breath and confirms if I still want to open the app. What I have realized is I don't want to completely do away with time-sink websites, I only want to moderate my behavior of pressing Cmd-T and opening reddit/youtube/twitter in the middle of work. I have increased the length of the pause to 30 second and I am actively forcing myself to actually take the deep breath. Such a pause is enough to knock enough sense into me and return back to work. I think such kind of gentle nudging is better than being overly harsh on yourself.
[1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/one-sec-website-blo...
I feel like I compulsively play chess online. I had not slipped up from 1/1 until last night. Then I really fell off the wagon tonight and played about 10 games.
It sounds ridiculous but I just have to put that behind me and get back to not playing online chess. I can play in person for fun but not the mindless waste of time chess has become for me online.
For me at least, it is always much harder to moderate than to go cold turkey with basically anything.
If that wouldn’t work for you, consider removing the app and accessing YouTube via the browser. I would be surprised it there’s not an extension or blocker which can disable those.
Every feed reader I tried auto-detects the correct YouTube feed URL if you just give them the channel URL.
1. Open YouTube ReVanced
2. Tap profile picture (top right)
3. Tap Settings
4. Navigate to ReVanced > Layout
5. Tap "Shorts components" at the bottom of the list
6. Enable "Hide Shorts in feed"
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/156lw72/the_be...
His approach is on the one hand to focus on other rewarding offline activities that are creative or which help grow deep in-person relationships. And on the other hand, to engage with technology in specific ways when that usage is justified by being the best way to solve a particular need.
For an example of the latter, one suggested practise is to always keep your phone on do-not-disturb (except for certain important contacts who may genuinely need to phone you in an emergency) and then to triage any notifications only at specific limited times of the day. Avoid the buzzes and pings, but carry on conversations when you aren't trying to focus on something else.
It's been about 15 months, and I haven't really had to compromise or sacrifice anything: I haven't uninstalled any social media apps, my banking apps are all still there, I have contactless payments on hand, etc.. However, I can say with absolute certainty that my habits have changed _drastically_. Interestingly, I'm not even hesitant to use the phone when I need to, I use it all the time - but when I use it I now use it intentionally, and very briefly; gone are the days of catching myself somehow scrolling through instagram just because 5 minutes ago I opened a whatsapp notification from my mum. It's like night and day, and what's more I feel like I barely had to try.
This is obviously sample of one anecdata, but I'm genuinely surprised at how successful it's been. A real 'life hack'.
(And no I don't have any samsung coupon codes nor do I particularly care for them as a company. Worth mentioning though - the hinge on the zf5 is still really solid 15 months in)