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'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

351 points by mrfusion 6y ago

sys_64738 6y ago
Why take a cellphone into the bedroom when you're trying to sleep? Just don't do it if you are weak to the temptation of doing it if you do take it into your bedroom.
- Fnoord 6y ago
  I put mine on quiet (basic Android feature) during sleep time, and its my alarm in the morning. It also gets charged overnight, and in case of emergency I can call emergency services. Its a no-brainer to take my smartphone with me to bed.
- Quiza12 6y ago
  This is a big one for me. Not so much the bringing the phone into the room to scroll through before bed, but working from home physically leaving it in another room so I can't instinctively reach for it and be distracted by it.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
troughway 6y ago
You’re better off unplugging entirely. Forgo all forms of news and pop media for at least 6 months and focus on your life. You’ll be happier and you’ll get shit done. I think a lot of this has to do with the West not really doing anything to address death. It’s out of sight and out of mind, so when it’s knocking at our door we are feeble minded and scared because we are ignorant of the cycle of life and death. Everyone you know will die, but confronting this fact head on breeds a very existentialist kind of anxiety that we’ve failed to address in our societies. This is the underpinning of doomer type behaviour. Eastern philosophy tends to have meditations where people remind themselves every day that today might be their last. You might think this sort of thinking breeds depression, mental illness, etc, but it works out for them very well. The West could learn a lot from this, but alas that’s a pipe dream.
- geofft 6y ago
  There is certainly a Western philosophical/religious tradition of meditating on death, for what it's worth. It's why I love Lent and the traditions/rituals around it - "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Here's a very contemporary take on it that I came across recently, blending the eremitic nature of the Covid lockdown and the cause of praying for those who have died of it: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/office-of-the-dead-revisited/ http://www.stbedeproductions.com/office-of-the-dead-revisite... You might also enjoy The Slavery of Death by Richard Beck, who blends his training in clinical psychology with his religious background to argue basically what you're arguing - that we try very hard to pretend death doesn't exist and that it works poorly - and from there argues that our fear of death should be understood as the primary problem of humans from a theological perspective, and that sin is a result of that fear, not a root cause. (He does draw on Eastern Orthodox thought to make that point, but I think that's not as far east as you mean by "Eastern," if I understand you right.)
  - troughway 6y ago
    Nice, will check it out. I’m aware of stoicism but even that is too “out there” for our society.
  - makomk 6y ago
    Yeah, I think it's specifically the modern, secular West that has this terrified, anxious relationship with death. The more religious communities seem to think about it much the same way as they always did, and people on social media keep using this to make clever gotcha arguments about how religious people aren't really "pro life" because they're not desperately freaking out about death and trying to stave it off however they can during the pandemic. Somewhere along the line, the idea that death is an inevitable part of life and that sometimes trying to desperately stop it no matter what is a futile act of hubris became so alien to parts of the population that they can't even understand how anyone could think that way.
countername 6y ago
Yeah reading hacker news since 4 hours and didn't even planned to open it. Now the world is more dangerous and don't know if people are commenting or GPT-3 bots. Any solutions to find sleep?
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Got any Chamomile tea?
  - countername 6y ago
    I try,thanks
- sasaf5 6y ago
  I've found that weight-lifting really puts my sleep in order. It's not only restful, it also feels good to sleep after a workout.
  - davidw 6y ago
    Exercise helps, a lot. I'd spend my days riding my bike, if I could. Helps get rid of some of the despair and worry and I definitely sleep better. And ... yeah, can't really check twitter while out on the bike!
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  Definitely exercise, works wonders. A bike ride or run, even a few sets of pushups and crunches
- geofft 6y ago
  Do something offline that avoids giving your brain the sense of "Something new must be happening and I need to know what it is." I like video games, which is sort of a compromise (there's still more to do, you can see the number go up, etc., but there's no realtime pressure), but reading a physical book or listening to music are both good options to (and avoid emitted light, for bonus points).
- 6y ago
lilyball 6y ago
A few weeks ago I identified doomscrolling, particularly in bed, as a major source for my recent sleeping issues. As a result, I took a major step back from Twitter in general, and especially forced myself to stop reading Twitter in bed, or even in the late evenings. This produced an immediate improvement in both sleep quality and overall mood.
- ponker 6y ago
  Even better is to physically turn your phone off at least one hour before bed. If you need to be available for emergency calls then in do not disturb mode with your family set to punch through Do Not Disturb.
  - srineesh 6y ago
    jnkjadbs sbbhsa
- recursive 6y ago
  I recommend charging your phone far from your bed. I've been doing it for a few years.
  - cryptoz 6y ago
    Added bonus of the alarm going off in the morning across the room helps that 2-3 seconds of initial wake up to be more "productive" in waking up - gotta stand and walk for a second before the alarm goes off. Less likely to fall back asleep after just that little interruption.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  As a rule, I don't check anything but HN before bed simply because they usually don't have those types of stories. Tonight it had an assassination attempt on a Judge working a high profile case who's 20 year old son is now dead and a husband in a hospital. In the United States.
- sien 6y ago
  Deleting twitter from my phone was very much worth doing. I'll log in at a conference, otherwise keeping it off your phone helps. Also as others have said keep your phone away from your bed, preferably in another room.
clairity 6y ago
the hypocrisy of this story is thick, from a news organization where every other story (and that's not much of an exaggeration) is about how we're all going to die from covid because everyone else is being a jerk in endlessly various ways. but to their credit, they did air a story recently featuring maria hinojosa, founder/host of latino usa and the first latina host at npr, that was not especially kind to npr itself (spoiler: she left and was more successful as a result).
- 0xy 6y ago
  Not to mention the journalistic malpractice of calling victims of being threatened with a firearm and having their vehicle attacked randomly "right-wing extremists", and then wiping the evidence of their false allegations from the internet without retracting or apologizing for it. The individuals who attacked the victims were charged by police. [1] [2] NPR is in the same class as the rest of the mainstream media who don't bother to vet stories they lather with political bias. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbEIlsUUcAACYht?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbEIlsUUcAACYht?format=jpg&name=... [2] https://www.wave3.com/2020/06/18/protesters-arrested-following-altercation-with-driver-downtown-louisville/ https://www.wave3.com/2020/06/18/protesters-arrested-followi...
  - phs318u 6y ago
    You're extrapolating from the evidence of one event to all (or most) events. What you're calling "journalistic malpractice" is possibly an editor with a story in need of a picture (everything has to be visual to sell the story), asking the photog pool for a suitable image. This happens all the time. Timing matters though. In the instance you quote, if the original story was published before the police charged the attackers, then the journalists made an honest mistake. Otherwise we'd have to wait for the entire judicial process to reach completion before making any comment. E.g. you seem to implying that because they were charged by police, the attackers of the vehicle were in the wrong, but that can't be known until a conviction is reached. The point, I'm making is that journalism is an exercise in trying to parse and publish what is known 'at the time'. I think your comment about mainstream media is mostly unfair, as the same accusations can be made against most non-mainstream media. I'd also suggest that NPR are one of the better mainstream media orgs, but that's just my opinion. The parent poster made one case for why - they are willing to host their own critics. Not too many news orgs are willing to do that.
unknownkadath 6y ago
I got a Nokia 8110 4g to use as a secondary phone during not-work times. Can't browse much on a phone with a tabless browser. Also, it is very 90s cool.
creato 6y ago
I don't like the implication that mental health is just feeling good. Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it, they'd be willing to do even trivial things like wear a mask. In my opinion, good mental health should be considered to be that your feelings align with reality. If reality sucks, it's not mentally unhealthy to feel bad about it. Feeling bad should spur making changes to make it better.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  The issue is that understanding the news and understanding the real world can be very, very different things. An endless stream of anecdotes about rare crimes and individual misbehavior will upset anyone, but it can't help anybody understand the real world.
  - baddox 6y ago
    Also, it doesn’t sound healthy to me to read news with the attitude that a lot of the bad stuff that happens is because you just didn’t research enough and vote hard enough. The point of democracy shouldn’t be to blame the people for bad government policies and actions. It should be the government that is accountable.
    - evan_ 6y ago
      many people are explicitly and intentionally voting for the bad policies and actions though, can I blame them for that?
      - ctdonath 6y ago
        No. They think they're voting for the good policies and actions. We can legitimately disagree over the good/bad of policies and actions. Is instituting/increasing minimum wage: providing a livable income for those at the bottom? or denying jobs to those at the bottom (being unable to produce >= $MINWAGE)? Good/bad of the topic seems obvious, yet differing views are widely held.
skwb 6y ago
From my own personal experience: back in March, when COVID started getting out of control, I found myself desperately trying to get access to more and better information from experts in the field. I turned to twitter, to try to get more and better information on the subject. This inevitably turned into 'doomscrolling'. I felt that there was a lot of nuanced scientific opinions that reporters were doing a poor job of communicating. I get that often deeply technical topics are complicated, but I think more than anything else COVID has helped how unprepared media has been in communicating these complex topics. And it's not just COVID; it's been a range of subjects such as law (Trump's immigration ban) and elections (in particular the 2020 Democratic primary and all the media coverage over Bloomberg's supposed supremacy in the race). I think overall journalists are well intentioned and can be trusted in most situations, but it's clear to me that there are systemic failures in communicating complex subjects.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
I love HN because there is no risk of doomscrolling. Articles here point to the real diversity of what is happening.
- abootstrapper 6y ago
  I love HN too, but I'm dubious it "points to the real diversity of what is happening." It mostly just has politics turned down to 2-3 out of 10.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  What diversity? HN removes any article critical of the mainstream leftist narrative. They removed this article when it was published https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housin...
softwaredoug 6y ago
I have found it useful to RTFAs on Twitter/Facebook, not just read the clickbait, anxiety inducing headlines. Not always, but many stories have some nuance that’s missing in social media outrage and replies. Like I said, not always, but it does help anxiety to get all the facts. Especially when I ruminate on something after seeing just the headline or the replies.
iliketosleep 6y ago
Social media is addictive by design and it's easy to slip into these bad habits. Gloomy, sensational news/opinions is good for "engagement" metrics and that's what people inevitability find themselves drowning in if they don't create clear boundaries around usage. At times, I've become so miserable from it that I've had to jump into a cold shower to snap out of the doom and gloom. Thankfully, the cold shower usually works and provides incentive not to fall into the habit again.
freen 6y ago
The circumference of the situational threat awareness of a deer is around 100 meters. For the vast bulk of the human experiences, our approximate level of situational threat awareness wasn’t all that much different. It’s unsurprising that unmediated, we expand that circumference and simultaneously experience a proportional increase in our general level of anxiety.
EarthIsHome 6y ago
> You see that coronavirus infections are up. Maybe your kids can't go back to school. The economy is cratering. Anxiety is a normal response to these external pressures. And anxiety isn't going to go away until we address these pressures. I'll throw in some other amxiety-inducing but solvable external pressures: homelessness, affording rent or health insurance, being forced to choose between going to work and getting coronavirus vs getting fired, precariousness, and so on.
sawaruna 6y ago
Maybe people should utilize social media for things they enjoy instead of solely sources of news. Of course people you follow will end up posting news anyway but it won’t be solely stream of ‘doom and gloom’.
- dgzl 6y ago
  I think news takes more of a front seat these days. Lots of history in the making.
  - pests 6y ago
    History will always be in the making.
    - owl57 6y ago
      Yes, but with varying pace. Let's hope it doesn't get even faster.
      - pests 6y ago
        Is it happening faster or are you consuming it quicker?
        owl57 6y ago
        Hmm. Probably both. On the second thought, it seems like that's a very good question, for these two processes are maybe in a positive feedback loop. This year we pay more attention to news, and this makes us both more susceptible and more exposed to things like "the moment to act is now".
        dgzl 6y ago
        I read a few years ago that there's more history happening than historians can keep up with. Scary thoughts
    - 6y ago
zozin 6y ago
I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up 30-50 pages in, never to return. I believe deleting Twitter also helped my mood. I am feeling more upbeat than ever. While circumstantial, I do attribute some of this change to no longer being bombarded by the negativity and one-shot-kill Tweets that are prolific on the platform.
- Minor49er 6y ago
  This is basically why I deleted my Facebook account, which was the one social network that I was really ever on. I was checking it non stop, but there wad never anything good. It was a huge time suck. I'd read news of how Facebook keeps people addicted or how they try out psychological experiments on its users which left me uneasy. Finally, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke and revealed that Facebook sells access to your personal messages, thst was the final straw. The biggest problem with deleting your account is that your contacts assume that you just deleted them and think that you're mad at them or something. It can have a real world impact. But I've been way happier texting friends and family and talking with them directly. It's been so much healthier than leaving "likes" on wall posts. I'm never returning to social media.
  - SyneRyder 6y ago
    > The biggest problem with deleting your account is that your contacts assume that you just deleted them and think that you're mad at them or something. It can have a real world impact. That's one reason I deleted my Facebook 5 years ago. I unfriended a casual acquaintance (who continually posted political rants), and they confronted me in person at a nightclub, demanding to know why. That just isn't healthy behaviour, and I don't need to be around people like that or on a network that encourages it.
    - 6y ago
xwdv 6y ago
Doomscrolling at least is passive. The active version I think would be “Doomsaying”, which I have become addicted to I feel. Going through my comment history, I often find it littered with comments that give a sense of hopelessness and inevitable misery. Highly cynical, sometimes toxic, wouldn’t feel out of place among the lamentations of the undying. Not sure how I got this way, but probably came after a long history of doomscrolling.
centv 6y ago
While I wish I have more will power to actually stay away from my phone, especially at bedtime, the second best solution I found useful is to set timers for addictive apps. If I use up the allotted time for an app, it will be disabled for the rest of the day. Also there is Focus mode on Android that disables distracting apps while working.
titzer 6y ago
See "The Program Dependence Graph and Its Use in Optimization" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/CS395T/2009fa/papers/ferrante87.pdf https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/CS395T/2009fa/papers/ferr...
dkthehuman 6y ago
If you want help setting limits, I made an extension called Intention that many people find helpful: https://www.getintention.com/ https://www.getintention.com/ HN thread of its launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742
guybedo 6y ago
This is the reason why I added a sentiment filter to the rss reader I built. Now I can put together a few rss feeds in a folder and filter out bad news, needs some more work but it gives good results already. (Https://aktu.io)
lemming 6y ago
I need Twitter for support for my product, but I don't really use it that often. So a while ago I set it up to be basically write-only: I use Zapier to send me emails for @mentions and relevant search terms, and I reply to those from a TweetBot instance which only has columns for mentions and the same search terms. So I can reply if something needs replying to and send product updates, but otherwise I don't see Twitter at all. It's been a huge time saver and mental health improvement.
rapnie 6y ago
Interesting that the "More Stories From NPR" right below the article is a clear invitation to continue your doomscroll-workout. /s
quickthrower2 6y ago
My problem is scrolling, doom or otherwise.
- jgtrosh 6y ago
  I'm curious if there's any existing effort to provide media on smartphones without scrolling. Not just “non-infinite scroll”, actually no scroll. Like, you have a page of text and to get to the next you swipe to flip, or tap a region (like on ereaders).
  - quickthrower2 6y ago
    I think that would be an excellent addition to the iOS Safari reader mode, where your intent is already to change the behaviour and look of the web page. That reader mode has saved me from a really badly formatted web page many times.
ck425 6y ago
One thing I found useful was installing Sudoku on my phone. If I feel the urge for a dopamine hit from the internet I play a have of Sudoku instead. It gives me a hit but without the anxiety and I find the focused thinking it causes very helpful if I'm procrastinating.
danfritz 6y ago
I use the following golden advice: don't bring your phone in the bedroom. We bought a simple digital alarm clock and suddenly we both slept way better and didn't had any trouble to fall asleep. Reading a book also helps putting your mind in an off state.
drevil-v2 6y ago
The problem with this that there are actually massive cultural and ideological changes been imposed on the western society at this time. We are being dragged to the hard left across multiple institutions. Some of us might not want that Ignore it and you will be the quintessential lobster slowly being boiled to death.
- maeln 6y ago
  Maybe I am confused and I didn't understand what you mean, but if you mean "hard-left" in the political sense, I feel I have to disagree. In a lot of western country, the "hard-right" has won: Trump in the US, Johnson in the UK, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, ... And in some other country they are maybe the strongest they ever been in recent memory (France, Belgium, arguably even Germany). I cannot think of any "hard-left" president/prime-minister that has won in any country recently. Moderate left maybe, but no hard-left. So if anything, the institutions in power are dragging us to the "hard-right", not really the opposite. Sure, some institutions have always been a left stronghold, but until now, it doesn't seem that they had really any impact in shifting the power balance ...
  - gadders 6y ago
    The OP said "cultural and ideological", not political.
    - maeln 6y ago
      Culture and ideologies are very much political.
      - yungmodulus 6y ago
        I think OP is going to meet resistance against the claim if people assume (maybe incorrectly) that they’re talking about the United States. I can’t speak to other places
septimus111 6y ago
I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.
- rogem002 6y ago
  I did the same. Now I’ve stopped using reddit as a news source, I feel a lot more upbeat. Plus my news cycle is a lot more localised now, which is a win! I also unsubscribed from subreddits who started allowing false, but entertaining posts (like a image with a fake caption for karma). That was a good choice.
- 0xdeadb00f 6y ago
  I get it, I really do. Negativity is shit. The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective. Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking this way? (P.s. I have not yet read the OP's article)
  - TheCapeGreek 6y ago
    Definitely, one does still have to be aware of how bad things can get. The way I see it, that sort of information can filter through no matter what you do. Instead of compltely shutting out however, what I've read some say in regards to this digital minimalism is to keep just one or two news sources. For some that's HN, or a custom subreddit collection, or just opening your local news site once a day/week/whatever.
  - nicky0 6y ago
    More important to maintain a tether to the immediate physical world around you, than to a notion of being "informed" about far-off events.
  - blablabla123 6y ago
    I agree with you. Actually I watch news regularly since my childhood and I've also heard the sentence "I don't want to see this (people suffering), this is terrible" Basically this would be actively looking away. The world is indeed a pretty messed up place and it's sad we need Corona to be reminded of a lot of long-standing issues as they affect also other groups now: - lack of universal health insurance/insufficient social support systems - lack of pandemic plans - precarious living conditions are more prevalent than represented by social/news media Actually very few news outlets even attempt to give global coverage, BBC is the only one I know of that somehow gets close to this. Still, I try to consume news more responsibly. I stopped using Google News and instead subscribed to a handful of online papers/magazines that produce quality content.
sputr 6y ago
I would like to challenge the idea of "being informed". So I went through some health issues in the last few months and I had to radically lower my stress (used to be in politics - that thing will kill you ;) ). So I "unplugged". No media, no social media. No talking politics. It was like a MASSIVE weight was lifted of my brain. I looked around and realized ... I, at that moment, was a bright spot in a sea of darkness. Everybody was depressed, anxious. The only thing anybody is talking about is how bad things are. Try looking for movies or TV shows to watch ... that are NOT dark/depressing/negative/cynical etc. You'll have a VERY hard time finding them today. I've gone back to watching old movies and TV shows from better times. We're living in dark times. Literally. So, back to my challenge: World has changed and the ROI of "staying informed" has changed. Specifically, the PERSONAL cost (effects on your mental and physical health, quality of life, quality of relationships etc.) has changed - it is now astronomically high. We all "know" that social media and media companies are spending ridiculous amounts of capital devising ever better ways to keep their "users" stressed so that they keep coming back and keep staying on their platforms. But the "users" are US. And we're also the ones paying for it. With our health. With our quality of life. With our happiness. So .. is it worth it? Let's think about it. Will you knowing every daily-politics titbit really ... change anything? Has it ever in the last few decades? So why pay the PERSONAL COST of knowing what [insert crazy person from other side] said today? What I propose will be good for your, personally, but I would argue, will also be better for democratic political systems: take a step back. If you're not ACTIVELY FIGHTING A POLITICAL BATTLE RIGHT THIS WEEK then you don't need to know what's going on this week. You don't need more then 10 minutes every week/ every two weeks to pickup any and ALL news that's actually relevant to you. If something big happens in the meantime ... trust me, you'll know. People will tell you. But what does ACTIVELY mean. Well first it means you IN THE FIGHT, your spending non-trivial amount of effort lobbying, organizing political groups etc. Most of you are NOT in the fight. But even if you think you are ... as was I ... there's a second parameter: can you win? Do you really have the Minimum Required Resources to even have a chance? Because you probably don't. Most modern "grass roots" groups don't. I know, I lost years to this mistake. Nothing wrong with that - it just means you should be focusing on getting the Minimum Required Resources first. But there's the catch: social media companies, with their numbers of likes, irrelevant impression numbers and the like are giving you a feeling like your changing something. But you're not, you really aren't. So, step back. See the bullshit of the standard Divide and rule[1]/Bread and circuses[2] propaganda, that's keeping you distracted so you don't notice the big trends that ACTUALLY matter. So step back. Stop spending your emotional energy on daily outrages. Spend a few minutes a week following the big trends so you know who to support when it comes down to it. Now for my most radical proposition: the only thing that really matters in politics is money. Those who spend money to rule ... rule. No, taxes don't count as you're not the one spending that money. So spend some money. First support some NGOs who are ACTUALLY fighting (with lobbyists and policy proposals) for the big picture stuff you care about. Then support a party or a candidate that listen to those NGOs. Make sure to tell them so and to switch your support when they go astray. Then unplug for a week.. The world of politics will still be there next week. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
ersii 6y ago
As of a hundred comments, none seem to have mentioned that this is not inherent in social media but in media in general. Remember to take breaks from the news cycles (whatever flavor of news and outlet you prefer) and try to not get emotionally engaged in what is really quite distant from your actual life. The news, wherever they come from and regardless of what they are about are mostly just a distraction from what actually matters, your own life, family and mission.
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  I came here to something similar: I quit twitter and facebook a while back, and I have found myself spiraling wildly over the last months. And I even agree that it's healthy to keep some emotional distance to the news. But right now, the news will have a very real and direct impact on what I will do. I'm happy I followed them much more closely in February, which allowed me to get out of the big city just before the lockdown was announced, without too much logistic trouble. These days it is about returning. Should I go back to renting an inner-city apartment? Depends on how this will go over the next few months. Which in turn largely depends on how people/ public discourse views mask-wearing. Should I visit my family? Well, depends on the situation here and there. Maybe I won't even be allowed to cross state lines by then? What's the contingency plan? Staying abroad for too long, even involuntarily, could reset my girlfriend's immigration status. I think never in my life have I experienced a situation where the connection between "the news" and direct impact on my life was so immediate.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  I realize this trick won't work for everyone, but a couple years ago I figured out a nice technique to combat all these problems, while still allowing myself to read the news: I made a pact with myself to only actively consume the news in a language I don't speak fluently. If nothing else, I'm improving my language skills, so the time spent doing it is edifying, even when the piece itself isn't. The concentration involved in deciphering the article inserts some emotional distance that helps me not to get too worked up about what I'm reading. And, since reading in a language one doesn't understand very well is tiring, the whole exercise is self-limiting. It's literally impossible to get sucked in.
tomduncalf 6y ago
I definitely found myself wasting more time recently scrolling through Twitter e.g. in the evening or when compiling code. I actually quite like the site but I find there's more and more irrelevant stuff on my feed so I don't really like feel like I get as much value from it, yet the addictive nature of the feed still makes you refresh it. I was aware I was doing this but didn't do anything about it until I was prompted by this article, which I think was posted on here recently: https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/ https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/. For me it really hit the nail on the head about wanting to reclaim your attention a bit, but that these companies have thousands of people working on systems to try and claim your attention for themselves, so it's no wonder it's hard. I made a few small changes as a result of this: - I used Screen Time on my iPhone to block all apps except essential ones (clock, calendar, notes, Philips Hue) for the first hour of my day - I logged out of Twitter on my Firefox and instead logged into it in a container tab, which takes a few extra clicks to open - I logged out of Twitter on my iPhone, so I have to log in to access it - I didn't install Twitter on my new iPad I've found these changes have made a big difference - I think particularly blocking apps in the morning. It feels like if you can "control" your attention a bit more in the first part of your day, that continues somewhat throughout the day, then adding in the slight hurdles to access the site throughout the day causes you to stop and think "do I really want to do this?" when your reflex to just open a new tab and type "tw<enter>" or to scroll while you're stood in a queue or whatever kicks in. I still do browse Twitter and other time wasting sites a little bit, which I'm fine with, but I feel like I'm doing it more conciously - sometimes after a long day I'll think "I just fancy sitting on the sofa and reading the news and looking on Twitter" and I'm fine with that, as it's something I've chosen to do. It's only been a few weeks so I don't want to speak too soon, but I'm feeling really happy with this approach so far, without having to go atomic and delete Twitter entirely as I do get some value from it.
Void_ 6y ago
I built an app to limit browsing on my Mac... Been perfectly happy without reading the news. https://focuslite.app https://focuslite.app
unnouinceput 6y ago
Quote: "Karen Ho, a finance reporter for Quartz, has been tweeting about doomscrolling every day over the past few months, often alongside a gentle nudge to stop and engage in healthier alternatives." Now that right there is a finesse irony
ManlyBread 6y ago
This is something I noticed a while ago. Some people just seem to be addicted to the feeling of impending doom. It's really tiring because the most of these topics are akin to someone standing with a sign saying "the doom is right around the corner" but then it turns out that around that corner there's just an another dude with the exact same sign.
nightcracker 6y ago
> Still, you incessantly scroll though bottomless doom-and-gloom news for hours as you sink into a pool of despair. This self-destructive behavior has become so common that a new word for it has entered our lexicon: "doomscrolling." Imagine having the guts to call a behavior "self-destructive" when you are directly complicit in that behavior, and knowingly contribute to the effect by having a doomsayer bias for better clickbait. Look no further than the current NPR frontpage to expose the hypocrisy: "The End Of $600 Unemployment Benefits Will Hit Millions Of Households And The Economy" They know the effect that titles such as these have on people, yet they continue. It's as if a food vendor laces their food with heroin and then claim repeat customers are being "self-destructive".
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Do you have a suggestion for a "non-hypocritical" title for that article? Or are you saying NPR shouldn't be reporting on the cessation of one of the few pandemic response programs that help the average person?
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    That title’s editorialised. How about just ‘$600 Unemployment Benefit Scheme to End’?
    - yungmodulus 6y ago
      It seems like you’re using “editorialised” as a pejorative, but I don’t necessarily understand how it’s negative. Nothing about the headline is hyperbolic or an exaggeration. The string of events from “unsafe to work” —> “cannot work” / “went to work sick” —> “no benefits” does have a direct impact on the economy, unless I’m missing some section there.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        > It seems like you’re using “editorialised” as a pejorative No it's a dispassionate statement of fact. Sometimes when I'm choosing not to get too wound up in current events I just want to know what's going on expressed in the simplest way possible. A briefing. I'm sure their opinion here on the impact is extremely sensible, but sometimes I'm not interested in anyone's opinions, no matter how obvious or sensible. This thread was about how to avoid getting involved in people's opinions and just learning the essential facts that you may have to do something about, like a new law to wear a mask, wasn't it?
Ensorceled 6y ago
There are a lot of suggestions for "long form" and "books" here. Are none of you keeping up with this pandemic and what your country/state/city recommended behaviours, laws and bylaws are?
- lm28469 6y ago
  None of that is posted on websites with "doomscrolling". Most countries publish their laws and recommendations on their own websites. People kept up with laws before twitter and reddit.
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    > None of that is posted on websites with "doomscrolling". Officials of my city, province and country post regular COVID updates on Twitter.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  You can switch on the radio once a day for half an hour and get a full update while you make breakfast or something - doesn’t need any more than that really. And no chance of commenting!
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    That makes sense. I'm confused by the people who are saying "I only consume long form" or "I only read books". If they said, "I dropped facebook/twitter and now get my news in short bursts from the radio"; I would have thought them wise.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Their are some deeper news aggregations. I would argue that Twitter is just so absolutely shallow, that it offers a misrepresentation of reality. I read the Wall Street Journal for general/business/politics news. I feel that you really have to pay for news if you want accurate reporting. Goldman Sachs has an ok podcast for market updates. For transient issues, you really need to dig around for where the field experts are posting their analyses... ...but it's also important not to get sucked into every online controversy/story. Achieving your life goals is about FOCUS - and most news are just distractions. For Pandemic stuff, I listen to the 10 min clinical updates on TWIV every few days, and watch the numbers on the New York Times data charts (not the articles). The Sans internet storm for IT security, because I'm in that field. If there's a Iran/NK conflict going on, I'll listen to the Arms Control Wonk podcast analysis. Stuff like that - there are some great experts podcasts out there. If I'm bored, I'll read HackerNews and ZeroHedge. I have found very little value in what my local city/state officials have to say.
lanerobertlane 6y ago
I found my way to escape doomscrolling is to never user the homepage of Twitter. Instead I have lists set up for Friend, Interests (People who tweet science / tech news), and News outlets. I then bookmark those 3 lists, and only read the first 2 unless I WANT to read the latest news. I never seen 99% of the people I'm following, trends or adverts, I just see what I want to see on the platform.
swiley 6y ago
I remember someone I knew in college who read twitter a lot. It made him angry all the time and kind of unpleasant to be around. Eventually he quit and was much happier. I wish my mom would do that.
harimau777 6y ago
Does anyone have suggestions for sources of more positive short to medium form reading material?
nercury 6y ago
Unfollow anyone who retweets outrage tweets, or posts low-effort content, follow people who post original, high effort content, and never go to the twitter's home page -- read only the latest tweets in chronological order. This will considerably reduce tweets that target emotional triggers or simply waste time.
whywhywhywhy 6y ago
The worst part is the moment you realise Twitter wants you to feel this way, they could actually only feed you positive things but instead they see it as their moral imperative to push this anxiety on you.
parliament32 6y ago
"Focus on what you can control" addresses the root of the problem. It's good to know what's going on in the world, but there's no point in stressing over it. I know it can be hard, but once you convince yourself these things aren't worth your energy things get a lot more pleasant.
tastytacos 6y ago
Great to have a name for the problem.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
Yeah I hate this. I signed up for 1 email newsletter, axios, for a morning and evening update. Thats plenty of news. You just have to quit cold turkey if thats not enough. If your on facebook you can use plugins like facebook purity to filter out 90% of the junk. That's the only social media that I actually pay attention to. I'm sure there are other filter programs for twitter and similar out there.
MrYellowP 6y ago
This article really only touches the surface of the issue and, despite hinting at deeper problems, refuses to acknowledge them. A potentially endless stream of seamlessly accessible information (aka continuous scrolling down) is bad, not because of the content read, but because it manages to manipulate the user into going on and on and on and on. The article touches on that tangentially ... > Aldao, the director of Together CBT, a clinic that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, has worked with her patients to cut back on doomscrolling. ... but fails to point out that the conclusion is not to control which content is being taken in, but to ban doomscrolling altogether, because it's some form of automaticity making you more perceptible to being psychologically manipulated. That's why it's so successful and that's why it's so bad. That's why patients are being treated with CBT, because apparently that's what it takes to get her to stop doing it instead of her simply stopping doing it. She simply can't.

351 points by mrfusion 6y ago

Why take a cellphone into the bedroom when you're trying to sleep? Just don't do it if you are weak to the temptation of doing it if you do take it into your bedroom.

Fnoord 6y ago
I put mine on quiet (basic Android feature) during sleep time, and its my alarm in the morning. It also gets charged overnight, and in case of emergency I can call emergency services. Its a no-brainer to take my smartphone with me to bed.
Quiza12 6y ago
This is a big one for me. Not so much the bringing the phone into the room to scroll through before bed, but working from home physically leaving it in another room so I can't instinctively reach for it and be distracted by it.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

troughway 6y ago

You’re better off unplugging entirely. Forgo all forms of news and pop media for at least 6 months and focus on your life. You’ll be happier and you’ll get shit done. I think a lot of this has to do with the West not really doing anything to address death. It’s out of sight and out of mind, so when it’s knocking at our door we are feeble minded and scared because we are ignorant of the cycle of life and death. Everyone you know will die, but confronting this fact head on breeds a very existentialist kind of anxiety that we’ve failed to address in our societies. This is the underpinning of doomer type behaviour. Eastern philosophy tends to have meditations where people remind themselves every day that today might be their last. You might think this sort of thinking breeds depression, mental illness, etc, but it works out for them very well. The West could learn a lot from this, but alas that’s a pipe dream.

geofft 6y ago
There is certainly a Western philosophical/religious tradition of meditating on death, for what it's worth. It's why I love Lent and the traditions/rituals around it - "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Here's a very contemporary take on it that I came across recently, blending the eremitic nature of the Covid lockdown and the cause of praying for those who have died of it: http://www.stbedeproductions.com/office-of-the-dead-revisited/ http://www.stbedeproductions.com/office-of-the-dead-revisite... You might also enjoy The Slavery of Death by Richard Beck, who blends his training in clinical psychology with his religious background to argue basically what you're arguing - that we try very hard to pretend death doesn't exist and that it works poorly - and from there argues that our fear of death should be understood as the primary problem of humans from a theological perspective, and that sin is a result of that fear, not a root cause. (He does draw on Eastern Orthodox thought to make that point, but I think that's not as far east as you mean by "Eastern," if I understand you right.)
- troughway 6y ago
  Nice, will check it out. I’m aware of stoicism but even that is too “out there” for our society.
- makomk 6y ago
  Yeah, I think it's specifically the modern, secular West that has this terrified, anxious relationship with death. The more religious communities seem to think about it much the same way as they always did, and people on social media keep using this to make clever gotcha arguments about how religious people aren't really "pro life" because they're not desperately freaking out about death and trying to stave it off however they can during the pandemic. Somewhere along the line, the idea that death is an inevitable part of life and that sometimes trying to desperately stop it no matter what is a futile act of hubris became so alien to parts of the population that they can't even understand how anyone could think that way.

countername 6y ago

Yeah reading hacker news since 4 hours and didn't even planned to open it. Now the world is more dangerous and don't know if people are commenting or GPT-3 bots. Any solutions to find sleep?

dvtrn 6y ago
Got any Chamomile tea?
- countername 6y ago
  I try,thanks
sasaf5 6y ago
I've found that weight-lifting really puts my sleep in order. It's not only restful, it also feels good to sleep after a workout.
- davidw 6y ago
  Exercise helps, a lot. I'd spend my days riding my bike, if I could. Helps get rid of some of the despair and worry and I definitely sleep better. And ... yeah, can't really check twitter while out on the bike!
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Definitely exercise, works wonders. A bike ride or run, even a few sets of pushups and crunches
geofft 6y ago
Do something offline that avoids giving your brain the sense of "Something new must be happening and I need to know what it is." I like video games, which is sort of a compromise (there's still more to do, you can see the number go up, etc., but there's no realtime pressure), but reading a physical book or listening to music are both good options to (and avoid emitted light, for bonus points).
6y ago

lilyball 6y ago

A few weeks ago I identified doomscrolling, particularly in bed, as a major source for my recent sleeping issues. As a result, I took a major step back from Twitter in general, and especially forced myself to stop reading Twitter in bed, or even in the late evenings. This produced an immediate improvement in both sleep quality and overall mood.

ponker 6y ago
Even better is to physically turn your phone off at least one hour before bed. If you need to be available for emergency calls then in do not disturb mode with your family set to punch through Do Not Disturb.
- srineesh 6y ago
  jnkjadbs sbbhsa
recursive 6y ago
I recommend charging your phone far from your bed. I've been doing it for a few years.
- cryptoz 6y ago
  Added bonus of the alarm going off in the morning across the room helps that 2-3 seconds of initial wake up to be more "productive" in waking up - gotta stand and walk for a second before the alarm goes off. Less likely to fall back asleep after just that little interruption.
kgwxd 6y ago
As a rule, I don't check anything but HN before bed simply because they usually don't have those types of stories. Tonight it had an assassination attempt on a Judge working a high profile case who's 20 year old son is now dead and a husband in a hospital. In the United States.
sien 6y ago
Deleting twitter from my phone was very much worth doing. I'll log in at a conference, otherwise keeping it off your phone helps. Also as others have said keep your phone away from your bed, preferably in another room.

clairity 6y ago

the hypocrisy of this story is thick, from a news organization where every other story (and that's not much of an exaggeration) is about how we're all going to die from covid because everyone else is being a jerk in endlessly various ways. but to their credit, they did air a story recently featuring maria hinojosa, founder/host of latino usa and the first latina host at npr, that was not especially kind to npr itself (spoiler: she left and was more successful as a result).

0xy 6y ago
Not to mention the journalistic malpractice of calling victims of being threatened with a firearm and having their vehicle attacked randomly "right-wing extremists", and then wiping the evidence of their false allegations from the internet without retracting or apologizing for it. The individuals who attacked the victims were charged by police. [1] [2] NPR is in the same class as the rest of the mainstream media who don't bother to vet stories they lather with political bias. [1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbEIlsUUcAACYht?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EbEIlsUUcAACYht?format=jpg&name=... [2] https://www.wave3.com/2020/06/18/protesters-arrested-following-altercation-with-driver-downtown-louisville/ https://www.wave3.com/2020/06/18/protesters-arrested-followi...
- phs318u 6y ago
  You're extrapolating from the evidence of one event to all (or most) events. What you're calling "journalistic malpractice" is possibly an editor with a story in need of a picture (everything has to be visual to sell the story), asking the photog pool for a suitable image. This happens all the time. Timing matters though. In the instance you quote, if the original story was published before the police charged the attackers, then the journalists made an honest mistake. Otherwise we'd have to wait for the entire judicial process to reach completion before making any comment. E.g. you seem to implying that because they were charged by police, the attackers of the vehicle were in the wrong, but that can't be known until a conviction is reached. The point, I'm making is that journalism is an exercise in trying to parse and publish what is known 'at the time'. I think your comment about mainstream media is mostly unfair, as the same accusations can be made against most non-mainstream media. I'd also suggest that NPR are one of the better mainstream media orgs, but that's just my opinion. The parent poster made one case for why - they are willing to host their own critics. Not too many news orgs are willing to do that.

unknownkadath 6y ago

I got a Nokia 8110 4g to use as a secondary phone during not-work times. Can't browse much on a phone with a tabless browser. Also, it is very 90s cool.

creato 6y ago

I don't like the implication that mental health is just feeling good. Maybe if more people would read and understand the news, and feel bad about it, they'd be willing to do even trivial things like wear a mask. In my opinion, good mental health should be considered to be that your feelings align with reality. If reality sucks, it's not mentally unhealthy to feel bad about it. Feeling bad should spur making changes to make it better.

whatshisface 6y ago
The issue is that understanding the news and understanding the real world can be very, very different things. An endless stream of anecdotes about rare crimes and individual misbehavior will upset anyone, but it can't help anybody understand the real world.
- baddox 6y ago
  Also, it doesn’t sound healthy to me to read news with the attitude that a lot of the bad stuff that happens is because you just didn’t research enough and vote hard enough. The point of democracy shouldn’t be to blame the people for bad government policies and actions. It should be the government that is accountable.
  - evan_ 6y ago
    many people are explicitly and intentionally voting for the bad policies and actions though, can I blame them for that?
    - ctdonath 6y ago
      No. They think they're voting for the good policies and actions. We can legitimately disagree over the good/bad of policies and actions. Is instituting/increasing minimum wage: providing a livable income for those at the bottom? or denying jobs to those at the bottom (being unable to produce >= $MINWAGE)? Good/bad of the topic seems obvious, yet differing views are widely held.

skwb 6y ago

From my own personal experience: back in March, when COVID started getting out of control, I found myself desperately trying to get access to more and better information from experts in the field. I turned to twitter, to try to get more and better information on the subject. This inevitably turned into 'doomscrolling'. I felt that there was a lot of nuanced scientific opinions that reporters were doing a poor job of communicating. I get that often deeply technical topics are complicated, but I think more than anything else COVID has helped how unprepared media has been in communicating these complex topics. And it's not just COVID; it's been a range of subjects such as law (Trump's immigration ban) and elections (in particular the 2020 Democratic primary and all the media coverage over Bloomberg's supposed supremacy in the race). I think overall journalists are well intentioned and can be trusted in most situations, but it's clear to me that there are systemic failures in communicating complex subjects.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

I love HN because there is no risk of doomscrolling. Articles here point to the real diversity of what is happening.

abootstrapper 6y ago
I love HN too, but I'm dubious it "points to the real diversity of what is happening." It mostly just has politics turned down to 2-3 out of 10.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
What diversity? HN removes any article critical of the mainstream leftist narrative. They removed this article when it was published https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housing-nimby.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/opinion/california-housin...

softwaredoug 6y ago

I have found it useful to RTFAs on Twitter/Facebook, not just read the clickbait, anxiety inducing headlines. Not always, but many stories have some nuance that’s missing in social media outrage and replies. Like I said, not always, but it does help anxiety to get all the facts. Especially when I ruminate on something after seeing just the headline or the replies.

iliketosleep 6y ago

Social media is addictive by design and it's easy to slip into these bad habits. Gloomy, sensational news/opinions is good for "engagement" metrics and that's what people inevitability find themselves drowning in if they don't create clear boundaries around usage. At times, I've become so miserable from it that I've had to jump into a cold shower to snap out of the doom and gloom. Thankfully, the cold shower usually works and provides incentive not to fall into the habit again.

freen 6y ago

The circumference of the situational threat awareness of a deer is around 100 meters. For the vast bulk of the human experiences, our approximate level of situational threat awareness wasn’t all that much different. It’s unsurprising that unmediated, we expand that circumference and simultaneously experience a proportional increase in our general level of anxiety.

EarthIsHome 6y ago

> You see that coronavirus infections are up. Maybe your kids can't go back to school. The economy is cratering. Anxiety is a normal response to these external pressures. And anxiety isn't going to go away until we address these pressures. I'll throw in some other amxiety-inducing but solvable external pressures: homelessness, affording rent or health insurance, being forced to choose between going to work and getting coronavirus vs getting fired, precariousness, and so on.

sawaruna 6y ago

Maybe people should utilize social media for things they enjoy instead of solely sources of news. Of course people you follow will end up posting news anyway but it won’t be solely stream of ‘doom and gloom’.

dgzl 6y ago
I think news takes more of a front seat these days. Lots of history in the making.
- pests 6y ago
  History will always be in the making.
  - owl57 6y ago
    Yes, but with varying pace. Let's hope it doesn't get even faster.
    - pests 6y ago
      Is it happening faster or are you consuming it quicker?
      - owl57 6y ago
        Hmm. Probably both. On the second thought, it seems like that's a very good question, for these two processes are maybe in a positive feedback loop. This year we pay more attention to news, and this makes us both more susceptible and more exposed to things like "the moment to act is now".
        dgzl 6y ago
        I read a few years ago that there's more history happening than historians can keep up with. Scary thoughts
  - 6y ago

zozin 6y ago

I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up 30-50 pages in, never to return. I believe deleting Twitter also helped my mood. I am feeling more upbeat than ever. While circumstantial, I do attribute some of this change to no longer being bombarded by the negativity and one-shot-kill Tweets that are prolific on the platform.

Minor49er 6y ago
This is basically why I deleted my Facebook account, which was the one social network that I was really ever on. I was checking it non stop, but there wad never anything good. It was a huge time suck. I'd read news of how Facebook keeps people addicted or how they try out psychological experiments on its users which left me uneasy. Finally, when the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke and revealed that Facebook sells access to your personal messages, thst was the final straw. The biggest problem with deleting your account is that your contacts assume that you just deleted them and think that you're mad at them or something. It can have a real world impact. But I've been way happier texting friends and family and talking with them directly. It's been so much healthier than leaving "likes" on wall posts. I'm never returning to social media.
- SyneRyder 6y ago
  > The biggest problem with deleting your account is that your contacts assume that you just deleted them and think that you're mad at them or something. It can have a real world impact. That's one reason I deleted my Facebook 5 years ago. I unfriended a casual acquaintance (who continually posted political rants), and they confronted me in person at a nightclub, demanding to know why. That just isn't healthy behaviour, and I don't need to be around people like that or on a network that encourages it.
  - 6y ago

xwdv 6y ago

Doomscrolling at least is passive. The active version I think would be “Doomsaying”, which I have become addicted to I feel. Going through my comment history, I often find it littered with comments that give a sense of hopelessness and inevitable misery. Highly cynical, sometimes toxic, wouldn’t feel out of place among the lamentations of the undying. Not sure how I got this way, but probably came after a long history of doomscrolling.

centv 6y ago

While I wish I have more will power to actually stay away from my phone, especially at bedtime, the second best solution I found useful is to set timers for addictive apps. If I use up the allotted time for an app, it will be disabled for the rest of the day. Also there is Focus mode on Android that disables distracting apps while working.

titzer 6y ago

See "The Program Dependence Graph and Its Use in Optimization" https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/CS395T/2009fa/papers/ferrante87.pdf https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~pingali/CS395T/2009fa/papers/ferr...

dkthehuman 6y ago

If you want help setting limits, I made an extension called Intention that many people find helpful: https://www.getintention.com/ https://www.getintention.com/ HN thread of its launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22936742

guybedo 6y ago

This is the reason why I added a sentiment filter to the rss reader I built. Now I can put together a few rss feeds in a folder and filter out bad news, needs some more work but it gives good results already. (Https://aktu.io)

lemming 6y ago

I need Twitter for support for my product, but I don't really use it that often. So a while ago I set it up to be basically write-only: I use Zapier to send me emails for @mentions and relevant search terms, and I reply to those from a TweetBot instance which only has columns for mentions and the same search terms. So I can reply if something needs replying to and send product updates, but otherwise I don't see Twitter at all. It's been a huge time saver and mental health improvement.

rapnie 6y ago

Interesting that the "More Stories From NPR" right below the article is a clear invitation to continue your doomscroll-workout. /s

quickthrower2 6y ago

My problem is scrolling, doom or otherwise.

jgtrosh 6y ago
I'm curious if there's any existing effort to provide media on smartphones without scrolling. Not just “non-infinite scroll”, actually no scroll. Like, you have a page of text and to get to the next you swipe to flip, or tap a region (like on ereaders).
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  I think that would be an excellent addition to the iOS Safari reader mode, where your intent is already to change the behaviour and look of the web page. That reader mode has saved me from a really badly formatted web page many times.

ck425 6y ago

One thing I found useful was installing Sudoku on my phone. If I feel the urge for a dopamine hit from the internet I play a have of Sudoku instead. It gives me a hit but without the anxiety and I find the focused thinking it causes very helpful if I'm procrastinating.

danfritz 6y ago

I use the following golden advice: don't bring your phone in the bedroom. We bought a simple digital alarm clock and suddenly we both slept way better and didn't had any trouble to fall asleep. Reading a book also helps putting your mind in an off state.

drevil-v2 6y ago

The problem with this that there are actually massive cultural and ideological changes been imposed on the western society at this time. We are being dragged to the hard left across multiple institutions. Some of us might not want that Ignore it and you will be the quintessential lobster slowly being boiled to death.

maeln 6y ago
Maybe I am confused and I didn't understand what you mean, but if you mean "hard-left" in the political sense, I feel I have to disagree. In a lot of western country, the "hard-right" has won: Trump in the US, Johnson in the UK, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, ... And in some other country they are maybe the strongest they ever been in recent memory (France, Belgium, arguably even Germany). I cannot think of any "hard-left" president/prime-minister that has won in any country recently. Moderate left maybe, but no hard-left. So if anything, the institutions in power are dragging us to the "hard-right", not really the opposite. Sure, some institutions have always been a left stronghold, but until now, it doesn't seem that they had really any impact in shifting the power balance ...
- gadders 6y ago
  The OP said "cultural and ideological", not political.
  - maeln 6y ago
    Culture and ideologies are very much political.
    - yungmodulus 6y ago
      I think OP is going to meet resistance against the claim if people assume (maybe incorrectly) that they’re talking about the United States. I can’t speak to other places

septimus111 6y ago

I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.

rogem002 6y ago
I did the same. Now I’ve stopped using reddit as a news source, I feel a lot more upbeat. Plus my news cycle is a lot more localised now, which is a win! I also unsubscribed from subreddits who started allowing false, but entertaining posts (like a image with a fake caption for karma). That was a good choice.
0xdeadb00f 6y ago
I get it, I really do. Negativity is shit. The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective. Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking this way? (P.s. I have not yet read the OP's article)
- TheCapeGreek 6y ago
  Definitely, one does still have to be aware of how bad things can get. The way I see it, that sort of information can filter through no matter what you do. Instead of compltely shutting out however, what I've read some say in regards to this digital minimalism is to keep just one or two news sources. For some that's HN, or a custom subreddit collection, or just opening your local news site once a day/week/whatever.
- nicky0 6y ago
  More important to maintain a tether to the immediate physical world around you, than to a notion of being "informed" about far-off events.
- blablabla123 6y ago
  I agree with you. Actually I watch news regularly since my childhood and I've also heard the sentence "I don't want to see this (people suffering), this is terrible" Basically this would be actively looking away. The world is indeed a pretty messed up place and it's sad we need Corona to be reminded of a lot of long-standing issues as they affect also other groups now: - lack of universal health insurance/insufficient social support systems - lack of pandemic plans - precarious living conditions are more prevalent than represented by social/news media Actually very few news outlets even attempt to give global coverage, BBC is the only one I know of that somehow gets close to this. Still, I try to consume news more responsibly. I stopped using Google News and instead subscribed to a handful of online papers/magazines that produce quality content.

sputr 6y ago

I would like to challenge the idea of "being informed". So I went through some health issues in the last few months and I had to radically lower my stress (used to be in politics - that thing will kill you ;) ). So I "unplugged". No media, no social media. No talking politics. It was like a MASSIVE weight was lifted of my brain. I looked around and realized ... I, at that moment, was a bright spot in a sea of darkness. Everybody was depressed, anxious. The only thing anybody is talking about is how bad things are. Try looking for movies or TV shows to watch ... that are NOT dark/depressing/negative/cynical etc. You'll have a VERY hard time finding them today. I've gone back to watching old movies and TV shows from better times. We're living in dark times. Literally. So, back to my challenge: World has changed and the ROI of "staying informed" has changed. Specifically, the PERSONAL cost (effects on your mental and physical health, quality of life, quality of relationships etc.) has changed - it is now astronomically high. We all "know" that social media and media companies are spending ridiculous amounts of capital devising ever better ways to keep their "users" stressed so that they keep coming back and keep staying on their platforms. But the "users" are US. And we're also the ones paying for it. With our health. With our quality of life. With our happiness. So .. is it worth it? Let's think about it. Will you knowing every daily-politics titbit really ... change anything? Has it ever in the last few decades? So why pay the PERSONAL COST of knowing what [insert crazy person from other side] said today? What I propose will be good for your, personally, but I would argue, will also be better for democratic political systems: take a step back. If you're not ACTIVELY FIGHTING A POLITICAL BATTLE RIGHT THIS WEEK then you don't need to know what's going on this week. You don't need more then 10 minutes every week/ every two weeks to pickup any and ALL news that's actually relevant to you. If something big happens in the meantime ... trust me, you'll know. People will tell you. But what does ACTIVELY mean. Well first it means you IN THE FIGHT, your spending non-trivial amount of effort lobbying, organizing political groups etc. Most of you are NOT in the fight. But even if you think you are ... as was I ... there's a second parameter: can you win? Do you really have the Minimum Required Resources to even have a chance? Because you probably don't. Most modern "grass roots" groups don't. I know, I lost years to this mistake. Nothing wrong with that - it just means you should be focusing on getting the Minimum Required Resources first. But there's the catch: social media companies, with their numbers of likes, irrelevant impression numbers and the like are giving you a feeling like your changing something. But you're not, you really aren't. So, step back. See the bullshit of the standard Divide and rule[1]/Bread and circuses[2] propaganda, that's keeping you distracted so you don't notice the big trends that ACTUALLY matter. So step back. Stop spending your emotional energy on daily outrages. Spend a few minutes a week following the big trends so you know who to support when it comes down to it. Now for my most radical proposition: the only thing that really matters in politics is money. Those who spend money to rule ... rule. No, taxes don't count as you're not the one spending that money. So spend some money. First support some NGOs who are ACTUALLY fighting (with lobbyists and policy proposals) for the big picture stuff you care about. Then support a party or a candidate that listen to those NGOs. Make sure to tell them so and to switch your support when they go astray. Then unplug for a week.. The world of politics will still be there next week. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_rule [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

ersii 6y ago

As of a hundred comments, none seem to have mentioned that this is not inherent in social media but in media in general. Remember to take breaks from the news cycles (whatever flavor of news and outlet you prefer) and try to not get emotionally engaged in what is really quite distant from your actual life. The news, wherever they come from and regardless of what they are about are mostly just a distraction from what actually matters, your own life, family and mission.

black_puppydog 6y ago
I came here to something similar: I quit twitter and facebook a while back, and I have found myself spiraling wildly over the last months. And I even agree that it's healthy to keep some emotional distance to the news. But right now, the news will have a very real and direct impact on what I will do. I'm happy I followed them much more closely in February, which allowed me to get out of the big city just before the lockdown was announced, without too much logistic trouble. These days it is about returning. Should I go back to renting an inner-city apartment? Depends on how this will go over the next few months. Which in turn largely depends on how people/ public discourse views mask-wearing. Should I visit my family? Well, depends on the situation here and there. Maybe I won't even be allowed to cross state lines by then? What's the contingency plan? Staying abroad for too long, even involuntarily, could reset my girlfriend's immigration status. I think never in my life have I experienced a situation where the connection between "the news" and direct impact on my life was so immediate.
mumblemumble 6y ago
I realize this trick won't work for everyone, but a couple years ago I figured out a nice technique to combat all these problems, while still allowing myself to read the news: I made a pact with myself to only actively consume the news in a language I don't speak fluently. If nothing else, I'm improving my language skills, so the time spent doing it is edifying, even when the piece itself isn't. The concentration involved in deciphering the article inserts some emotional distance that helps me not to get too worked up about what I'm reading. And, since reading in a language one doesn't understand very well is tiring, the whole exercise is self-limiting. It's literally impossible to get sucked in.

tomduncalf 6y ago

I definitely found myself wasting more time recently scrolling through Twitter e.g. in the evening or when compiling code. I actually quite like the site but I find there's more and more irrelevant stuff on my feed so I don't really like feel like I get as much value from it, yet the addictive nature of the feed still makes you refresh it. I was aware I was doing this but didn't do anything about it until I was prompted by this article, which I think was posted on here recently: https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/ https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/. For me it really hit the nail on the head about wanting to reclaim your attention a bit, but that these companies have thousands of people working on systems to try and claim your attention for themselves, so it's no wonder it's hard. I made a few small changes as a result of this: - I used Screen Time on my iPhone to block all apps except essential ones (clock, calendar, notes, Philips Hue) for the first hour of my day - I logged out of Twitter on my Firefox and instead logged into it in a container tab, which takes a few extra clicks to open - I logged out of Twitter on my iPhone, so I have to log in to access it - I didn't install Twitter on my new iPad I've found these changes have made a big difference - I think particularly blocking apps in the morning. It feels like if you can "control" your attention a bit more in the first part of your day, that continues somewhat throughout the day, then adding in the slight hurdles to access the site throughout the day causes you to stop and think "do I really want to do this?" when your reflex to just open a new tab and type "tw<enter>" or to scroll while you're stood in a queue or whatever kicks in. I still do browse Twitter and other time wasting sites a little bit, which I'm fine with, but I feel like I'm doing it more conciously - sometimes after a long day I'll think "I just fancy sitting on the sofa and reading the news and looking on Twitter" and I'm fine with that, as it's something I've chosen to do. It's only been a few weeks so I don't want to speak too soon, but I'm feeling really happy with this approach so far, without having to go atomic and delete Twitter entirely as I do get some value from it.

Void_ 6y ago

I built an app to limit browsing on my Mac... Been perfectly happy without reading the news. https://focuslite.app https://focuslite.app

unnouinceput 6y ago

Quote: "Karen Ho, a finance reporter for Quartz, has been tweeting about doomscrolling every day over the past few months, often alongside a gentle nudge to stop and engage in healthier alternatives." Now that right there is a finesse irony

ManlyBread 6y ago

This is something I noticed a while ago. Some people just seem to be addicted to the feeling of impending doom. It's really tiring because the most of these topics are akin to someone standing with a sign saying "the doom is right around the corner" but then it turns out that around that corner there's just an another dude with the exact same sign.

nightcracker 6y ago

> Still, you incessantly scroll though bottomless doom-and-gloom news for hours as you sink into a pool of despair. This self-destructive behavior has become so common that a new word for it has entered our lexicon: "doomscrolling." Imagine having the guts to call a behavior "self-destructive" when you are directly complicit in that behavior, and knowingly contribute to the effect by having a doomsayer bias for better clickbait. Look no further than the current NPR frontpage to expose the hypocrisy: "The End Of $600 Unemployment Benefits Will Hit Millions Of Households And The Economy" They know the effect that titles such as these have on people, yet they continue. It's as if a food vendor laces their food with heroin and then claim repeat customers are being "self-destructive".

Ensorceled 6y ago
Do you have a suggestion for a "non-hypocritical" title for that article? Or are you saying NPR shouldn't be reporting on the cessation of one of the few pandemic response programs that help the average person?
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  That title’s editorialised. How about just ‘$600 Unemployment Benefit Scheme to End’?
  - yungmodulus 6y ago
    It seems like you’re using “editorialised” as a pejorative, but I don’t necessarily understand how it’s negative. Nothing about the headline is hyperbolic or an exaggeration. The string of events from “unsafe to work” —> “cannot work” / “went to work sick” —> “no benefits” does have a direct impact on the economy, unless I’m missing some section there.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > It seems like you’re using “editorialised” as a pejorative No it's a dispassionate statement of fact. Sometimes when I'm choosing not to get too wound up in current events I just want to know what's going on expressed in the simplest way possible. A briefing. I'm sure their opinion here on the impact is extremely sensible, but sometimes I'm not interested in anyone's opinions, no matter how obvious or sensible. This thread was about how to avoid getting involved in people's opinions and just learning the essential facts that you may have to do something about, like a new law to wear a mask, wasn't it?

Ensorceled 6y ago

There are a lot of suggestions for "long form" and "books" here. Are none of you keeping up with this pandemic and what your country/state/city recommended behaviours, laws and bylaws are?

lm28469 6y ago
None of that is posted on websites with "doomscrolling". Most countries publish their laws and recommendations on their own websites. People kept up with laws before twitter and reddit.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  > None of that is posted on websites with "doomscrolling". Officials of my city, province and country post regular COVID updates on Twitter.
chrisseaton 6y ago
You can switch on the radio once a day for half an hour and get a full update while you make breakfast or something - doesn’t need any more than that really. And no chance of commenting!
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  That makes sense. I'm confused by the people who are saying "I only consume long form" or "I only read books". If they said, "I dropped facebook/twitter and now get my news in short bursts from the radio"; I would have thought them wise.
  - deleted 6y ago
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koheripbal 6y ago
Their are some deeper news aggregations. I would argue that Twitter is just so absolutely shallow, that it offers a misrepresentation of reality. I read the Wall Street Journal for general/business/politics news. I feel that you really have to pay for news if you want accurate reporting. Goldman Sachs has an ok podcast for market updates. For transient issues, you really need to dig around for where the field experts are posting their analyses... ...but it's also important not to get sucked into every online controversy/story. Achieving your life goals is about FOCUS - and most news are just distractions. For Pandemic stuff, I listen to the 10 min clinical updates on TWIV every few days, and watch the numbers on the New York Times data charts (not the articles). The Sans internet storm for IT security, because I'm in that field. If there's a Iran/NK conflict going on, I'll listen to the Arms Control Wonk podcast analysis. Stuff like that - there are some great experts podcasts out there. If I'm bored, I'll read HackerNews and ZeroHedge. I have found very little value in what my local city/state officials have to say.

lanerobertlane 6y ago

I found my way to escape doomscrolling is to never user the homepage of Twitter. Instead I have lists set up for Friend, Interests (People who tweet science / tech news), and News outlets. I then bookmark those 3 lists, and only read the first 2 unless I WANT to read the latest news. I never seen 99% of the people I'm following, trends or adverts, I just see what I want to see on the platform.

swiley 6y ago

I remember someone I knew in college who read twitter a lot. It made him angry all the time and kind of unpleasant to be around. Eventually he quit and was much happier. I wish my mom would do that.

harimau777 6y ago

Does anyone have suggestions for sources of more positive short to medium form reading material?

nercury 6y ago

Unfollow anyone who retweets outrage tweets, or posts low-effort content, follow people who post original, high effort content, and never go to the twitter's home page -- read only the latest tweets in chronological order. This will considerably reduce tweets that target emotional triggers or simply waste time.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago

The worst part is the moment you realise Twitter wants you to feel this way, they could actually only feed you positive things but instead they see it as their moral imperative to push this anxiety on you.

parliament32 6y ago

"Focus on what you can control" addresses the root of the problem. It's good to know what's going on in the world, but there's no point in stressing over it. I know it can be hard, but once you convince yourself these things aren't worth your energy things get a lot more pleasant.

tastytacos 6y ago

Great to have a name for the problem.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

Yeah I hate this. I signed up for 1 email newsletter, axios, for a morning and evening update. Thats plenty of news. You just have to quit cold turkey if thats not enough. If your on facebook you can use plugins like facebook purity to filter out 90% of the junk. That's the only social media that I actually pay attention to. I'm sure there are other filter programs for twitter and similar out there.

MrYellowP 6y ago

This article really only touches the surface of the issue and, despite hinting at deeper problems, refuses to acknowledge them. A potentially endless stream of seamlessly accessible information (aka continuous scrolling down) is bad, not because of the content read, but because it manages to manipulate the user into going on and on and on and on. The article touches on that tangentially ... > Aldao, the director of Together CBT, a clinic that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, has worked with her patients to cut back on doomscrolling. ... but fails to point out that the conclusion is not to control which content is being taken in, but to ban doomscrolling altogether, because it's some form of automaticity making you more perceptible to being psychologically manipulated. That's why it's so successful and that's why it's so bad. That's why patients are being treated with CBT, because apparently that's what it takes to get her to stop doing it instead of her simply stopping doing it. She simply can't.