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.
If I want to doom scroll, I have to open up the laptop.
Frequent 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 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.
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.
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?
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.
But hey thanks for your tip!
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.
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.
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.
what if you are not a free human being? scrolling the only source of entertainment till death
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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)
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.
There is an app called ScreenZen that was immediately effective in breaking my habit. It made me use social media much more consciously.
My go-to "social media" page has been GoodReads for a while, and I don't see a problem with it – not only because it is rewarding reading books, but because it doesn't have dark distraction patterns and is much more like the mid 2000s internet. Half my family is doing the reading challenges now.
If you factory reset and just allow enough time for Play Store to update, I found if you are quick you can switch off auto update on all the other apps (which are installed as stubs only) and end up with enough storage to be useful, yet one which can run other apps successfully.
adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.android.chrome
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
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.
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
Of apps, I am currently using ScreenZen, which links into ScreenTime to provide a warning message and delay before I browse a customisable list of websites/apps. (HN is on it...) It seems to work better than OneSec, though it isn't perfect.
[update] Another thing I find useful is to regularly measure my screen time, and have a manageable goal for how long I spend. That's more productive than hoping to go "off-grid" forever.
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 just don't understand how this can be such an enticing experience. I couldn't bring myself to read the news on my phone even when that was the only device I had for a few weeks.
So... maybe a solution is to try a better device / medium?
Also, being used to Linux, using Android feels really awful because of programs trying to control what you can do instead of the other way around. It could be really infuriating. Also, everything is mildly broken / really trashy quality in terms of UI interaction (things move on their own when they shouldn't, UI element partially drawn offscreen, very variable response time, absolutely garbage keyboard).
So... maybe another solution is to get used to Linux, and just the taste of freedom will deter you from using smartphones?
At that point I’m just annoyed and I quit.
I wonder, are people doom scrolling for a long time seeing a lot of content they LIKE?
I made some scrapers for the sites i follow that lacks full rss feeds, and can now enjoy distraction free focused reading again, without inflammatory comment sections.
However, I’m here commenting so I guess im still under the spell. :-/
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...
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
Occasionally rabbit-hole threads to find new interesting accounts to follow.
Every feed reader I tried auto-detects the correct YouTube feed URL if you just give them the channel URL.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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 have a little more personal self control, but found his technical implementation pretty neat!
... i switched back to it and noticed my login expired. Didn't bother to log back in.
Yes I'm bragging. Yes, I'm also commenting on HN :)
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.
I would guess there is some link between this trend and the word `pretty`, but I'm no linguist or tiktoker
The paid version also can desuplicate across the sources, which is really nice.
Then just block every other source.
I thought it was about stocking life supplies in the basement though.
https://nitter.privacydev.net/elonmusk/rss
For subreddit you can use redlib which has rss feeds, example https://redlib.zaggy.nl/r/insects.rss
Using this as a source, you can combine a bunch of subreddits you like to follow into a single feed for minimal usage effort.
Since you are processing the feeds by now, it is trivial to filter out crap you dont want, such as Musk news.
1. No icons -> less temptation to open another app
2. Faster because you only have to type part of the name, eg typing 'po' opens Spotify (for me)
3. Probably less resource-intensive since we're just rendering text
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 have found this helps because when the motivation is that dopamine hit, the delayed start generally gives me enough time to think, "I should be doing something better with my time."
Edit: of course you can reconfigure and delete LeechBlock, but if you are committed to reduced scrolling it helps. (Obviously I haven't been able to do it with hackernews yet.)
It’s one of the lesser levels in Dante’s Inferno. We are in hell.
1. Unlock Phone
2. Swipe up, type "ti"
3. TikTok opens
4. Let the doomscroll commence
I do love these simple launchers, though!
It’s reasonable to want to keep up to date with some things. X is just not the best platform for that.
What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night.
Now the battle is easier: Decide once a day to put it there, and track how many days you succeed.
For me that's a lot easier than having it in my pocket, where the Internet is always a couple lazy taps away. Now I at least have to walk to it if I want it, and that often "breaks the spell."
I finish work and chores hours earlier when my phone is charging in another room, without consciously doing anything else differently.
It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.
If you want go to even further, use a hosts file to send all these sites to localhost and set up an ad blocker to block the html tag on all these sites as well. Now you've blocked the sites 3 different ways.
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!)).
If you want to double (or triple) up on it, add the sites to your hosts file and send them to localhost and add them to your ad blocker and block the html tag. Now you've blocked all the sites in question 3 different ways.
Like going outside, doing trips, enjoying nature? Oh boy...
Would love to be proven wrong with an example :)
https://amontalenti.com/2024/03/26/the-smartphone-app-audit
If the idea of auditing all your apps seems daunting, you can take a look at how I did it in bulk by using screenshots of my app launcher screen, then OCR and LLMs to help me do an initial pass at categorizing them. That let me do one quick bulk cleanup.
I found that it's better to simply delete apps and keep the total app count on your phone low, rather than use the various parental control / digital minimalism / Freedom.to style app blocking ideas.
Removing browsers from my phone never seemed like an option for me, but even so, removing all the addictive apps really reduces doomscrolling and other mindless scrolling a good bit.
Lately, I also put any newly installed apps in a "Purgatory" app launcher group and if I notice any of them having addictive qualities, I uninstall them. I did this recently with the Bluesky and Discord apps, for example.
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 ended up building a nice charging station right near the entrance. It has storage for keys, wallet, and other things to grab when heading out. It has an abundance of wired and wireless chargers for all devices.
Then I got a dumb (but nice) alarm clock for the bedroom.
Then I noticed that a common reason to pick up the phone is to check the calendar. I ended up hanging a monitor on the wall, displaying the family month/agenda calendars. It’s read only, but it prevents a lot of device checking.
Cannot recommend enough restructuring physical reality to not have device on your person at home. It also helps the kids to put theirs away and learn good habits.
I really want to be able to see my close friends' Instagram posts and read interesting tweets from ~50 people I've chosen to follow in my field. There are no technical blockers to letting me do these; they aren't even much technical work. It would be a material life improvements for me (and I believe for everyone). But I'm not allowed to use the subsets of consumer tech which would enrich my life without exposing myself to the Reels button, the For You feed, and an avalanche of black magic attention hacking. I am bad at moderating my use and I have a low tolerance for doomscrolling, so I don't let myself use these products. As a result I'm cut off from the genuinely life improving subsets of social media which could be so easily made available.
We just accept that _of course_ you have to be willing to get your frontal lobe mined if you want to see what your friends have been doing. _Of course_ you have to be willing to scroll an infinite feed of AI-generated slop if you want to read opinions from people you respect.
I'm perfectly happy to see ads, I'm happy to pay money, I'm happy to come to any fair economic arrangement; but I value my attention highly and I can't pay the attentional price demanded of me, so I don't get to use these products.
People on this site might say "just don't use Reels / For You Feed" and maybe they're right. But for me and the vast majority of people that's not an option, it's my individual willpower pitted against an army of designers, PMs and data scientists every hour of the day.
I am happier without social media than I was with it; but I would be much happier still with the genuinely enriching subset of social media which is there for the offering. As social media becomes a bigger and bigger part of modern life it feels more like essential infrastructure which we _should_ be able to access in ways which work for us. The Fediverse is a great step though I haven't gone as far as to built a custom frontend which works for me (I think it's a big untapped market).
Youtube is the clear winner here. They let you turn personalization off - at which point the Recommended tab disappears, Youtube Shorts don't work, and I can still see new videos from people I subscribe to and follow links to videos when I need to watch them. It's a fantastic compromise and I live in fear of some PM (maybe reading this thread) inevitably realizing they could squeeze a few more minutes of sweet attention juice out of me by taking it away.
As long as there's a logged in session somewhere, I have to have various tricks and extensions on my browser to manage things.
Most have been only varying degrees of successful, often ending up in me just disabling the feature whenever I want to get my fix.
The most successful iteration I've found so far is keeping these apps uninstalled from my phone, and using https://one-sec.app/ to forcibly install a barrier between me and the site.
It's not too much different, and the wait time can be customised. You can still just learn to wait through it, but importantly it also has an "intervention" feature that will block you off after a chosen time period and re-prompt you if you want to stay on.
It's been quite flaky on Instagram on desktop, but it's been very useful for Youtube on mobile (which I keep to play videos in the background sometimes).
Otherwise, Unhook for Youtube on desktop also helps blocking things like the home page and shorts.
I haven't found any extension for LinkedIn that works for blocking the feed (or at least suggested posts), and Facebook ones are sporadic in which work for me or not.
It's still very tempting to just "hop on reddit and see what's there" or "I'll just check bluesky for..." Then it's 2 hours later and you're angry and despondent.
I've found that having no social media apps on my phone has helped. It also helps to stick to just Firefox+ublock on Android and resist every time a site tries to install an app.
Try to steer clear of any sites with infinite scrolling and recognize the dark patterns that try to suck you in. One thing that was eye-opening was to visit reddit and see which of the stories in /r/all were "amygdala-bait"; rage, indignation, hate, fear, superiority, they're all bait on the hook to reel you in.
People on reddit write fake stories that push as many buttons as possible; an obviously wrong/evil antagonist, the ridiculous situations that only get more and more extreme to try to attract notice, the righteous moral superiority over the antagonist and their minions, etc etc.
Realizing that the result is the same, whether it's a fake story or "news", it's all amgydala-bait.
I recommend getting a Library card and reading. Read anything you like, but read!
You see, I've actually had some success with using Blocksite on my phone and blackholing things on my laptop by editing /etc/hosts. Of course if you have the access to put these filters in-place then you'll have the access to remove them, but the time it takes to fire up the blocker on my phone and disable it or to pop open a shell and type "mv /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak" is time enough for me to go "Am I actually accessing this because I care about some particular piece of content or am I just trying to plop myself into the dopameme stream?" It's not about 100% physically preventing myself from accessing these sites. It's about interrupting the flow. I used to have a problem where I'd be doomscrolling FB or TikTok in particular, realize that I haven't had any actual fun in about half an hour, close the app and exit the loop for a second, start looking for something else to do and then compulsively open the app again and start doomscrolling. Getting rid of the apps and having the web version default to being unavailable has made it so that I can still do the social part of social media with real people who send me content that I actually like and want, but I can't do the completely antisocial part of social media where robots send me content designed to piss me off and frighten me so that I interact with them and their masters get money.
I think there's one common element between our two approaches though: intentionality. Whether it's opening up a second app and disabling it, or walking into the other room to physically pick your phone up, there's an intervening step that allows us the space in which to go "Do I actually want this?"
This is a habit I feel like I absolutely have to shed. Luckily, a lot of the impetus to do that will go away when I ditch FB, which I'm going to do as soon as I get my new personal website/blog set up.
This leaves mostly meditation and health advice, spiritual and religious uplifting content, cute animals videos, sweet things to share with friends, 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.
1. Disabling all YouTube thumbnails, making the YouTube home page layout as a vertical list instead of a grid, only allowing YouTube in Incognito mode, requiring a log in each time I want to use it
2. Unfollowing/muting most people on social media such as Instagram and Twitter. Only allowed in Incognito mode so I have to log in to use.
3. Blocked all subreddits except for one, which is AskNYC for me, via custom CSS.
4. Built an RSS reader to serve a web page rendering of the content.
5. I'm working on my own content recommendation algorithm. I'm trying out things like get a random Wikipedia article -> search the YouTube API for the article title -> return videos. Which makes YouTube content feel less brain dead and more educational.
If while I'm watching short form content like Reels or YT shorts etc, I realize that if you asked me what I watched 2 scrolls ago and I couldn't tell you- I'm doom scrolling.
This is the case almost every time I open instagram.
- realizing I traded one waste-of-time activity (doom scrolling) for another (device/app fiddling to prevent the former)
- realizing that the clock is ticking towards ultimate death and therefore time is precious
- recognizing when I'm looking for a distraction and, rather than automatically giving into it, asking myself one question:
"Do I want to be thoughtful and disciplined with how I spend my time, or not?"
And then being honest with myself, listening to my answer, and respecting the outcome of my choice.
For me, I want to be a disciplined person. When I'm not, I let myself down. Happiness for me is not letting myself down.
Couldn't help but look at everyone the same as all the people on the space ships in Wall-E.
Yea I get it, I have similar feelings about installing such a privileged app on my phone.
You can remove the app (with a delay, so it doesn't defeat the controls!).
I'll make this a bit clearer on the site.
I still have IG and FB on my phone, and find myself impulsively reaching for those scrollable short videos whenever I have a spare minute. That format of “content” is just very addicting. I really wish I could go back 20 years to when smartphones were a thing, but there was a lot less to “do” on them. I don’t think I’ll be able to break the habit without a major reset, personally.
> when I ditch FB, which I'm going to do as soon as
As someone who has deactivated and reactivated my Facebook account several times over the years — just do it! Maybe it will motivate you to finish that other project if you have something you really want to share. But the whole “I’ll start that diet after the holidays” thing doesn’t pan out in my experience :(
For YouTube there is Unhook [1], which allows you to block shorts. For all other sites I just use custom uBO rules. Both options also work on your phone if you use a browser that can install WebExtensions (Firefox on Android for example).
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...
I also keep it across the bedroom so I need to get out of bed to turn the alarm off.
"- Delete the browser from the phone." This is hard because the browser has other uses. I've found similar results by just signing out of any social media accounts on my phone.
Reddit is useable without being signed in, but just barely. It's certainly not as addicting as it is with an account. Twitter doesnt let me see anything without an account. Same with TikTok. I went ahead and deleted my accounts entirely but you can also just make the password hard to type and remove it from any password managers so its difficult to sign in.
This has pretty much cut my Reddit time from an hour+ a day into 5-10 minutes a day.
[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?hl=en&co=GEN...
For instance digital crack (tiktok )<->X/facebook<->hackernews<->wikipedia<->"soft" novels<->poetry<->james joyce<->legal texts
At some point any information stream can become susceptible to self-reinforcing doom scrolling. Reading novels is probably better than tiktok but could easily become unhealthy. I mostly weaned myself off of traditional social media but find it very easy to have a quick glance at hacker news and notice hours have gone by.
I understand why you want a replacement for updating friends and family, but that's a really effortful barrier you're placing in front of deleting Facebook. For this reason you will find it way harder. And it's already harder than you think.
Take any and all barriers away from ditching FB. They are your mind tricking you into staying.
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.
Yeah, that's doom scrolling
Yes, that's doom scrolling
Leaving my phone on the charger in the bedroom after 5pm completely removes the temptation. If somebody needs to reach me, they can call my wife or just leave a message for me to check in the morning. I've been doing this for several months and it's worked wonders for my attention span, my sleeping habits and my vision.
* ScreenZen on IOS breaks up screen time into discrete sections rather than a lump sum (e.g. 10 segments of 10 minutes each) making it much easier to know each time I've used a segment ("okay, that was ten minutes, do I want to go again?").
* Utilizing focus modes aggressively. DND and Sleep mode can be used aggressively to limit notification spam. While I'm at it I regularly go through my notification list and prune any app that has no pressing need to notify (or demote it to the daily summary).
* physical separation: my friend put me on to this, which is if I can do something without my phone, I'll consider it. Yesterday I drove to the store and back without my phone. Not feeling that weight in your pocket and not having it there to fill your time is a powerful experience. I have considered paying the Apple Watch cell subscription (which I always considered useless) because it means I will be reachable without being scrollable.
* I'm going to try that Foqos app posted here yesterday, I like the idea of physical blocking mechanisms so we can take the upgrades of phones, like GPS and chatGPT while leaving the poisonous bits at home.
This is one of the y biggest personal initiatives ever since I took my screen time stats and calculated I was losing about a day a week to my phone. My life is getting 14% shorter, given to trash I don't really enjoy.
Basically, picking up my phone is not rewarding anymore. I'm many steps removed from anything fun. It's enough to not think about it.
But again, your point is valid. Probably I need to set a "drop dead" date and tell myself "if this new site isn't up by Jan 31 (or whatever), then I'm killing FB anyway".
> 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.
Functionally, this seems to have helped a lot and usually the only time I end up on social media is when I am killing time waiting while out or when I really really want to look at something specific, and only on my mobile device. It seems that making it slightly more inconvenient worked on me without me having to give them up entirely.
If you're using an iPhone, you can use Assistive Access to disable a lot of stuff, making it functionally simiilar to a flip phone:
https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-...
There's probably an Android equivalent, but I can't speak to that.
And great insight about the calendar. That's the #1 reason why I keep my phone near me (thereby facilitating all the unwanted behaviors)
One of the most interesting things about a hardware based restriction is that it entirely avoids the game of turning on and off apps or deinstalling them. Even if you want to respond to a message in your DMs in Instagram, it will work, but the temptation to pull up the Reels or For you page just isn't there when it's all black and white and choppy.
Mind you we are super early stages but the idea feels promising and by my own testing I have really found it to be a much more pleasant phone experience.
I'll post some links here if people are interested.
as soon as you’re out & about and need an uber, or maps-based navigation to another location, or to transfer money from one bank, or even to look up an important tidbit of information - the phone number of a local business, for example - you’ll yearn for the power of a normal phone.
the answer is not buying things - it’s changing your behavior. put your phone in another room. stop using it at night. purge harmful apps one by one. focus on changing your _behavior_ instead.
the lightphone is a heavy , worse supported, worse integrated, less featureful wrapper around android - do you really want to pay hundreds of dollars for that?
i have firsthand experience - i fell for the lightphone, and it’s sitting in a box next to me.
what actually worked for me was:
- setting my phone to greyscale
- disabling ALL notifications except phone calls
- charging my phone in a different room at night
Similarly (easier but less drastic) I’ve seen people turn their phone to grayscale mode to make the device less engaging and remind you that it’s a productivity device, not an entertainment device. On iOS you can do this through the Accessibility settings. (Settings > Display & Text Size > Color Filters > Color Filters on, Grayscale
Made reddit's /r/all mostly about interesting new things or funny memes.
When reddit banned third party clients, I logged out and have never logged back in. I don't really miss it, even if it means I spend more time here or on fark. That was my last major social media site account, and I don't miss it at all.
Imagine a TikTok / YT style video scrolling but after each video you have to swipe progressively more times to get to the next video.
By the time you are swiping like 30 times to slowly inch to the next video maybe people would naturally stop.
There are all kinds of reasons a person may be looking at their phone, and to judge them for it, especially in an airport of all places, is kind of ridiculous.
My blocklist was several hundred subreddits long too :)
The only thing that helped was the KitchenSafe / kSafe.
I put my phone in the kSafe during pomodoro sized chunks. If there is an emergency, I can still do calls from my apple watch/ipad. I keep my ipad in my closet so i don't use it for doom scrolling.
It is funny because I random found out that the ksafe got popular from a sharktank episode where the inventor was advocating for controlling binge eating lol.... I found that funny because I've only heard it propose to quit smoking/vaping nicotine/weed.
Still figuring out the interface for other things. When I am at work, social pressures help. Still figuring out a way to prevent myself from opening incognito on my mac laptop and opening hackernews / reddit.
I essentially blocked every subreddit and specifically only open accounts now. I completely agree with you.
One of the best advices I heard is: don't let the algorithm recommend stuff for you.
Never click on the recommend for you page. Or doom scroll.
Any time on these sites, you should know what you are looking for. Never get on there just to browse.
"When I went on a trip this past fall and saw a very high percentage of people sucked in to these *short form videos* at any idle moment at the airport and out at public events..."
Assuming it was all short-form videos (I'd bet it was), then it's definitely more psychologically destructive than them reading a book on their phone.
Also your mentioning of several hours a day being "crazy high" is slightly telling of your understanding of the relationship, especially young people have, with their devices.
For younger people raised in this environment, myself included, putting in 6-8+ hours a day into doomscrolling youtube/instagram/tiktok is really not that out of the ordinary;
"13- to 18-year-olds use about eight and a half hours of screen media [per day]"[0]
[0]: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/researc... page 3
But that is exactly how I expect a dictionary definition of a relatively new and tonally ambiguous term to present itself.
1. Step one was to delete the app, though there was a bit more friction, I still found myself opening Facebook in (ios) Safari
2. Announce to friends and family I was deleting my account (yup I'm that person).
3. Delete account
4. Success!
1. Delete account, Elon did me a favor here by blocking access without an account.
2. Delete second account,
3. Links into twitter are still a problem, but I spend possible 2 minutes on the site per week tops.
4. NEXT STEP: Block www.twitter.com, www.x.com, etc. from all devices personal and work via /etc/hosts, pihole, custom dns, etc.
1. FAILURE
1. Delete app,
2. NEXT STEP: block instagram.com from all devices
1. Block news.google.com from all devices,
2. NEXT STEP (WIP): Block all news sites from all devices
1. UGHA half hour before the alarm goes off, it slowly gets brighter which I find simulates the sun rising enough to be a more pleasant waking experience. Plus I set the alarm sound itself to bird chirps, starting with 1 or 2 birds and growing into a whole chorus (I'm usually up before then)
Last time this didn't work because I kept turning off the freedom app. (Sigh.) This time I seem to be holding the line though. I'm getting more done and feel better.
I hear the ancients had their own crude technology for this:
Funny/Memey videos with low content value are entertaining, here and there. A rapid succession of them does nothing to the reward center of my brain. Or worse, the video would clearly be better as a longer form video and now I'm just frustrated (this is more common with YouTube Shorts).
That being said, I probably have YouTube normal-long form content running in the background 4-8hours out of the day.
I don't at the slightest feel bad about it.
Tell them I sent you: https://www.chess.com/?ref_id=7467288
Removing the official apps was an essential first step. Then I progressed to using mobile web sparingly with SocialFocus to trim the experience.
This. The phone without social media basically becomes a practical tool for basic communications, maps, taking photos, and news.
In other words: boring, and much less likely to be picked up.
How many others would classify hackernews as doomscrolling?
Anytime I get setup with a blocker it helps heaps. But I always slip back in. Every source of useful information (Reddit, YouTube) comes with toxic clickbait that you cannot disable.
I realized that my addiction is to the point that I cannot reason my way out of it. There needs to be a physical barrier.
A tangible example is sitting eating breakfast and the phone is sitting there and I so badly want to check cnn.com to see what is kicking off in politics.
Today I decided not to check it, and my imagination ran wild and I got really motivated about work. If I checked the phone though this wouldn't have happened and I would have ruined my whole morning searching for little dopamine hits.
Social media kills your imagination and injects someone else thoughts into your head. You want to let yourself think about things that you enjoy and motivate you INTRINSICALLY, not someone else because then you just keep needed to rely on their enthusiasm.
Main settings that gave me a starting point:
1. Uninstalled YouTube app and now using only the browser version (on mobile and desktop)
2. Turned off Watch History in https://www.youtube.com/feed/history - "Pause watch history" (you can only pause the watch history and YT will periodically remind you to turn it back on. OH yeah, nice try Google!).
3. Turn off AutoPlay (toggle switch on the video player toolbar)
4. Tweak all the settings in https://www.youtube.com/account_playback - disable info cards and video previews (the setting that makes the videos to play when you hover over thumbnails)
After making these changes, your YT homepage and History page will be empty spaces - no videos at all. It is so refreshing! As a bonus, now YouTube shorts show only short-forms content from the channels you subscribed to. So it is more meaningful than some random junk.
Additional habits that helped me:
1. Subscriptions - I subscribed to specific channels that I want to follow - eg: Dave2D, MKBHD, fav cooking channels, NPR etc. and watch their videos via Subscriptions link
2. Topic-specific playlists - save interesting videos that I want to save for later - e.g: 'Health', 'Good recipes' etc.
3. Related videos - When a video is playing, YT shows a bunch of 'related videos' on the right. Most of these videos were not really related to the video, instead they are just trigger content. So I do two things here:
- select the 'Do not recommend channel' from the vertical "..." menu in each video.
- if the related video is genuinely interesting to me, choose the menu option 'Add to watch later'
This was a big shift from a "push" to a "pull" model and has effectively stopped my doom scrolling habit in just a couple of weeks. I feel like I am watching YT on my own terms now.
invidious
freetube
pinchflat + jellyfin
MPV + yt-dlp
tubular/newpipe (mobile)
For me, "doom" scrolling is what you do when there's actual doom. When there's a terror attack and you don't know if you your close ones are safe, when there's a coup, when another war in one of your countries starts. You're horrified as hell, but you can't actually do anything useful, so you are glued to the "scroll": news, hearsay, and all the images and videos that you really should not be looking at for the sake of your own mental health.
(Final 'graph especially.)
Addresses your first point.
For the second: communication.
It turns out digital collaborative calendars are pretty great for us in general, there is no chance in hell I could keep the analog one up to date, so it was definitely worth having a screen on the wall.
The difference I see with the example you give is that “Dirty laundry” is a metaphor, not a definition of a phenomenon.
What's great about Linux distros is they are designed for different purposes, and they can decide what apps they ship by curating the list of ones in their repository. App delivery is secure, there's no random malware, there aren't a billion different nearly-identical apps with [probably] nefarious purposes, no barrage of capitalist free services designed to addict you. Just basic apps that let you be productive, without bloat, without malware, without BS.
I don't know why we aren't all using that right now. The PC is definitive proof that an open hardware platform can support any number of OSes. Let the user choose.
OneSec [1] is the only one that worked for me. It's quick enough that I'm not tempted to disable it, yet annoying enough that makes me think twice if I really want to open app X for the third time today.
Also it's just a polite nudge, rather than a full block, or condescending messages saying "you've hit your time limit for today" (that make you feel bad and make you want to immediately disable the thing in the first place).
Wish parental controls were designed with the same principles.
A half-measure for this would be to arrange your charging-setup so that you can't use and charge the phone at the same time. For example, USB cables long enough to reach the nightstand, but not long enough to comfortably hold the phone in front of your face.
Black and white kills the dopamine cycle and brings color back to your real life.
Use your strength. Put different things in different objects. Now you rationally reason about them.
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)
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.
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.
I would give a try to an e-ink based smartphone if there was a good one. The only reason I got a smartphone in the first place in 2020 was access to maps/taxi/banking apps which would work with any display. But given the grayscale experience I wonder if you get used to laggy e-ink videos as well.
Or you're talking about literal black-and-white, as in 2 colors no grey?
Legitimate question for debate: how does this differ for social media vs other media? Apart from social media being more addictive, all media is pushing someone else's thoughts on you, in some way. I can imagine old folks would've made similar arguments against TV and books.
(I ask this but still 100% agree social media sucks)
It still shows me shorts from subscriptions on the subscriptions tab, which I don't mind. If you scroll on them it shows you ones from other subscriptions before stopping and showing that message again.
In searches it does show shorts, but will only let you scroll through ~5 before that message comes up again.
I really like this setup because I can see my subscriptions shorts, which are generally fine, and it doesn't let me spend more than like 2m 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.
To clarify, its not that "I refuse" its just I find little incentive to. On top of this, I do not view my smartphone as a replacement for my laptop. Yes, its great to have the internet and apps that can fit in my pocket. For many people, their smartphone replaced 90% of their activities on a desktop/laptop but not for me.
Sure when I go on youtube I watch a Short I find interesting. Before I know it, I am pressing down, down, down... etc.
I also admit that when I am learning or trying to solve a problem I can venture off to youtube or other sites. I can vaguely relate what it must be like for younger kids who grew up with the internet and smart phones. It is easy to get sidetracked.
Despite being in my 40s I hate to be that "back in my day" type of guy but the truth is, before the internet was common, we had little distraction on our PCs. We could only run what our computers had installed, right? Sure, we could still get distracted by our TVs or video games but they still exist today + everything else.
I try to teach my kids (one of which has a phone) that its easy to get caught up them... to be a third arm if you will. My eldest is slowly learning and, in my opinion, is a better example that my spouse.
Lastly, I have enjoyed reading other comments on here and their methods to improve their daily lifestyle choices.
Anyway -- a bit of fun for you...
Not long ago I was in an important meeting with 30 other people. The organiser had to leave to take a phone call. The moment he left EVERYONE took their phones out and all you could hear was 'tap, tap, tapping...'
I was the only one not on their phone. I didn't even bring it into the meeting room with me! I couldn't help but smirk look around the big table with everyone looking down on their phone.
^^ This was in 2011... 14 YEARS AGO!! This would be around the IPhone 3 era. As I looked around the room I started to hate the idea of a "smartphone" and how reliant the average person will be... and I consider myself an introvert! It was just a reflection on what the future holds. Personally, I am glad (even to this day) not to have a reliability towards it.
I check emails, I ePay, SMS/Discord messages, utility apps like hobby score tracking or taking notes, necessary company apps like airlines or resorts, etc.
I never use my phone for pleasure. If I look up a YouTube video, it's for a purpose and it ends at that purpose. If something takes me to a social media site, I read the post and end there.
I keep pleasure on my computer. When I step away from my computer, I'm disconnected from all the carcinogenics of the modern online life.
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.
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.
Destroys our imagination and creativity. Instant satisfaction.
When we imagine things we are exploring a tree of possibilities and following the branches that give us satisfaction.
Everyone would have one. :D
My phone is ideally for
- Call
- Text messaging / WhatsApp / Discord of few groups, etc
- Alarm clock
- Taking pictures or videos. (Likely family oriented)
- Booking tickets - document, shows, travel (the main reason I have email setup on my phone)
- Travelling - Geolocation / map (gmaps, etc)
- Exception: Internet if working on laptop with no internet (ie in cafe) (This could also be youtube videos or similar)
If smart phones were banned tomorrow then my life would not change that much. The above is mostly for better convenience of what is other methods and requiring a some paper or printer, etc.
I do wonder what the percentage is today that rely on their smartphone (even if not serving a decent purpose other than "social") and struggle with daily life if a ban started tomorrow.... waking up to no smart phone. I think it will be pretty high even for people in their 40s. Its rather sad.