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.
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.
Couldn't help but look at everyone the same as all the people on the space ships in Wall-E.
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...
[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?hl=en&co=GEN...
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.
Yeah, that's doom scrolling
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".
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.
"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
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.
Removing the official apps was an essential first step. Then I progressed to using mobile web sparingly with SocialFocus to trim the experience.
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.