alt Hacker NewsIn terms of solutions on an individual-level: after a lot of trial and error I feel like what works for me is an absolutist cold-turkey-approach. I've pretty much banned all consumptive screen-time except some things like Hacker News, LinkedIn, YouTube (only existing subscriptions, no recommendations or shorts etc). Things I know I won't spend more than 15-20 minutes on and are not highly stimulating and made to high-jack your brain. Initially, I used to allow myself some leeway as in screen-time i.e. should be less than X duration, but it never worked.
The withdrawal-symptoms of going cold-turkey are intense but you get over them eventually and then once you've powered through a few weeks, and you try and go back and look at any type of "content" you see how much trash it all is. Even the "good ones" or things you tell yourself is "educational". Another important note is to have some replacements in place so that when you start seeing that new void of so much time on your hands, you don't feel empty/hollow but as a reminder to yourself that you had so many cool things to do.
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I managed to give up Reddit (still have other attention consuming vices) and temporarily checked in to see the reactions to Arsenal finally winning the Premier League...and was repulsed by just how MEAN that site is. Discussing something as innocuous as sporting events instantly devolves into cruel, personal attacks and pulls in every topic under the sun.
It's not just Reddit that's like that, but it was especially striking after having been away for a while.
There is clear irony in the statement "... an absolutist cold-turkey-approach." ... "except some things like Hacker News, LinkedIn, YouTube." That sounds closer to the opposite end of the extreme.
Yeah I’ve gone through varying degrees of cold turkey too. These social media / infinite scroll platforms are not all ‘bad’, but some are ‘worse’ than others. Unfortunately heavy platform usage is so widespread + people staying at home as a result, such that it’s harder to obtain ‘proper’ interaction and stimulation when stepping out IRL, so I think some controlled platform usage can be beneficial for filling the void. My ultimate conclusion / main point is that balance is key, as per usual. I maintain limited Reddit, hacker news, LinkedIn, YouTube usage, and have Facebook because my distant family uses that a lot. That’s all though. And I’ve tried all sorts of methodologies…making devices grayscale, timer locking my phone in a box, putting devices in faraday bag when not using as like a mental block, etc. I remain out of the loop on some shared cultural fabric that comes with being chronically online and tapped into the global town square, and that manifests in IRL experiences / feeling excluded at times, but in exchange I get more peace and a greater focus on the present, which has felt ‘better’ and more ‘natural’ anecdotally speaking.