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My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

• bredren 5y ago
  Or fast food. Or video games, or anything that can be optimized and tuned to attract at near instinctual levels. There is a lot out there carefully designed to trap, hook or ensnare people.
• fmakunbound 5y ago
  I’m using a shock bracelet when accessing time wasters like Reddit and HN during “thinking. hours.” I can access them anytime but it comes with pain.
  • beagle3 5y ago
    > I’m using a shock bracelet when accessing time w Serious? If so, did you build it yourself, or is it a commercial thing?
    • fmakunbound 5y ago
      It’s a commercial thing. It’s called Pavlock.
• marajit 5y ago
  We are in a state of war. Don't be lulled by a sense of ease - the stakes have never been higher. If you are not directing your attention, it is being directed for you. Infinite scroll is much more dangerous on phones than on computers. Your breath is den. Good luck.
• jdrc 5y ago
  people used to say the same things about cigarettes. then at some point other people stopped taking them seriously
• kuramitropolis 5y ago
  Sometimes infinite scroll wins. But usually it's too janky to get me hooked.
• vedtopkar 5y ago
  It’s honestly so bad. No matter how hard I try, I find myself re-downloading TikTok or Reddit (Apollo) every month and then wasting away all my free time for a week or two before re-deleting them out of disgust. I truly don’t know what the solution is. I would just get rid of my smartphone if life wasn’t quite inconvenient without it.
  • pojzon 5y ago
    Replace tiktok with “X game” and have exactly the same issue. We are just addicted and need professional help. Im just happy its not smoking or drinking. Would make life a lot harder.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    If you must use Reddit, set up an account that's unsubscribed from all subreddits. Then only add small, niche subreddits and never any of the default or popular subreddits. At worst, you'll get a homepage that updates with new content maybe once or twice a day, drastically reducing the chance of scrolling your free time away. It's preferable to just not use it at all if you can, though.
    • runnerup 5y ago
      Yeah this method really turns it into a slot machine for me. Reload 120 times, get a “jackpot” (new post) 1 time.
    • obligate_self 5y ago
      Another good technique is to use an RSS reader. Every subreddit has a corresponding feed (simply append .rss to the url).
    • 45ure 5y ago
      I initially started using the multireddit feature, to section off specific but related interests. It can also be used to build a focused feed.
      • 5y ago
• ethbr0 5y ago
  I don't use any product with infinite scroll. If it's not paginated or single-paged, it's a clear sign they regard their users' time as worthless. Why would you interact with a company that believes that?
  • jraph 5y ago
    An exception: I find Duck Duck Go's infinite scroll quite pleasant, and find paginated results quite cumbersome. Elsewhere it's just annoying. Especially when a misclick makes you lose the position. Dilbert's website is a good example of this. For Reddit or Twitter I don't know, I read them using libreddit and nitter when I occasionally land on them from a link or a search result. TikTok and Facebook I have never tried.
    • ethbr0 5y ago
      Point. I should qualify that to "non-terminating infinite scroll." E.g. DDG is likely neither hoping nor expecting their users to infinitely scroll through search results all day, without clicking anything. Also, where does DDG have infinite scroll? I just checked (it's my default) and Firefox on Android shows a "More Results" footer button.
      • jraph 5y ago
        Oh, you are right, it's not actually infinite scroll, you have to click on "More Results" so Duck Duck Go loads more results in the page! My mistake. But yes, even if they did so, this is the important bit: > DDG is likely neither hoping nor expecting their users to infinitely scroll through search results all day, without clicking anything.
    • throwawayboise 5y ago
      Who looks past the first half-dozen search results. I almost never do.
• flenserboy 5y ago
  Is there an extension out there that will paginate infinite scrolls?
• ReaLNero 5y ago
  A very hacky solution that I've found to combat TikTok's infinite feed is to scroll up instead. I skip to the 20-th video in the feed, watch each video, and then exit once I'm done with the 20. Hitting the top gives you an off-ramp to get out of the app.
  • tsian2 5y ago
    For other things I make use of the "work offline" mode, to see what's loaded in and then leave. I'd like it if browser devs stopped pushing that future further away and maybe gave it a hotkey.
  • vgel 5y ago
    This is genius, definitely going to give this a try.
  • polio 5y ago
    If you enjoy the product, this risks skewing the input to the recommendation algorithm. Presumably they use time spent to determine what content you enjoy.
    • sixstringtheory 5y ago
      Not sure I follow, it doesn’t sound like any particular post would be on screen any longer than normal, unless you’re suggesting that time since load is what is measured instead of time on screen (or time since last scroll), or that they use overall duration of the app session to infer things about all the posts that were loaded.
      • ec109685 5y ago
        It might register a whole bunch of skips, and skips might be weighted more than re-runs (or not and it’s a good technique!). TikTok is ridiculously captivating. I just don’t use it because it sucks me in.
• aeciorc 5y ago
  This is also my struggle. I've come up with a million ways to cope, but it makes me sad to think of the wasted potential: all the projects I never started, hobbies I never picked up, courses I never finished, books I never read
• draw_down 5y ago
• amelius 5y ago
  Small request. If you are a developer and you are forced to implement infinite scroll and you can't quit your job, at least make sure the back button works.
  • sovok_x 5y ago
    And a few more possibly good tweaks, it could also: - be pausable, allowing to reach the page's footer - be resumable from the latest viewing point on page reload - modify current URL periodically - preload new data slightly before reaching the end of last page - auto-pause at some point to prevent mental overload - be switchable, in part to "Click to continue" state, in options
    • Aeolun 5y ago
      Making all these things is too much effort, can I just use a good old paginated view instead?
      • sovok_x 5y ago
        Why not both with an options switch? Everything has its uses.
    • nickjj 5y ago
      > - modify current URL periodically This is a big one. Without this it's so frustrating to infinite scroll down to the equivalent of 12 pages, leave the page and want to go back to roughly where page 12 is another time. Instead you have to start from the top and scroll down. You'd likely save a good amount of server compute power just using push state to update the page in the URL as you go so folks can copy / paste it and jump right back to that page later.
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    What does ‘back button works’ mean in the context of infinite scroll?
    • 5y ago
• _carbyau_ 5y ago
  For me, the important part is to actively commit your time. IE I am actively deciding to spend X minutes doing Y. If that is doomscrolling/TV/games, that's fine. The problem only comes when that time limit is breached. And THEN you can review and figure out whether that time got you what you wanted. IE usually doomscrolling is to zoneout/relax/catch up with friends news, etc. But this requires dedication to think in this way.
• moltke 5y ago
  I've removed everything with this from my life. Everyone knows how bad it is now, there's no excuse.
  • sodality2 5y ago
    > Everyone knows how bad it is now, there's no excuse. I disagree. Ask any 20-30 year old and I don't think many will say that TikTok, Instagram, etc is "harmful to your health". Maybe a "bit addictive", maybe a few people who say "I have a problem with it". But never "I know this is very harmful for my attention span, my mental health, etc".
    • Shared404 5y ago
      > But never "I know this is very harmful for my attention span, my mental health, etc". Early 20's here, and avoid TikTok, Instagram, etc and know Reddit and the like are all of those things listed - though the worst affected for me personally is attention span.
      • sodality2 5y ago
        Hacker News might not be the best sample set :p I do all of these too but I really doubt many of my peers do.
        • Shared404 5y ago
          I imagine you're quite correct. I usually just like to chime in when people mention stuff like "no one young <does|knows|cares about> $THING", because I've noticed a trend where the fact that there are young people who care is ignored which I think hurts the case more. Most of my peers don't care however, at least, not as much as I do though I've made some inroads.
    • moltke 5y ago
      By "everyone" I really meant people building things. IE: If someone builds something with infinite scrolling that's like putting caffeine/alcohol/cocaine in a drink.
• Lamad123 5y ago
  When you try to close a loud annoying facebook video, it is minimized but is louder and more annoying. I just close the whole page!!!
• hifikuno 5y ago
  I also struggle with this. As such I've tried doing little things to stop the infinite scroll. I don't use reddit anymore unless it is something I am actively looking into (e.g. a tech subreddit or something). I went through and unfollowed every friend and product on facebook. Luckily, I think that's all I use that has infinite scroll.
• thenerdhead 5y ago
  The only way I’ve defeated infinite scroll is with the sword of purpose, and the shield of time-boxing. All other load outs aren’t that effective at this boss.
• llasse 5y ago
  I even have this problem when just sitting in front of my laptop to look something up - I end up on completely different websites procrastinating a lot . Another behavioral hack was told to me by someone els: write down on a piece of paper what you want to look up/do on the computer before you sit down in front of it and check if you have done it as much as possible.
  • jbmny 5y ago
    I use a sort of inverse tactic. While working, I often find that trivial questions pop into my head, and I get tempted to look up the answers and distract myself for a while. Stuff like "what does the word 'ducky' mean" or "what are the lyrics to the verse of that Blur song" or "what is the capital of Albania". I keep a text file open on my computer called "later", and when one of these questions comes up, I write it in the file, promising myself that I can look it up later. The truth is that I hardly ever do. The questions seem so burning when I want to be distracted. When I have the free time to look them up, I realize how silly they actually were.
  • clircle 5y ago
    Switch to using chrome without ublock origin, and you’ll find the web experience to be so intolerable that you’ll only use it for what’s absolutely necessary.
• sodality2 5y ago
  I'm still young so maybe my mind hasn't matured enough to where I can combat this well. So I went heavy-handed - I have a button on my desk that when I press it, my server's DNS server (through which all my devices and router resolve) begins rejecting requests to reddit, instagram, twitter, hackernews, news.google.com, etc. For the next two hours, there is nothing I can do outside of SSH'ing through my mobile device (purposefully don't have an app for it) and resetting the countdown on the DNS server and restarting the server, to allow these DNS requests. It denies all SSH connections from my home network, and doesn't even resolve its own subdomain (dns.my-domain.com for the DNS dashboard) for me to reset it.
  • angusturner 5y ago
    This is awesome. I use the "self control" app for Mac OS X, which is pretty effective, but obviously doesn't stop me using my phone. Would be interested to learn more about this approach.
  • lrvick 5y ago
    I just ditched my smartphone entirely. Humanity survived until the 00s without them. You can too.
    • yayr 5y ago
      most tools are multi-use. A smart phone is currently the best "convenient world remote control" you can have. It is also the best "distraction toy" you can have... ...self-discipline does not come easy, especially if supply and demand are strongly in favor of distraction...
    • farmerstan 5y ago
      Humanity survived without winter jackets until the Ice Age. Then all of humanity would have gone extinct without them.
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Yeah but there is nothing on social media that you actually need to survive.
• pomian 5y ago
  On the other hand, why does every shopping, manufacturer, parts supplier, etc. Have to paginate everything? That only makes sense if you are trying to increase page views with ads. It is frustrating to have to click next, re load all the background clutter, sometimes every ten items.
  • woodruffw 5y ago
    I've always wondered if this has something to do with instilling a feeling of artificial scarcity.
    • sovok_x 5y ago
      Or just offload their servers cause infinite scroll makes the process of loading additional pages mindlessly faster and much less cumbersome.
    • heffer 5y ago
      Oftentimes it is so that you have to interact with the website which subsequently allows the webpage to autoplay media with audio or track engagement with a particular piece of content.
  • sovok_x 5y ago
    There are multiple browser extensions for generic infinite scroll, like AutoPagerize, AutoPatchWork etc. so...
  • slig 5y ago
    I'd guess because it's a PITA to do infinite scroll "right" and make the thing work properly with the back button.
  • ehnto 5y ago
    I much prefer pagination, because I can get back to where I was. There are technical ways to make infinite scroll deep-linkable but I almost never see it in practice.
  • hnick 5y ago
• sp332 5y ago
  Aza Raskin, who improved and popularized infinite scroll, has repeatedly apologized for it. He co-founded the Center for Humane Technology, and has a podcast about perverse incentives that drive tech companies to make users' lives worse. https://www.humanetech.com/podcast https://www.humanetech.com/podcast
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ehnto 5y ago
    I think he can sleep easy that it wasn't entirely his fault. We already had infinite scroll before social media, it was probably just a matter of time before it made it's way over there.
• _def 5y ago
  Your attention is very valuable. Treat it like that.
• sovok_x 5y ago
  I actually browse Hacker News with infinite scroll through AutoPagerize userscript. ;D
• civilized 5y ago
  I've reached the stage where I no longer even enjoy social media consumption, I'm just doing it out of habit. I feel like a heroin user who no longer gets high and just uses it to feel normal. And I'm not even talking about the usual social media ratholes. I pretty much bounce between HN and NYT at this point. And I feel close to dropping even those two entirely, out of sheer boredom. Because on the bright side, it's probably a lot easier to quit than heroin.
• yakattak 5y ago
  Trying to cut down on phone time/doom scrolling has been a focus of mine the past few weeks. I've been able to help mitigate but not get rid of it with the following: 1. Apollo for Reddit on iOS has a toggle for infinite scrolling, I have infinite scrolling off 2. Most of my time on my phone is spent either in bed, or in transit. Transit has a definite end, so being in bed was my main target. I now leave my phone so far away from my bed at night that I need to get up to get it. Instead of using it before bed, I read. I do #2 in moderation, for example weekends, I just run free but my sleep is way better the nights I read and keep the phone away! I hope this helps some folks.
• dnicoli 5y ago
  > I don’t have any quick fixes or easy answers. Oh but there are - and if we're being honest with ourselves we already know it. If you can't defeat it head on (and you can't) you have to take extreme actions - ditch your smartphone for something dumber, block the sites using something like nextdns. Maybe you could go even further, see Popey's brilliant blog entry on his command line only laptop - https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/command-line-only-laptop/ https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/command-line-only-laptop/ Good luck to anyone reading this! You can do it!
  • sixstringtheory 5y ago
    I love the focus the terminal brings, besides the solid benefit of scriptability/automation that’s not possible with most GUI apps. I’ve recently rediscovered emacs and now use it as my primary tool for development. I already loved working in the terminal for git and xcodebuild so it’s felt natural. Moving editing and workflow into emacs has been great so far. I’m already customizing things. Even using eshell! Excited to look into other things like a music player or email app. Or even slack like the author: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-slack
• resonious 5y ago
  Lately I've become convinced that video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol. They're a pretty fun way to kill time, but some people are predisposed to doing too much, and too much is dangerous. Also similar to drugs/alcohol: it seems to affect some people more than others. I know people who can check FB/TikTok for a couple minutes and then they're done, and I also know people who continue to scroll Instagram while cooking. It's very similar to how some people can knock down some beers a couple times a month socially, but some people end up in a vicious spiral of drinking every single night.
  • pfundstein 5y ago
    The common denominator is of course dopamine, and drugs, social media, video games, etc, all offer an easy and reliable hit.
    • superkuh 5y ago
      Every single thing you do involves dopamine. The difference with drugs (of which alcohol is one) is that they directly manipulate your brains neurochemistry. Nothing you perceive with your normal senses does that. Even sex doesn't have the same addictive effects as direct chemical manipulation of the dopaminergic neuronal populations. The idea that they are the same is very dangerous for society and will lead to the use of violence to control people where it is definitely not warranted.
  • sometimeshuman 5y ago
    The question is if these vectors of addiction are compounding or if it always affects people who were prone towards addiction anyway. My hope is the latter. Not that having a population of 10%(?) addictions isn't tragic, but it's better than eventually having a population of 90% addicts because we eventually offer personally tailored addictive products at scale.
  • irjustin 5y ago
    > video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol. Disagreed - one key aspect of the latter is physical dependance where withdraws are potentially life threatening. It's similar sledge hammer approach to putting weed on class 1 or treating all wrong doings as 'sin'. They are not the same things, should not be thought as the same nor treated the same.
• personjerry 5y ago
  Use a trick they teach you to manage anger: Count to 10. 10 posts, 10 seconds, whatever. And if the first 10 didn't stop you, restart and count to 10 again. These artificial "pages" are low-effort but always do the trick for me.
• ericdykstra 5y ago
  There's a kind of vicious cycle here where people feel disconnected from their surroundings and communities, and attention-stealing apps make a business of providing a surrogate through parasocial relationships and infinite access to the spectacle and new ways to interact with it. Parasocial relationships aren't real relationships, and the spectacle replaces doing anything directly, there is no fulfilment and the cycle continues. There's an epidemic of people who can't have hold a conversation or relate to anyone without mediating the conversation through a common topic that they've experienced on mass or social media. They're addicted to watching a simulation of having a life, and not actually living the one life they have.
  • klabb3 5y ago
    This is the big one for me, even though I do 0 social broadcast apps (only 1:1 chats, news, reddit and hacker news). Huge improvement, yet still I use it in the same parasocial way, using your terms. It sucks!
• vhiremath4 5y ago
  I’m on day 1 of 30 days of no social media, and I’ve kept all my apps on my phone and haven’t made any restrictions to me being able to access it. I feel like it’s helping me build up resiliency to saying “no” longer term with a reset period as the buffer for change. Wish me luck!
• awr 5y ago
  The reason why I don't have TikTok installed. Facebook is manageable, TikTok is a 2 hour rabbit hole of "oh crap, it's 2am and I've got work in the morning". FB has recently added Instagram reels to the app. Not quite TikTok but it's getting to a point where I work out how to disable them or I uninstall FB for the first time in a decade.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    Like Twitter, the concept of TikTok doesn't make any sense to me so I've never tried it. But YouTube suggestions I do not find very compelling. I'll sometimes scroll for a few minutes but it's mostly stuff I've either already watched or exactly like stuff I've already watched. It doesn't do very well at surfacing stuff that might catch a related interest but isn't really the same thing.
    • mdonahoe 5y ago
      Have you tried YouTube shorts? The auto-playing-as-you-swipe format is very addictive in a way that the regular YouTube feed is not.
      • throwawayboise 5y ago
        No.
• LiquidPolymer 5y ago
  I’m curious what the generational divide is for this. I’m 57, love tech and enjoy the positive side of the internet in limited doses. But I find most social media boring. There is incredible and AMAZING art, accidental moments, serious discussion and fascinating analysis of the world to be found online. But without grounding myself in genuine experience in the stinky, cruel real world of human interaction, nature, and emotions it’s hollow. It only has meaning with this grounding reality. Infinite scroll has never captured my attention beyond a few seconds. I can’t determine if I’m an anomaly? Normal for my age group? I’m distressed about how much time my 24 year-old daughter spends on instagram. She lives at home, works as a dance instructor, and spends most of her time staring at her phone screen. As a child I loved television. The six million dollar man was a highlight of the week (unless a spaghetti western was on). But it quickly became stultifying garbage when I spent more than a couple hours on the screen. Am I just not normal? I love the grittiness and dangerous unpredictability of the real world. Yet love movies. I’m not sure what to think
  • RMPR 5y ago
    I'm (almost) 24 and I can relate so much with your feelings. Except that I don't like movies. Or more exactly, I am not super down to watch movies alone. It has to be in a social setup. Most of my friends (mostly girls though) are addicted to their Instagram feed. It's a bit the norm, but there are some outliers. Maybe it's a generational thing, maybe not. But I guess in your days there was something to replace social media (TV maybe?).
  • yupper32 5y ago
    > But without grounding myself in genuine experience in the stinky, cruel real world of human interaction, nature, and emotions it’s hollow. The ability for younger people to actually experience life is fading. Having to work multiple jobs to keep a roof over your head, massive inflation, burnout from everything, covid spikes recently, etc, etc, etc, etc. Instagram/other social media is free and doesn't require any commitment or planning that real life experiences often require.
    • trutannus 5y ago
• ipaddr 5y ago
  Maybe it is me but scrolling brings less revelant items. Each scroll being worse. If scroll more than a few I give up.
• MauranKilom 5y ago
  For those who don't want to completely give up on this kind of content but want to limit their intake, I can highly recommend the Intention add-on for FF/Chrome: https://www.getintention.com/ https://www.getintention.com/ For me, it worked really well for a while, until I started instinctively hitting the "one more minute" button. But they recently added the option for a 30 second timeout after each "unlock" period, which curbs that very effectively. It gives the non-lizard part of your brain the perfect opportunity to take the reigns again :)
• oxplot 5y ago
  The key to curb bad habits is to create friction, and doing so well in advance. When you're exhausted and you're out of will, you're not gonna take much action to avoid quick pleasures. As it pertains to websites and app, here are a bunch of techniques for creating friction: - iOS and Android both have screen time features to show you a banner when you've used an app for longer than a set time. This is a good soft block to start with. - Auto logout after a set time. Having to login is one extra step that may deter you from accessing a website. This can be done with browser extensions. - Auto delete apps after a set time (this is possible with MDMs). Again, having to install an app would be a big hurdle next time you want to sit back and scroll through clips. - Throttle speed of a website - this one's a little brittle as you can quickly switch to a faster network, usually your mobile connection.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    This right here. I blocked reddit on my home network. I can easily use a VPN to bypass this but the friction broke the habit. Next up is Hacker News
• windhamdavid 5y ago
  Slow Thinking - How I try to organize my attention - https://davidawindham.com/slow-thinking/ https://davidawindham.com/slow-thinking/
• throwawayHN378 5y ago
  45 minutes? I’m a VP of Product and work 12 hour days, yet someone I spent 9 hours a day ( as per my iPhone ) on my iPhone… most of it in an endless scroll k-hole
  • icedchai 5y ago
    So if you stopped being distracted by your phone, you could do 3 hour days? Sounds about right.
• yumiris 5y ago
  I see it as our minds being impressioned into a) needing new information and b) fearing a lack of information. This fear manifests as a habit of continuously craving novelty, to the point where we are used by technology. A step towards overcoming it is to realise this fear and begin using technology as tools, like they were originally intended. This is, of course, easier said than done; however, with time, we can overcome this habit by using our technology with intent. The biggest obstacle is not the technology, but ourselves. We often find reasons and justifications to continue this habit. Fundamentally, it's a case of self-victimisation and illusion of necessity. "It's too hard to quit", "I will learn new things", "I need to catch up with people", and so on. I'm still exploring this topic and there's a lot to learn! What I've written above is likely just a (possibly misguided!) part of the whole equation. I'm happy to discuss this with anyone and understand the nuances of this problem, and hopefully a more effective solution. Coincidentally, I've written about this topic in more detail a few days ago: https://blog.miris.design/attention-atrophy https://blog.miris.design/attention-atrophy
• aprdm 5y ago
  Yes, we have some of the smartest people in our generation, being paid an endless supply of money to... keep our eyeballs watching a device & ads. Modern times.
• ImaCake 5y ago
  If you are on iOS you can, and should, use the App Limits functionality within Screen Time in settings. It won’t solve your problems, but it will help nudge you away from doom scrolling.
• askura 5y ago
  Absolutely. I know this is unrelated to the psychological side of things but for the company I'm with I often have to reach out to charities or NGOs. I absolutely hate badly designed sites with infinite scroll when I'm simply trying to get to the contact in the footer. It's infuriating!
• imron 5y ago
  Twitter recently made a change on mobile where if you are not logged in, you can only scroll through a handful of tweets before being prompted to login. This has dramatically cut back the amount of time I’d spend browsing twitter (don’t have an account, and not interested in creating one).
  • rr808 5y ago
    Hey I got this too! At first I was annoyed they wouldn't let me check my favorite accounts then realized its actually good.
  • soared 5y ago
    Reddit also has the same feature on the mobile site where they randomly force you to download the app or stop browsing. Pretty nice.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I just set a limit (only access them on my iphone) of 1 hour per day (total) on my social media apps. I know that is still a lot but it is what it is, I use it to catch up on news and family "what's going on" so please don't hate on me, there are worse things that I could be doing. I was spending more than that for sure before.
• rg111 5y ago
  I have actually won against doomscroll. I used to spend 5-6 hours per day, and it peaked at 10 hours per day for some days of the year. I realized that doomscrolling is not only clever algorithms trying to get me hooked, but also a symptom of deeper problems that I had. And I realized that I was unhappy because I spent most of my doing things that I didn't like. I was deep frustrated. I did not want to spend my brain's precious energy on doing things that I didn't want to do. I changed my path. Stopped caring about outside forces. Became happier. This was the hard part. The easy part is what I learned from Cal Newport's book "Deep Work". It asks you to implement timeblocks. I implemented a 20 minute timeblock for browsing social media. I would not touch social media outside that timeblock. It really worked. I implemented timeblocks for studying, coding, personal time, and the resistance towards doing these things weathered away once I started. So, the urge to doomscroll went down, too. I read some books, and consumed other resources that talk about our mind and our brain. Also some books on Theraveda Buddhist teachings. When you see your "self" as a bunch of neurons contextualised by your environment, outer stimuli, and as these are bound by biological laws, you stop being hard on yourself. You forgive yourself, gently. Then managing emotions, urges, etc. become easier. Reducing the number of apps that you use also reduces time spend in doomscroll. I gave up Facebook 4 years ago because the content was too low quality, and gave up Quora some months ago for the same reason. Now all I have is Reddit. I keep Facebook as a non-professional networking too. I open it if I have something to say to particular someone, and spend maybe 10 minutes per month on it. I also started meditating. That also helped big time. I will highly recommend it. Books that helped- - What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula - Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana - Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright - Mastery by Gordon Leonard - Learning How to Learn (Coursera) - Mind Illuminated by Culadasa - Atomic Habits by James Clear - Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt
  • dboreham 5y ago
    I've had some success with time blocking (which I usually do by Google searching for "30 min timer"). But I'm curious what you do about asynchronous interrupts? e.g. you block out your morning carefully, then 1h into things a guy you called three weeks ago to ask if he would estimate for painting your fence shows up and wants to spend 30min looking at the job asking questions. Now your time blocks are scattered to the wind. I find in my life that interrupts of this nature are quite frequent. Almost every day. (and: no you can't ask the painter dude to schedule a time next week. He'll never show up).
• ZYinMD 5y ago
  I find these apps much healthier than games, because they're easy to put down, because there's no continuity between two items when you scroll. Some games are impossible to put down once you get hooked, and even when you're not playing them you still constantly think about "I'll do this and this next time".
  • Wiseacre 5y ago
    Do you play them the moment you wake up in the morning?
    • ZYinMD 5y ago
      Yes when I get addicted. The problem is it's hard to refrain even if you try. Social media on the other hand are totally easy to refrain from opening if you know you have more important things to do.
• Razengan 5y ago
  Maybe addictive platforms could do some good and make more money if they limited the amount of content a user can see in one day, like some F2P mobile games: * Say you can only view 50 videos or 2 hours on TikTok per day. * If you need more, pay 50 cents. * The free limit resets every day. This could also lead to better payout systems for content creators. (the exact numbers would be tweaked as appropriate of course)
  • ehnto 5y ago
    You've described an existing approach actually, and unfortunately there is a big caveat. Duolingo and many other applications use gated or timed content windows in order to increase retention and form stronger long term habits. The TL;DR of that loop, is that in order to achieve your goals within the app you'll have to come back later to do so, which sets up a daily usage habit. The Sims mobile for example, you can't just keep playing the game, you have to constantly check back in to see how your timed tasks are going. For DuoLingo, you run out of hearts as you get questions wrong, so you have to keep checking back to see if your hearts have replenished in order to finish the lesson you were on. It might genuinely be healthier, I think that would need to be studied, but it's not out of the kindest of their hearts that they do it, it's just another way to keep you on the app, albeit over a longer period of time.
• aasasd 5y ago
  Overindulgence to the point of disgust worked relatively well for me. Imgur: fun for a while, then it's a handful of themes-of-the-day and rapid-fire stock comments. Reddit: teenagers and kidults either desperately trying to sound smart while peddling left or right wing of the same US bubble, or again just polluting the site with current stock responses. YouTube: a few good recommendations, and lots of clickbait junk. Oh my god the clickbait. I whipped up a uBlock filter to get rid of ‘insane’ and ‘you won't believe’. Also 99% of videos are 10:01 in length. However I kinda managed to do the ‘deliberate’ thing by collecting promising videos into ‘watch later’ playlists—hundreds of vids are in there now. I may be hitting this point with HN, as the low-effort sentiment on many topics is easily predicted. Thankfully there are still plenty of articles too involved, technical and boring to just spit out a readymade opinion. I heard that WoW players kick the habit by moving to a new server: when you have to grind again (afaiu), the game becomes tedious.
• winternett 5y ago
  I still mostly use the web browser on my mobile phone. Many apps are just too damn invasive now as well, they cross the line way too far for metrics they don't even really pay attention to; this is why I only install apps that don't use dark patterns and I've deleted many that go that route. I also schedule my important daily tasks on my calendar with silent (vibration alerts) so that I know when things need to get done. Ringers and notifications are always off on my phone... I do get pulled in to TikTok at times, but I frequently recognize when the content gets "preachy" and/or boring, and I quickly quit the app and take a break when that happens. Sometimes, it's just simple fun to take a mental break from being serious too, so we shouldn't always ruin all the good aspects of social platforms. Product owners and companies now often think their role is to manipulate people into staying on apps, and that's a very toxic attitude that discourages trust in corporations behind the apps. In truth, these platforms are accountable for the suicides, societal depression, crimes, and negative effects their platforms encourage in real life, and eventually they will be held accountable for it. For us, there are careful choices to make; we need to identify dark patterns and encourage public awareness about them. We need to refuse to do development work that supports negative outcomes and dark profit. If any of us collect a check for creating bad algos and just think it's just "doing our job" we're just as accountable as the greedy and morally corrupt execs that push for profit goals without any sense of societal responsibility and moral accountability.
  • omitmyname 5y ago
    Is there any list of dark patterns?
    • smhg 5y ago
      There has been some effort around this in the past if I remember correctly. A quick search leads to this list [0]. [0] https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern
  • sizzle 5y ago
    Thankfully iOS has implemented Screen Time limiting and I someone I trust set the pin to add more time. Works like a charm across the apple ecosystem
• lightsurfer 5y ago
  Thank You!!!
• nighthawk454 5y ago
  the Apollo app for reddit on iOS recently added the ability to disable infinite scrolling and go back to pages. having to specifically click 'Load Page 4' helps a lot
• unexistential 5y ago
  I feel exactly as the author feels, and it's heartening to see so many comments here talking about this problem. What baffles me is outside of HN and the occasional news story or opinion piece, people seem to be just unbothered. People (or at least my friend and acquaintance circle) seem to keep using these platforms, posting on and what the infinite scroll feeds them as if there's nothing out of the ordinary about it all. I've tried sharing on my social media how I feel about it all in the past, but I stopped after I started feeling like most people don't have a problem with it. No one wants to be the person that demands the state of affairs should change just because it inconveniences them.
  • prawn 5y ago
    I imagine a lot of people feel helpless if they think that using these apps is part of the mix of being socially relevant, but there are limited ways they can change how those apps work. Or they feel it replaces their idle TV watching and so aren't bothered that it's endless and passive. Instagram is important in my industry and I detest the infinite scroll, but multiple times a day I carry past the "caught up" point and get partway into suggestions and ads before I realise. I'd love a feature to switch it back to how it used to work, but that's very unlikely!
• QuadrupleA 5y ago
  A great overview / guide for breaking free of this kind of stuff: https://defetter.com/ https://defetter.com/ No affiliation with the project, just something I've found really helpful.
• everydayDonut 5y ago
  The answer is obvious - legislate pagination options for all social media. We can't handle it the way we can't handle added sugar in our diets. China is already taking the lead by banning AI from setting prices dynamically.
• ashleybravo 5y ago
  I once had a nightmare about infinite scroll where I was in a room and the floor fell out from below me, and then right before I was about to hit the floor of the room below, THAT floor collapsed too, and so on!
• nbzso 5y ago
  The whole world is captured by dark UX. The pandemic situation forced people to stay home glued to the screens and rewired their brains to accept more intrusive media consumption. We don't know the negative effects of this process yet. I have lost communication with a lot of people, the information shock has made them completely strange to me. On a personal level, I got lucky. Due to my interest in photography, in early 2015 I developed the habit to leave my phone home and go for a walk only with a camera in my hand. It felt refreshing. The next step for me was to delete all unnecessary apps from my phone and stop the usage of texting apps. If I wanted to communicate with someone - I called. Somewhere in 2017, I realized that my brain needs a constant hit of fresh information and I have to combat this urge. Now I have offline data collection of carefully curated books, videos, and music. I have limited my "news" consumption to 20 minutes a day through RSS feeds, Twitter, and Hackernews are limited to 15 minutes a day. Internet is used only for work.
• bikamonki 5y ago
  A few decades back nobody new, or cared, that smoking cigarettes was so bad for your health and everyone else around you. You can wait a couple of decades to realize, or accept, that social media is bad for your health and everyone else around you. Or you can quit now.
• olsgaarddk 5y ago
  Since we are sharing our getting out of doom scrolling stories, I’ll share how I got off Reddit. I realized that most of what I was reading on Reddit was fabricated outrage (since then they’ve added subs like “makes your blood boil” and “idiots in cars” - check them out if you feel like you are not outraged regularly enough) I was the type of person who would sit on Reddit, be bored and type Reddit in the url bar. So I decided to quit Reddit and used habitica for the task. It’s a gamification for to-do lists and forming habits. I added “visiting Reddit” as a minus 1, and every time I realized I was on Reddit I opened habitica and gave myself a minus 1. Fictive internet points are quite powerful. I also started flossing this way (flossing at night, +1)
• m8s 5y ago
  I just want to give a quick shout out to the Apollo Reddit reader on iOS for two specific features: 1. You can disable infinite scroll. When I’ve been scrolling Reddit for 20 or so posts, it’s a sobering reminder that I’ve gained nothing of value on Page 1, and Page 2 likely won’t be any better. 2. You can disable r/all. If it’s there, odds are I will look at it. Without it, I don’t feel tempted to wander outside of my curated feed of programming languages and such. Two really excellent features to combat the addictive noise I have trouble filtering.
  • duncanc4 5y ago
    Long time Apollo user, I had no idea you could disable the infinite scroll. Thanks for mentioning it!
  • arepublicadoceu 5y ago
    I have exactly the opposite issue. The fact that Apollo fixes all my reddit annoyances means that I use it way more than I should. If I was forced to use the official reddit app with it's ads and nonsense or the atrocious web page, my reddit usage would drop exponentially.
• cmckn 5y ago
  At various times in my life, I've spent way too much time on Twitter. I've been using Twitterrific for a couple months, which does not have the Explore tab and does not include things in your TL that you don't explicitly follow. The UI also makes it a bit less easy to read replies than the official Twitter app does. I find myself spending almost no time on Twitter now, and it's great.
• xgdgsc 5y ago
  My solution is using a e-ink phone for those apps. So you cannot "scroll" smoothly. But you use the paging button. The visual stimulus is much lower.
• Softcadbury 5y ago
  A technique I use to realize how bad it is for my brain, is to try to remember everything I saw after a session of browsing. It's often hard to remember at least half of the stuff.
• r_singh 5y ago
  This may not be a contribution to the discussion, but I've recently read a few books that made me aware of how most of my preferences are just arbitrary and a product of feedback loops and after finding this post on HN this morning I just have to say: Thank you hacker news for being an anomaly on the web. Even if opening HN maybe a habit that I'm not in control of, I don't regret wasting my time on this website as much.
• mbar84 5y ago
  This is one of the nice things about https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ Visit once per day and maybe read 5 articles of the top 20 from the previous day. Done.
• sytelus 5y ago
  There are people who can resist this naturally. It’s like people who won’t eat the sugary stuff without having to put any effort. My theory is that this habit relates to available mental energy. When you are in low energy state, you can’t read dense article or do intellectually taxing work and you gravitate towards infinite scroll because it’s the best reward you can get for your available energy. People with high energy seem to be automatically resistant at infinite scroll because reward from other taxing activities is much higher, although delayed. If this view is correct then perhaps the solution is to engage in forced mental excercise just like body excercise to increase strength and endurance at more taxing activities.
• boxfoxdox1 5y ago
  I tend to call this idling and it has been something that has been known to consume hours and hours of the day, to an extreme example where it just goes ahead and consume the day. At first I tried many methods to fight, including and alarm set when I start idling, or having a dedicated time to idle usually 15mins. But then I noticed that I just kind of slip into idling so the next idea was to keep a sort of a log that I fil up before i tend to do something or a series of actions and the approx time it took. This had worked much better than the previos ideas so I kept at it trying to form a habit out of it in the same light of whats is my next action step from GTD. But it would still occur from time to time and sometimes it would be an outbreak of idleness. So instead of trying to fix it I start to do two things, one is to try and be as conscious as I can while idling and the other is to just observr my self and my patterns of idling to try and see the why I wanted to do it over something like play a video game or you know, have some fun. What I found out ( and this is still a work in progres) is that my idlenes is a mix of an eacape, being overwhelmed, a habit comforting reflex, dopamine fix need and being tired. It is rarely one reason for it so I understood that I am unable to fix it just by doing one thing. So I started to adress the problems one by one depending on the current strongerst reason for. If tired go nap for 9m30s, if overwhelmed clean up gtd and add new stuff to inbox etc. I still idle but it is not as long as it was. Also not having the apps helps allot. Strangely enough this place is not what I use for idle, but that is because I've been treating it differently from the get go, as most of the time each topic here that interests me is packed with information and has a buch of really high quality comments so much so that I usuallly just add a topic in my gtd for further processing. One observation for idling is that you should not combine idling with something you enjoy as idling is a habit loop and everything you add to it feeds it, now this can be used for good as well but idling while you drink coffe or are having fun will chain that strongly. If you are able to be counscious enough to catch yourself as you begin to idle that is the most difficult but most useful step as for me most of the time idling is an semi-conscious act. Guided meditation helps here, also having coinscious triggers either formed ( everytime you sit a moment of consciousness) or randomly activated ( set a random gentle alarm trough out the day) the more you have those the bigger the chance that it will trigger when you start to idle. Also as said before, observe your idle patterns, your body position when you start doing it, your place in the room or wherever while it is hard to build consciousness triggers on idling itself you may be able to build it around the movement or positional patterns that you take when idling. The reason I am motivated to write this is that I noticed just how much of the time that I will never going to get back is taken by it with no visible when done in the quantity that I have been doing it. There is obviously some benefit though, but same can be said for many other addicting substances. Also calling it idling is kind of not fair because true idling ( just doing nothing) is actually very useful as it help you rest and kind of process things and resting or true idling before I go to bed has improved my sleep quality. And that is all on that from me, maybe it might be useful to someone.
• bob66 5y ago
• blessingdusk 5y ago
  Infinite scrolls and other features are classified as dark patterns, meaning it is a feature that is designed to engage the user as much as possible. The common denominator of all dark patterns are that they benefit the service provider or business at the detriment of the consumer. It helps being able to define what infinite scrolling does, because once you can recognize what a dark pattern entails, it will be much easier to spot and accordingly adjust your behaviors. Moderating your own behaviors when dealing with dark patterns is key. Mobile games are notorious for this; the market for mobile games are flooded with "Log in everyday to get your dailies!" Initially I was enthralled by mobile gaming as a middle schooler. I got to play Clash of Clans in my classroom and away from my home computer. I am now in sophomore year of college. The novelty of mobile games wear off as soon as you realize that mobile games back then and still today are designed to monopolize your time. I like to think that mobile game developers do it because they are passionate about it, but their passion gets bogged down at their first gamedev job because of company politics and the fact that dark patterns make money. Come to think of it, I really resonate with this author because dark patterns are everywhere. It is as if every single service provider is trying to monopolize your time. It happens with YouTube, computer games (notably Path of Exile), Discord, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and so much more. Dark patterns are definitively not conducive to a healthy populace. Thinking of my own time as a finite resource really helps. Is this dark pattern worth my time? It is ridiculously easy to sink 8 hours of your time watching reality TV on YouTube. I would even go as far as to say that they are designed to keep the working and lower class poor. If anyone wants to inquire further about that statement, please reply.
  • rightbyte 5y ago
    I played way to much Clash Royale, a really good tower defence game, for two three months. But I realized the grinding element in that game was insidious. "This chest opens in three hours". It wasted your time for no fun added, rather than being a game mechanic. I just deleted it. I.e. the game rate limited your grind and made you pay to remove the grind cap. At some point it got impossible to increase your ELO ranking without having better card levels, so you had to pay up or grind, or you would lose to bad players with high level decks. Really boring ... It is a shame that the gaming industry got to this. Becouse Clash Royale is a really good game underneath the leveling of cards grind and pay-2-win.
• giorgioz 5y ago
  On many platforms there are ways to disable the infinite scroll/auto play: Netflix: https://streamersworld.com/enable-disable-auto-play-next-episode-in-netflix/ https://streamersworld.com/enable-disable-auto-play-next-epi... Disable News Feed: - Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn - YouTube - Instagram - Y-Combinator News (Hacker News) - Reddit - Github https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...
• gernb 5y ago
  I feel like I could say the same about infinite news which I'd define as a site I can check several times a day and see new "top stories". This would include Reddit and HN. I find it super addicting to check too many times and then get sucked into spending too much time reading comments and sometimes articles. Rarely am I actually better off for it . Contrast to 20-30yrs ago where at best you got a newspaper once a day or if you were like me you got a few magazine subscriptions and once you browsed each one, that was it for your monthly article consumption.
  • ILMostro7 5y ago
    Maybe sticking to a newspaper, print or digital version, or a single news program on tv is what everyone should be doing. It might even cut down on consuming fake news.
    • ComodoHacker 5y ago
      That's what many elder people are actually doing for years and decades. It definitely doesn't help to cut down fake news.
      • MandieD 5y ago
        There's a big difference between watching the national news on ABC/NBC/CBS before dinner and then the local 10/11pm news, and keeping Fox News (or MSNBC or even CNN) on all day long, even as "background noise".
  • dredmorbius 5y ago
    Browse HN on "Past": https://news.ycombinator.com/front https://news.ycombinator.com/front 1. It's yesterday's news. You've probably got some contextualisation for the story as you've likely already caught wind of it from some other channel. Much of the compulsion of HN comes from the too-brief and decontextualised subject lines. They are, ultimately, a Dark Pattern. 2. The Machine Stops^W^WScroll Ends. Typically there are ~60--100 or so items. That's ... more than you can comfortably read, but it is finite. 3. Skip the comments. I'm increasingly finding they're less worthwhile than the post(s) themselves, usually. With some exceptions. 3.0 Those exceptions are rarely in more-active discussions. Or political ones. Or business-oriented ones. 3.1 Definitely skip comments dominated by drama or cheap shots. Utterly not worth it. 3.2 If you must read comments, do so logged out, and collapse as you go. 4. The front page has had a day to sort out its rankings. Typically, the top few items are reasonably significant or interesting, and that likelihood falls as you go down the list. HN ranking is arbitrary enough that there can be quite good content far down the queue, but be discerning. 5. Browsing day-olds seems to help ease the urge to scroll and check often. 6. If you're feeling adventurous, go back a year or five or ten and see what's being discussed. You may discover a ... sameness. Which might make you question the value of aggressively pursuing the latest all that much more. 7. Close the tab and go on a dandilion break.
• mcv 5y ago
  I have noticed that infinite scroll is becoming bad for my health. I dealt with RSI issues 20 years ago and got that under control, but now it seems like scrolling on my phone is giving me different RSI pain in my thumb and shoulder. I really should stop reading stuff on my phone that requires scrolling.
• janmarsal 5y ago
  Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? I'm also one of those people who randomly clicks and "paints" the text on every website I use. On Reddit this means that I manage to close the thread by accident all the time because someone thought it would be a good idea to open the threads in a modal that closes when you click outside of it. Oh and once I tried to use Quora. It asked me to log in before I even knew what kind of a website it is. Now I hate Quora with a passion even though I'm not even sure what kind of a website it is exactly. I can only imagine it's full of modals, infinite scroll and other features that makes my skin go green and pants purple. So I only end up getting addicted to websites that are simple and old fashioned enough like HN and wikipedia (as long as I don't click a cursed en.m.wikipedia link by accident). Btw, on youtube each time I click subscriptions it defaults back to the grid view. I want a list. Monkey wants list! YOUTUBE AAAAAAARHGFHGHGHFFG-
  • Nimitz14 5y ago
    > Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS? So you think the standard should be to keep a video playing even if one's scrolled past it? Are you insane?
    • phit_ 5y ago
      not op, but yes when I actively unmuted it, it should keep playing
    • shakna 5y ago
      There's a bit more subtlety and tradeoff here. For example, I doubt most people watching a video on YouTube would like the video to stop playing when they scroll down. If they wanted to pause it, they'd pause it. They also probably don't want the video to transition to the next, whilst they're reading threads. If you're in an infinite loop stream however, you do probably want it to pause or stop, without intervention, as you've scrolled away and dismissed the video. However - you may not want that to happen whilst you're still in-thread with the video. If you're looking at comments on the video, you probably still want it to continue. But if you reach the bottom of the thread, you probably don't want to have it pause and have to find the start of the thread to continue playing it, just because you scrolled an inch too far.
• Havoc 5y ago
  None of the scrolling apps really do it for me. Reddit in the other hand has enough content and subs that there is always one more thing to check out. And by the time you’ve looked at all your subs you can basically start at the front again since so much time has passed
• pgt 5y ago
  Same with food. If I have unhealthy food in the house, I will eventually eat it in a moment of weakness when I experience a dip in fortitude. So the solution has been to not allow bad food in the house, by never shopping on an empty stomach. And ensure I always have a whole lamb in the freezer. Another trick is to go shopping on my bicycle, so I can only buy what fits in a backpack - and usually that's high-nutrition items.
• otikik 5y ago
  I didn't reinstall twitter on my phone after I bought a new one. FOMO first week, then I have one less source of distraction and rage in my life.
• hendrikrassmann 5y ago
  I believe that in 100 years people will look back at our consumption of anti-social media the same way, we're looking back at doctors refusing to wash their hands before delivering. Your body can deal with many things on it's own, but once there are cities with a million people in them, and railroads and steamboats zig-zagging between them, hygiene has to be a conscious effort. Much same way, it's not your fault, if your mind can't handle all the shit the internet landscape throws at it. One easy way I found is to have an older smartphone (S4 mini), without any cheap mobile internet access. (This works very well in Germany, as we have almost no free wifi). This way I only allow myself podcasts, which I chose to download before leaving the house.
• kimown 5y ago
  I dislike twitter's infinite scrooll,Paginated is more usefull than infinite scrooll.
• cja 5y ago
  This comments thread is so long that it might as well be scrolling infinitely
• LoveMortuus 5y ago
  Sadly I don't have this problem. I say sadly because the same mechanism that prevents infinite scroll from working on me, also prevents me from enjoying video games. It's very simple, my brain keeps asking me what's the point of increasing in integer in some database far far away. But the answer is always that there's no point...
• whiplash451 5y ago
  Infinite scrolls are deeply addictive. The best way I have found to combat them is to get busy with a really interesting project that I care about.
• ajuc 5y ago
  Last decade in web design was mostly spent on inventing ways to make reading text on the internet less convenient.
• informalo 5y ago
  For the case of using Instagram on iOS, I recently posted something on reddit about how to disable the explore feed on iOS when browsing Instagram in Safari. Maybe it's of use to someone; I myself feel like I have a much healthier experience like this without missing out on what my friends are up to. https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/t780bt/remove_the_explore_page_from_instagram_on_ios/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/t780bt/remove_the_expl...
• floor_ 5y ago
  Infinite scroll is the worst and pixel hunting for hidden ui elements is even worse.
• trey-jones 5y ago
  I noticed I was doing this with Facebook. Decided never to install it on a phone. I did install Instagram on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Instagram. I installed Reddit on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Reddit. My biggest problem then is that I can't uninstall the stupid Google news feed, so that still gets me pretty often. They've made the scroll longer, but at least it is currently finite. Only slightly related is the way I use my phone for other things. I notice that I'll compulsively unlock my phone and check certain apps that might have something for me (Slack message in a channel that doesn't notify, Chess move to make). And the problem with that is I know I don't need to, and that nothing has likely changed since I last checked. And it's still darn difficult to avoid.
  • carlosr2 5y ago
    Make google news useless by disabling personalization in android settings. It worked for me, its not interesting anymore.
• fleddr 5y ago
  A less popular opinion: when you're in the danger zone regarding mindless scrolling, say several hours per day, another way to look at it is that you simply have too much time on your hands. When you add friction to using these apps as some type of self-control, the problem is that the time surplus is still there. Which leaves infinite excuses to get back into the habit. You need to replace that time with something better. Preferably fun social obligations, because those you won't easily opt-out of. Agree with a friend to go walk to the park every Wednesday. Do volunteer work. Group sports. Cook an extra nice meal for your partner on a particular day. Stuff like that. Fill up your surplus of time with things that are fun and have meaning. I know, for some the above is too steep. For the ultra lazy, there's still options. Pick a movie/documentary that you expect to enjoy. Now put your smartphone in another room and fully engage with the movie. Use your own laziness as a tool as you can't bother to get it. Further, uninstall Facebook, Twitter, the like from your phone. Only check them on desktop. Finally, minimize chat on your phone. I limit chat to practical matters only. Needing to pick up something from the store, input on a party that is being organized, things like that. Anything else...I don't engage. I'm not going to have a long winded social conversation on chat just for the sake of it. To signal this, just respond a day later, and only with "yes", "no" or "OK".
• mnort9 5y ago
  I've been using Screen Time this year so far and it's been working pretty well. For me Twitter, FB, and Reddit were the go to dopamine hits. I have separate 5 min daily limits for Twitter and Facebook. And a 15 min daily limit for Reddit. Reddit is much easier to curate topics that I'm actually interested in, so I give myself a little more time there since the comments add to the conversation more commonly than the other platforms. This helps make it feel like I'm "checking-in" and leaving it behind, rather than letting it consume my time. It also makes me think twice about logging in as a habit since my limit will be up without recollecting at all what I just scrolled through. I find myself more often thinking, "Am I going to pay attention to what I'm looking at now?". If not, I'll save the session for later when I have the attention to give.
• LtdJorge 5y ago
  It's just YouTube for me. But it sucks most of my time :(
• kosasbest 5y ago
  I've turned the socials into a pull medium, not a push one. This is why Twitter lists are so good. I open a list and browse topics I'm interested in, not what Twitter 'thinks' I like.
• AlwaysRock 5y ago
  News Feed Eradicator is a great chrome extension that lets you unblock websites for a set period of time. I check my twitter and hackernews for 5 minutes in the morning everyday. Otherwise if I move to those websites they are blocked. I removed social media from my phone and mobile browser social media use without being logged in is so painful or restrictive that I'm rarely temped to do much other than check the top few posts on the reddit homepage. Those two things helped a ton with my social media usage.
• crispyambulance 5y ago
  I ended up using ublock origin to block the "recommendation" sidebars on twitter and youtube. So glad for that. Is there a way to stop the infinite scroll? The stuff on the sidebar is related, sort-of, but you're not expecting it and you are not necessarily in a critical state of mind when you notice it and instinctively click. Meanwhile, I imagine, giant inscrutable algorithms are tweaking knobs in our heads that we don't even know about, always making incremental progress towards taking away all our attention without us even being aware of it.
• asmr 5y ago
  Thankfully my brain was programmed/imprinted during the "pull to refresh" era. I rarely scroll past a page length before I move on to something else or scroll to the top and refresh. On a more serious note I've had problems with TikTok. The most helpful thing I've done to manage this is to make it incredibly difficult/annoying to access your stuff. I don't have the Instagram app on my phone and all though I have several twitter accounts I only keep 1 signed in to my twitter app.
• gideon_b 5y ago
  A while back there was an article here from someone who moderated their social media use by throttling the connection speed for facebook - with the site getting slower the more time you spent browsing. At the time I read that article, my achilles heel was Instagram. The Instagram mobile site has most of the content I care about but a pretty poor experience on a mobile browser. I can still get messages and see the things I care about. I can't use it for more than a few minutes without getting frustrated. Stories barely work, you can only watch 4 or 5 before the video player hangs up. Honestly it's perfect, and the discussion here on HN helped me realize that a degraded experience was a better experience for social media. Using the mobile site helped me turn a bad habit into a healthy one. I use the same strategy for Twitter but their mobile browser experience is better. Twitter can still be habit-forming without the app.
• eternityforest 5y ago
  Infinite scroll is probably the worst thing about modern tech aside from curation algorithms. It's truly horid. It makes devices harder to use for anything except mindless scrolling like as if your eyeballs are trash cans for the whole world to crap into.
• deleted 5y ago
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