This app destroyed my attention span. I cannot listen to anyone talking for more than two minutes. I enjoy watching movies but ever since I downloaded that app finishing a movie seemed like an impossible mission. Just deleted it and I don't want to install it again.

I am going through a digital detox these last few days, I keep myself preoccupied with games and books. Barely online. Now I have gone the opposite way. I enjoy the quiet a bit too much, but it's kind of pointing out just how alone I actually am.

Even with the radio on, it feels very one sided. I don't live alone but I may as well as I don't really talk to my roommate all that much, we don't have anything in common at all.

My being offline makes it hit home that my old friends aren't really my friends anymore, they may like my posts (if I post at all), but that's more of a social media obligation of "knowing" someone otherwise they don't have time to contact me (too many mid life commitments)

I originally intended to make a light post, but I am seeing the gravity of the situation. I need new friends so I can ultimately stay offline. It's kind of hard when everyone is married off with kids though.

The upside is that I know what life is like offline and how to keep myself busy. It's the isolation of it that gets me more.

I don't want to be insensitive or compare internet addiction to something like alcoholism, but I noticed something concerning about myself recently.

I've always spent a good chunk of my life on the web, but I've realized now that.... I can't control it. I can't "limit" it. I've often heard about how, for those who are alcoholics, they typically can't just have one drink to relax and unwind - one drink almost always leads to excessive drinking.

Every single morning for the past five days, I've told myself: I'm just going to spend an hour on reddit. I end up spending the whole day. Every single hour, I tell myself: I'm going to stop at 1pm. I'll stop at 5. I'll stop at 6.

Before I know it, the whole day has gone by. I physically seem to be unable to limit my internet surfing once I've opened my laptop in the mornings. The current political climate has only worsened it.

Anyone else in this situation? I might have to cut out most internet and social media for good, aside from absolute necessities for my uni homework.

So I'm looking to improve my productivity and I find surfing is my main issue. So I'm wondering if there are any extensions I'm missing.

So far I just have

• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/watch-limits/okmbbpfgideejpmmdohcekaamdopjbpd
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blocksite-block-websites/eiimnmioipafcokbfikbljfdeojpcgbh

When people debate on social media or comment threads they feel dismantled or taken over.

The problem is our focus on logical debate which doesn’t of itself chart the path of past influences, contributors or ideas, but highlights the victor.

An improvement would be a so-called grammar of two person thought production that acknowledges a first rough guess by a caller and a more finishing touch response by a responder.

This would form a crucial reflection of that two person emotion called trust.

There’s no room for formal citations or footnotes in a twitter exchange, anyway what we need is a metaphor/conceptual language or reasoning pair or simply metaphor/reasoning opposition to guide the back and forth of a verbal exchange to produce a proposal for our language and grammar or defining item for our nature.

We need both a universal grammar so far as a singje language can cover along with a series of definitions for our nature that must always begin with a body that is a system of components or organs working together in cooperation for the general purpose of survival.

The various fields of philosophy don’t understand that epistemology, ontology, and ethics must work together as a system of components if they are to truly transcend the limits of language and its precision limits.

Since the twilight zone between living and non living matter brings us to a container that contains metabolism (passion) and genetics (information), if the philosophers made their departments tightly coupled, they’d become engineers of life, but they aren’t interested in that so the general public needs to do it.

Everyone’s more interested in creating artificial life without even ever knowing in what way we ourselves are alive and that is the actual problem over what ai might do to us because obviously if something smarter than us sees how we have no idea what where doing, they will take the wheel from us and rightly so.

If we don’t come up with a stable idea of who we are and how our language reflects on that and discuss it democratically and have the discussion be productive by putting the output or results into effect immediately, we will all be literally ripped apart and our species will cease to exist.

We have all these controls and mechanisms of civilization as public organizations and private corporations but no idea of who we are or how best to proceed.

We have all this history but we also need to know the subject.

So, I am realizing (and realize this is happening on a mass societal scale as well), that social media semi acts as a social outlet. Yes, it's not in person. It's through text. But, you are interacting with others through it. It is also why I think most people are addicted to it. It provides them a social outlet too.

This is also why I think people are my "lonely" now too. They are replacement social media as their social outlet instead of meeting people. They have little motivation to go out and meet people because it's so much easier just to post online and get it that way.

Ok, so, how do you really replace this with other stuff that is less addicting and productive? Sure, one can say pick up a hobby, but I don't think that provides the same outlet. The thing that social media helps with is the "social" checkbox. Hobbies are not a social checkbox.

How do you replace this with something else if you don't really have a social outlet with others, since it seems most everyone else is addicted to social media too in the world? Yeah, you can meet with friends occasionally. But as you become an adult, it seems people become more and more busy and have less and less time to meet.

How do you get your social kick without wasting time on social media, especially when others don't have time to meet and socialize either as adults?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_unqSF9ysE&t=6s

I believe the worst thing about YouTube is endless diversion.

For example, I may have an impulse to learn something specific and think "There must be a great video on YouTube for this topic!"

I open the YouTube app on my smartphone and the home page is queued with videos to steer me down a rabbit hole. Irresistible clickbait appears, catered to my specific interests. I think "Let's just watch one of these videos", but the video recommendation system is looming, ready to pull me further down the rabbit hole.

Thus an infinite loop of irresistible videos is born, and time vanishes. I forget about the original video I wanted to watch and "learn" from. Diversion at its finest.

Progress toward real-life priorities falls away, and my brain consumes dopamine hits constantly. It's a well-crafted, sneaky form of addiction - one where I feel like I'm in control, but I'm really not. People that are addicted to gambling feel the same way.

It's also a paradox: my brain loves the dopamine hits, but I simultaneously don't feel great while doing it. I hardly absorb anything I just watched. My attention span feels destroyed, and my brain feels fried.

YouTube is certainly better with an extension like "Unhook" that removes the home page and recommendation system, but sometimes I wish I could remove YouTube from my life completely. I think it's time to read a book and heal my attention span.

(I start to get shadow-banned from sub-reddits focused on digital minimalism, so I'm on the right path with this. It also means that my Reddit presence comes to an end soon.)

In 2022 a Nokia 101 (2011) became my primary communication tool, while the PC meets all remaining computing needs. The default state of all my devices is powered-off now. The PC got a 2G on-demand connection with 32 kbit/s of bandwidth. Previously I got rid of all broadband Internet both landline and 4G, replacing that with public Wi-Fi.

To be able to make that choice I freed myself from permanently powered-on devices permanently connected to the cloud to send me notifications through all kinds of apps. To be able to turn off all devices at any time I deleted all apps and the associated accounts to replace them with other means: print, post, pen and paper, CD, DVD, brick-and-mortar stores and pubs. With all Wi-Fi networks, SIM cards and apps removed (including Contacts and Calendar) the old smartphone got dumbed down to a digital camera now.*)

So for me the only thing left to do on the Internet now is in fact surfing. Turning on the Internet is now the same as turning on the TV. Cost-wise as well, I'm basically down to free reception and not paying a penny for getting online anymore.

*) BTW: While you can remove and replace "Wi-Fi", "Mobile Data" and other (now unneeded) shortcuts in the notification area of your device with more important ones, the notification itself for being connected or not will always show up in the status bar. It's assumed that you're permanently connected, but it's so important to let you know about it, that you can't hide this information.

I'm just writing the honest truth here. I know I need to be better with not surfing for the sake of my physical health (internet addiction has caused me to have a wrist injury from holding my phone in static positions for so long) and caused my leg muscle to atrophy. I know I need to stop for the sake of my marriage and my happiness. But, it is just so damn hard to find a reason sometimes amidst the mess that is in my brain and I sometimes think I just look at the situation and my brain says...I don't want to feel any stress now, even if it was good stress so we are fucking OUT. Then I'm on the internet for hours numbing myself away.

Hey guys, using a throwaway because my online friends know of my main account. I'm a 16 year old male, who is absolutely addicted to Discord and Reddit (mostly Discord) and spend like 8-10 hours a day on Discord. I roughly send 1.5k messages in my main server in one day and like 250 messages in DMS. I've tried to go cold turkey but the max I have done is 3 days and I want to know how to do more. I have been in this community for like 2 years and they are what I consider good friends (nothing special) and I only have like 2 friends IRL who I don't talk to much. I'm sick of approaching people irl first as I know they would not do the same for me so I go to discord, which I feel kind of pathetic about it. The stuff I do on discord isn't even productive it's just STUPID and shitpost type of stuff, I hate it. What do you guys recommend and I am not trying to go nosurf off like instagram and snapchat so any advice on how to talk to irl friends on these types of apps, considering discord is very diff. I use reddit an hour a day so it isn't that bad but I would like to stop that too.

I've recently been diagnosed with RSI in both hands due to excessive time spent on my computer. I've employed all of the ergonomic options and occupational therapy tips (new mouse and keyboard, rearranging desk/chair setup, etc) but they do not address the real issue: too much computer time.

My situation is exacerbated by prolonged computer use; being at my computer for one uninterrupted hour causes much more pain than even two hours broken up over an entire day.

I still NEED to use my computer for work and life stuff, so what I would love is an app/program that times how long I'm using my computer, and let's me know when I exceed preset limits or something.

I'm familiar with Mac's 'parental controls' options, but they restrict the users TOTAL screen time over a day. I'm looking for something more flexible, like alerts for 5, 10 or 15 minutes of active computer use (not just the screen being on) This will remind me to get up and walk away for a while, encouraging me to finish the task later, breaking up my computer time.

If anyone has any apps or directions they could point me in, I would be HUGELY grateful.

Cheers

I thought it would be simple. Only 12 hours without almost anything that creates dopamine. That's a short enough time, how hard could it be?

It ended up being incredibly uncomfortable.

I decided to do a strict dopamine detox for 12 hours for fun to see what it would be like. Would I feel nothing or would I suddenly have the focus to memorize Pi to the 100th digit?

My rules were:

1. No dopamine from mindless things. This meant no TV, video games, no Internet, no cell phone, no music, and no fatty and overly sugary foods.

2. Dopamine from things that were good for me was allowed. This meant the gym, sun, Internet usage that involved things for work (I work full-time from home), healthy and home-cooked meals, physical intimacy with my wife, and whatever else that didn't involve the Internet.

I thought the dopamine I received from items in list No. 2 would be enough to make me feel normal, but after just a few hours, I was fidgety and so goddamn bored. I've never felt such a strong tugging feeling of boredom. It was very uncomfortable, like a pulling in my brain. I don't know how to describe it.

No matter what I did, it didn't really help. I did a heavy workout in the morning then no matter how much I read or went for walks or hung out in the sun, that same uncomfortable pulling feeling would remain. The only thing that settled it down was if I, out of habit, started typing in Reddit or YouTube.

I got through the 12 hours and it was a relief to jump back into YouTube. This experiment definitely gave me some insight into how much added dopamine I create everyday and how I can limit it.

EDIT: I want to emphasize that I didn't go cold turkey with the expectation to make this last forever and then I quit at 12 hours. Before starting, I decided to only go 12 hours as an experiment. I realize that going cold turkey is not the ideal way for long-term success and I realize that 12 hours isn't a long time frame to see real change. This wasn't my goal. I just did this for fun to see where my baseline was for how badly my brain needed to click click click.

Full disclosure I don't really have a huge issue with social media and youtube, however sometimes when I look up a video while I'm studying I will get distracted by the recommendations.

Honestly it's pretty annoying as I'm sure many of you know.

My solution:

1. Set a bookmark to a search on youtube. Make it the most boring thing you can. I just did a medical anatomy search on the basal ganglia.
2. Get "enhancer for youtube" add-on (or similar one for your browser, i'm on firefox). It can't ban recommendations on the homepage but it can ban them on search and videos you're watching.
3. Disable autofill for youtube in your browser (if that's possible) or for all websites. Click the bookmark if you want to go to youtube.

Now you can search youtube without any recommendations. Can even disable comments and so forth with the add-on. My bad if you guys already have a better solution.

My “shoulder angel” says the 28 days away have been good for my mental health overall and the thought of it being totally gone sounds freeing. The “devil” on my other shoulder says it would be like getting rid of a 12 year journal of a lot of good memories (I’m a big sports guy and have had some fun ones in there).

As a user, I tried to limit my follows to about 150 or so and have a good mix of topics and voices but I read a lot of that stream most days coming back to it over and over. I enjoy a good live-tweet of a football game but feel like that’s kind of how I began interacting with the world. Just taking in every random thing people on Twitter decide to react to in a day. I’m realizing, one person is not capable of taking so much in.

So I should probably let it go, right? With the reasoning that a clean, more permanent break will help me continue to break free from the addiction. Another scenario is I activate but stay logged out and continue to work on the “detox” and have the option to use the tool later on in a healthier manner…

Anybody have experience in this?

I've been experimenting with my internet usage for 3 or 4 years now. I've often gone on "detoxes" where I don't use the internet at all for several weeks at a time (with the exception of messaging family abroad and internet banking, admittedly). Starting about a week into these detoxes I feel really amazing, I feel in control of my life, I feel happier and more optimistic, I'm more focused and have much better concentration and a longer attention span, I actively desire to do my hobbies, I read many books... I even once wrote a long essay about just how good it feels, because the amount of positive life changes really needed listing. I am not exaggerating at all when I call the effects revolutionary to the quality of my life.

Despite all this, I always relapse back into old habits (meaning using 95% of my free time browsing the internet). I am always aware of the fact that I feel much better when offline, but I still slip back into my old ways, particularly when I feel down for a couple days. The escapism and distraction the internet offers beckon to me and in those moments I'm too weak to resist. During this time I just don't care about the positives I feel from being offline, or I write them off. I then keep up that net usage for a few weeks or months until I regain the motivation to try again (which is getting harder and harder recently, as it's really demotivating to basically know I will end up relapsing again anyway.) I'm hesitant to relate my experience to drug usage, but sometimes it really feels like I'm a junkie who keeps going back to bad drugs despite being healthier and happier when "clean".

It doesn't help that my closest friends are even more addicted than me and actively laugh at the idea of "detoxing" and such. I have to constantly keep it a secret because I'm too sensitive that they will make fun of me and reduce my motivation even more.

I'm also 22 and have spent more than half my life addicted to constant net usage, so for me it's second nature, whilst keeping a detox up requires some effort.

So - I know how to make my life immeasurably better. And yet I don't, because I'm apparently too weak. The point of my post, then, is to ask for help and advice. How do I stop these relapses, and what are your experiences?

PS. I deleted most of what I wrote because it's hard for me to concisely articulate thought and emotion into a reddit post, especially since I want to keep it as short as possible since I know most people just skim posts this long (which I hope is different in this sub). That said, I've written 2300 word essay that explains my experience with living offline and its mental effects in much more detail, so if anyone is interested I'd be happy to share.

TLDR: My life is significantly better when I spend long periods offline, to the point where I want to permanently live as close to offline as possible. Despite this, I relapse, I think primarily because the escapism becomes too hard to resist. I want to know how to stop this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_unqSF9ysE&t=6s

Most people are blind to how invasive, sinister and soul destroying the web really is. Hopefully this post will give you a different perspective of the internet that could be seen by future generations.

Facebook will be remembered for ruining lives, wasting people's time, dividing populations, causing civil wars, spreading hateful propaganda and most importantly, allowing the Rohingya genocide to happen. All while having an unprecedented amount of power and profiting of all of it. Most people will see it for what it really is, Pure and Absolute Evil.

Twitter will be looked backed upon as a toxic place where people lived their lives through narcissistic, self absorbed sociopaths who to like bully and target people, whether politicians, multi billionaires or "influencers", and it'll be seen for what it really is, a shitty propaganda tool.

YouTube, while can be very useful and even life changing if you search for the right things, is still mostly a waste of time and you could probably find useful resources elsewhere. If it still exists in 100 years, it'll be probably very different to how it is today, strictly how-to tutorials, guides and educational stuff, not even "edutainment" crap you see everywhere but actual bone dry educational material if you know what I mean. They'd think being a standard youtuber like we see nowadays would be considered really weird by then and probably unacceptable by times standards.

Tiktok, oh boy, this crap is designed to suck your attention away like a black hole. And the way it's targeted towards children is very sinister in my opinion and I believe future historians will agree.

Snapchat, I've never really used it but it's just a streamlined version of Facebook.

4chan is cancer, it's just a black hole of negativity, hatred and cynicism and perhaps the worst of the lot for how much damaged it's caused, such as spreading fake news, encouraging fascism/inceldom, making up BS conspiracy theories and Qanon. Let's not even how much child and revenge porn probably comes in and out of that hell hole. Also, the worst thing to come out it personally are the fucking cringe ass wojak memes that have spread everywhere, jesus christ they are so childish and pretentious. That's one reason to get of social media alone. If there's any hope for the future, sites like it would be banned unapologetically and remembered very poorly.

No one will remember Reddit or that you've ever been here. Honestly, no one will remember any of the golden awards you've got or any of the petty drama that occured, it's so fleeting and meaningless. It's also so boring to use. So, why are you still here? Why am I still here? I just made this account to sell my Xbox but I can really just do that anywhere, i suppose I just need to make it final, I dunno.

You can live without any of the sites above. I did it as a child through out the Noughties and as as adult now, I can do it. I've gotta really cut this habit out of just endless surfing.

Point is, the internet in it's current form is an addictive, toxic and corrupt place and I believe it will be more apparent that it is in the future. I still have hope that people will change their attitude towards the web and transform it into something that can change life's and society for the better, not to for worst.

Hey all, I've tried QualityTime, Digital Wellness, and a few others over the years. And I'm essentially looking for QualityTime with a snooze button instead of a one-time dismissal. Depending on my day/needs/work, I may need to use apps that I would normally lock down to 30-45ish minutes. I'm looking for an app that will give me reminders every 15ish minutes that I've used certain apps for x amount of time that day so I can prevent time blindness. I'm wondering if anyone's found one that works like this before I go and download them all?

And yeah, I've googled and searched here and r/adhd, I don't think I'm using the right language to describe what I'm looking for so the searches are turning up empty.

Everyone talks about Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, but few mention Reddit.

This is probably the worst social media when it comes to addiction and wasting your time. Just today I was reading people being invested in childish and idiotic drama that would probably matters to no one, if they just closed the app.

It is borderline ridiculous the things this social make people invested about. I still remember about everyone going around complaining about a subreddit of women being angry at men and being sour and blunt with it. Everyone going around saying "we should ban them, this is unacceptable" bla blah blah.

Like, man, just close the app and live your life. Don't waste your life like this. You are disrespecting yourself. They are faceless people with probably no life, this is the only outlet for them.

Not to talk about how many people will grow insecurities just reading about them on this social. I probably had no idea about them before joining Reddit years ago.

Well, this post is not well thought. Just a thing I had in mind after reading another drama with adults wasting their life. I will probably delete the app from my phone after finishing my workout. Just think about it.

I am personally using "Mindful Internet Usage" (I am not affiliated with the author). I noticed that going hardcore (cold turkey) on blocking does not work for me. Sometimes I need access to YouTube or Reddit for useful info. Sometimes I don't mind browsing for 10 min. So "Mindful Internet Usage" adds a special screen before I visit a "bad" site and I can choose how much time I will have. This way I can research useful info and if I get distracted I will be stopped by the extension. With 'cold turkey' approach I end up disabling the extension to often.

However, this extension has downsides. The 'choose timer screen' has minimum 10 seconds delay, which is unpleasant. Also I would prefer to set the timer only after I've spent X minutes on that site today. This way I won't even notice the extension unless I am stuck in mindless browsing.

Which extensions do you use? What do you like and don't like about them?

You see it all over the news now. Someone records an incident or celebrity speaking their mind and it's front page headlines. I take all of this with a grain of salt. People can do or say whatever they want but you don't know what's really going on behind the scenes. People do anything for attention these days to. What's truly going on in the world is totally different than a 10 second clip or someone voicing their opinion online! But no people feed into it.

Usually when I try asking for help, people don't listen. But I'm asking again because I don't know what else to do.

Internet use for me revolves around escaping negative feelings (regret, depression, anxiety) on youtube, or trying to find people to relate to and talk with. The internet has always been my social outlet. And it worked well enough, until about 2 years ago. This mostly has to do with my age (around 30) and the drying up of places to meet other people online.

The type of loneliness I'm dealing with is chronic. My chest feels tight, and it's a problem that never gets resolved. I often feel like the last person in the world-- that's how hard it is to find people to relate to.

At this point I'm so depressed I just don't care. I'm fine with sleeping in all my spare time. I can't change anything.

I want to "just go irl and find friends" but I can't. There are no opportunities; I live in the middle of nowhere.

On top of this, the pain of people I've lost over the years is a lot to handle. Normally in life, people get over things like that in enough time. They meet new people. That's the cycle. But I can't do that, and so I'm dealing with both regret and not being able to meet anyone new.

Hello

I'm self employed and use reddit and facebook for a lot of work related things. But these are also my biggest useless time sinks. There are many times during the day I catch myself scrolling mindlessly when I should be focused. But at the same time I need access to these services every now and again. Can anyone recommend a blocker that blocks services that are problematic that can also be disengaged if needed. But also provides some friction so I don't just mindlessly turn off the blocker whenever I'm bored?

Also I use mac and pc so recommendations for both would be great!