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Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

• paulcole 5y ago
  Got nothing better to do. Don’t care about being “productive.” Get through the other things I want to do - exercise, eating healthy, watching TV, reading, and then internet is left. It’s not wasting time, it’s how I choose to spend my time.
• cute_boi 5y ago
  Same here :(. I understand the consequence, but still I spend all my time watching useless news, reddit & hackernews. IDK why I am getting so much addicted on internet... And, I believe this is also why I haven't been able to achieve great things in my life.
• rhizome 5y ago
  My therapist asks me the same question.
• purplerabbit 5y ago
  What has helped me immensely is intermittent fasting from the internet. Setting a time to put away my phone and laptop every single day and sticking to it has rewired my brain and allowed me to rediscover old, slower, richer ways of thinking that I used to engage in. I cannot recommend it enough.
  • dudebro420 4y ago
    a version of this i do (and am obviously failing at currently) is to avoid sites with comments, and avoid search engines sites with commenting trick your brain into thinking you are having social interactions, at best it’s a waste of time, at worst you end up legitimately feeling worse than you did before the feeling of wanting to look up some random factoid and not being able to feels unsettling at first. this is how you know your brain is getting fucked up by this. whenever is stick to this for a couple days my brain feels much more normal and i feel more relaxed
• minroot 5y ago
  For having zero people to spend time with
• cecilpl2 5y ago
  Randomly reinforced dopamine hits. Same reason some people play slot machines all day.
• ngamboa 5y ago
• pigtailgirl 5y ago
  it's cheap - i could go for a walk - go to the gym - call my mother - clean the house - na - clicking the same 3 buttons in a different order on youtube - hoping for something new and amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy - & very occasionally - I win something amazing- think this has always been true tho - mum used to buy the sunday times then read the same pages multiple times throughout the week - not sure she thought she would get something new out of them each time - it was just something cheap to do -
  • stnmtn 5y ago
    > clicking the same 3 buttons in a different order on youtube - hoping for something new and amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy - & very occasionally - I win something amazing- You just made me realize that these algorithmic feeds are quite literally a skinner box because you're exactly right.. once in a blue moon there is a recommendation, a video, or a tweet, that really is amazing and can change your perspective or give you huge amounts of enjoyment So we click on, waiting for that next payout of gold.
    • pigtailgirl 5y ago
      and if that is indeed true - do we control the algorithm - or does the algorithm control us? :=)
  • davesque 5y ago
    Feels kinda pathetic to lay it out like this, but the one thing I wish I could do is call my mom. But she's gone.
    • shrimp_emoji 5y ago
      That's the last thing I wanna do, and she's alive (and calls me). D:
• dailyplanet 5y ago
  If it annoys you, then you're probably an extrovert. I am an introvert and I like being alone and being able to choose how much I self-express and communicate. In person, I do not have as much choice about my time and energy commitment in front of company if I want to be polite. It's just easier for me to manage my social bandwidth while being on the internet.
  • jansan 5y ago
    I think he is more annoyed of being unproductive, i.e. wasting time on social media instead of getting work done. I am more of an introvert and love working alone, but I hate looking back at a day and realizing that I spent most of my time lurking on certain wensites instead of implementing that undo functionality which I had originally planned.
  • II2II 5y ago
    I am also an introvert and the computer is an easy escape after a day of what I can only describe as sensory overload. That said, the author's point was more about productivity than socialization. There, I can only agree. To offer a couple of personal examples: I have to actively avoid certain types of games since it is far too easy to explore virtual worlds, gather virtual resources, and build virtual things when I would feel more productive doing something real. That something real may be as mundane as learning how to develop software more sophisticated than toy projects, simply because the product is reflects reality rather than fantasy. The other example is my tendency to watch other people do real things, like embedded development or repairing electronics. I have the interest and I even have most of the tooling. Still, consuming is easier than creating. That is especially true after a mentally exhausting day. I can only conclude that technology has made some things easier than others, and that it doesn't necessarily correlate with what people value. It doesn't even matter whether those values are social or asocial.
• petercooper 5y ago
  It's so often expressed it feels like a universal, but I don't feel like I do, at least. I spend a lot of time on the Internet but I don't think it's a waste because there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. Now, maybe my ambitions and dreams are set a bit low, but that's a different matter ;-)
• DerekBickerton 5y ago
  I'm not sure about wasting. Most of my surfing consists of unearthing gems, and I have to wade through a lot of noise and muck to find those gems, but the gems are there. If I could automate it, I would, but it wouldn't be the same. A piece of code that crawls the net looking for something I would really enjoy is a hard problem, and I would have to code in my own biases to the program to make it work properly, and this means I couldn't share the program with others since it would be very personal and context specific. I am aware of confirmation bias and filter bubbles, but it doesn't mean I don't like my own bubbles. It's just plain psychology afterall and we're all human, although I do try to break out of my comfort zone in terms of what content I consume, and regularly scout for different places to get my content besides The Bird Site, Reddit, FaceBuck etc
  • Tade0 5y ago
    Can you give an example of such a gem? Normally I just rely on HN to provide me with interesting links, but lately it doesn't seem to give me the same kick it used to.
    • DerekBickerton 5y ago
      Sure. Some links I just bookmarked and will use: https://highbrow.se/ https://highbrow.se/ (Alternative search engine) https://cora-pic.com/en https://cora-pic.com/en (Meme generator) https://www.mightyapp.com/ https://www.mightyapp.com/ (New upcoming cloud browser) https://ossdatabase.com/ https://ossdatabase.com/ (Database of OSS)
    • gpm 5y ago
      My own list, which is pretty different in character than Derek's. Gankra's work on a useful rust memory model is both fascinating and useful: https://twitter.com/Gankra_/status/1509335163045650436 https://twitter.com/Gankra_/status/1509335163045650436 This tool to convert low-complexity rust tests to proofs is interesting and something I'm glad I know exists: https://model-checking.github.io/kani-verifier-blog/2022/05/04/announcing-the-kani-rust-verifier-project.html https://model-checking.github.io/kani-verifier-blog/2022/05/... I'm using this code I found out about via reddit in a side project, probably less interesting to you though: https://github.com/setzer22/egui_node_graph https://github.com/setzer22/egui_node_graph (Warning, videos from here on out): Cool product demo of a futuristic debugger: https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/debugging-by-querying-a-database-of-all-program-state https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/debugging-by-querying-a-datab... These people also have a cool demo of splitting a single program across two different computers (frontend and backend webserver in their case). Maybe a bit less convincing than the previous one, but something I intend to watch: https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/uis-are-streaming-dags https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/uis-are-streaming-dags These people have some really cool work on automatically solving physics problems (just linking to one of their talks as an example): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhDgxkiR9c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhDgxkiR9c
• rambambram 5y ago
  Do you even lift? I mean that seriously. Lifting heavy weights helps one get rid of all that mental bullshit. It's a cornerstone habit. So lifting can form a base for all other beautiful stuff in your life. It's hard to care about trivial shit on Youtube or Instagram when you just lifted dumbbells until fatigue and did some good squats.
  • almost_usual 5y ago
    Or you start worrying about RPE / programming and comparing yourself to others. At least that’s what happened to me. Got very strong over the years, didn’t get much happier, and then would stress out about losing any gains that were made. Eventually I quit caring and started walking more. I feel the same.
  • keenmaster 5y ago
    Or browse the internet between sets. It’s big brain time. I’m not even joking, if you’re going to waste time at least multitask and get stronger/healthier in the process.
    • gigaflop 5y ago
      This is the sole reason I use reddit on my phone. I keep a tab for AskReddit, open something for later if the title seems interesting enough, and at least skim the thread within a few days. No app, no login, old-style UI. Since my brain is usually disengaged when lifting (gotta save those calories for what matters), I rarely bother with anything 'deep' between sets. One potential upside of this is that the threads are usually a few hours or days old before I actually read them, which means that I can expect no new content from them once I have my fill of a thread.
    • emadabdulrahim 5y ago
      For that reason I never take my phone to the gym. I just enjoy resting between sets. I also try to make my workout as efficient as possible.
• blueflow 5y ago
  Might be some kind of addiction. I suspect because smoking works for me as substitute.
• terr-dav 5y ago
  Like any other addiction, it's a way of coping with painful emotions that you (and I) are hiding from (consciously or not). I've been in therapy for several years now and I'm still struggling.
  • dudeDDRrulez 5y ago
    Top answer IMO. Substituting drugs, alcohol, shopping, cutting yourself, etc, it’s all the same root cause which is hiding somewhere deep inside yourself. Either do the work to find out what that root cause is or be held hostage by it. Took decades for me to figure it out for myself. Well, the process took decades to play out. Once the root cause was dealt with, improvement was instantaneous.
• zelias 5y ago
  Hits a little close to home. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and anyone who speaks out about this should be applauded. Years from now we will still be examining the after effects of years spent at the mercy of addictive user engagement algorithms.
  • dan12ha 5y ago
    Well done, you have condensed and encapsulated the problem into a single line. This is evil corps motto, "Keeping you at the mercy of our addictive user engagement algorithms since 20xx".
• scubakid 5y ago
  It's almost like the platforms were designed and optimized to keep you on them ;)
• danuker 5y ago
  Relevant: http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html > Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new things. [...] It took a while though—on the order of 100 years. > Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction. We're all trying to figure out our own customs for getting free of it.
• Apreche 5y ago
  Just speaking for myself, I've noticed that my habit is to eat what is in front of me, and clean my plate. I mean this both literally and figuratively. If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I eat one after dinner. If I don't have it in the house, then I just don't eat dessert. If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll scroll through all of it until there's nothing else that's new. So what I've been doing is not entirely quitting Internet stuff, but instead I just massively unsubscribing, unfollowing, and filtering all the feeds. Sort of a Marie Kondo thing. I go through every subreddit I'm in, every RSS feed, every account I follow on Twitter, and i strongly consider "is this really providing lots of joy and/or value?" If not, it gets the chop. I've cut out at least 2/3s of the stuff I was following since the peak, and it's only going down. Now when I doomscroll it's only for a few minutes. I hit the end of new content very very quickly. When that happens I start to look elsewhere. I've been reading a lot more actual books, done more chores, and been more productive overall. As for the things I unfollowed? They clearly had no value because not only do I not miss them, I can barely even remember what they were.
  • fma 5y ago
    Switching Twitter to timeline mode rather than their poor excuse of an algorithm helps. Learned that from HN....but I have a browser plug-in that also removes all their recommended and "Joe also owed this tweet" junk.
    • warkdarrior 5y ago
      Which browser plug is this? It sounds amazingly useful.
      • fma 5y ago
        https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/ https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/ If you need it for mobile, on my mobile (Android) I downloaded Kiwi Browser so I can install that plugin.
    • Braini 5y ago
      Funny enough I have the opposite opinion regarding twitter: If I use it in timeline mode I have the urge to read through all of it until where I stopped last time as the OP described (same with my Feedly RSS feed) In algorithm mode its more like a "don't care, its garbled anyway, just a sea of stuff". That being said I am still mostly using timeline mode.
• gravypod 5y ago
  Well if you want friends the first step is to find them. Wish there was an easier way to do this but messaging people from HN/Slack/Discord has been a great option
• nonstickcoating 5y ago
  Another key factor is, that YouTube interleaves really well made educational content with fun and stupid videos (these have their own merit, of course). I think this leads to people hunting for new videos about topics that really interest them, those can be insightful and stimulating. At the same time, the next 20 minute TikTok compilation is one click away, as well as numerous click-farmy videos with no real substance but the appearance of depth and knowledge. This is simply not possible if you, for example, get your knowledge and entertainment from e.g. books. To click a funny video after watching a good video essay or educational content is somehow simpler than putting away your textbook and searching for your favorite comic in your bookshelf.
• NanoWar 5y ago
  Really: What can you do?
• Decabytes 5y ago
  I waste so much time on the internet because it's easier than doing anything else. Binging YouTube videos and peoples post mortems gives me a dopamine hit akin to being productive without actually putting any work towards my goals. I hate it.
• belkarx 5y ago
  The modern internet, with ever-refreshing recommendations, is fully intended to be addicting. Possible mitigations: make it very inconvenient to repetitively view social media. Examples: - Create UBlock rules to remove recommendations, only keeping the search bar on the youtube home page so if you want to watch a video you have to explicitly seek it out - Redirect an address like reddit.com in /etc/hosts so it is inaccessible - Seek out more productive forms of social media, and set loose timers for accessing them so you don't get caught in infinite scrolling - Do not have social media apps on your phone - Turn off internet when doing productive work if possible. Or employ context switches - one browser for fun, another for work.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• leodriesch 5y ago
  I’ve been thinking about this for some time, since so many people (including me) seem to struggle with this, even while being completely aware of our behavior. I think legislation should force social networks to: - have a reverse chronological timeline for your network - optionally disable any algorithmic recommendations Social Media companies are mostly unrestricted in the current legislation system while they are trying their hardest to maximize user engagement. Just like the use of certain drugs this something some people can’t responsively deal with themselves, hence it should be regulated. And probably my idea is not very fleshed out, but I think something has to be done, and it has to come from states as the companies themselves can’t be held responsible.
  • greggman3 5y ago
    I find myself wasting too much time on the internet and I don't spend any of it on social media. I waste most of it on HN.
• bloaf 5y ago
  Why do you feel like not being productive all the time is a moral failing?
  • LigmaYC 5y ago
    Do you not feel bad when wasting time? Especially if you're just refreshing youtube and instagram, as the blog states.
  • kataklasm 5y ago
    For me at least I feel like there's a difference between being unproductive due to doomscrolling $socialMedia and being unproductive due to a more 'traditional' way of "wasting" (as in not being productive) time. Spending time on a grassfield in the sun is just as unproductive as doomscrolling, yet it feels a whole lot different. One feels abusive and abrasive to the soul; the other is relaxing and soothing. All while being unproductive. There may be a lot more layers to this productivity conundrum than being just a productivity boolean.
• abramN 5y ago
  I've been around since the birth of the internet, and just have been amazed with how much stuff there is to do and see and learn. Granted, there's a lot of cesspools, but lots of good wholesome stuff too. I mean, think about it - when in the history of mankind have we had so much information at our fingertips?
• dcchambers 5y ago
  My completely unprofessional opinion is that almost everyone that uses the internet throughout the day has developed some form of undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. The modern internet has broken our slowly evolved brains. We are not built to cope with these types of attention destroying activities and media. At least 20 years ago you had to sit down at a specific place and use a chunky computer. Smartphones have made it 1000x worse. There's no easy solution. I don't think becoming a digital luddite is the answer...but we all need to be more intentional with our time. It's not the only answer, but Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism^1 is a good read for anyone that finds themself feeling this way. [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimalism https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-minimal...
  • senectus1 5y ago
    information/stimulation addiction is a thing....
    • vorpalhex 5y ago
      No, it's not. This "X is addictive" where X is porn/videogames/making popcorn view is based on a flawed understanding of brain circuitry.
  • alisonkisk 5y ago
    is it ADD or is it just a common pattern of human nature? Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease, or an environment that is toxic to instincts that usee to suit us well?
    • dcchambers 5y ago
      > Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease It's not, but it will lead to some (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc). In the same way, consuming infinite amounts of quick-hitting and dopamine-inducing social media is not a disease, but it can damage our brains and lead to "disease" in the same way that sugar damages the rest of our body. Again, I'm not a doctor and I have no facts/evidence to share. Just my own thoughts on how things are going.
• DanHulton 5y ago
  I'm surprised nobody's mentioned ADHD yet. It's not clear-cut or anything, but I recently just went through diagnosis and testing and mentioned this behavior. For me, I tend to resort to this behavior when I can't summon the focus to work on things I know I SHOULD be doing, so I end up scrolling for hours instead, because there's so much less inertia to overcome there. It may be worth talking with your family doctor about. If so, there's medication and/or targeted coaching that can help significantly.
• spir 5y ago
  I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby. When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to create further engagement. But in reality, there's almost no positive relationship between my engagement with social media and my personal human flourishing. I think these products are mostly poison for my soul.
  • pde3 5y ago
    A possible experiment to try: what happens when you only browse Reddit through an anonymous, not-logged-in browser and IP address? And then only use your account when you are actually sure you want to post something?
    • recursive 5y ago
      For me, it's enough just to log out. The friction of logging in is just the right amount of friction.
    • tayo42 5y ago
      I do this,I find my self scrolling a lot still. Though its helped avoid alot of the stupid back and forths I used to let me self get into.
  • rvbissell 5y ago
    I almost never regret time spent reading a book. But I frequently regret time spent on Reddit/Youtube/Twitter, even if I enjoyed the content at the time.
    • wrycoder 5y ago
      I'm more likely these days (as the decades pile up) to deliberately stop reading a book, if it hasn't engaged me by the time I've read 20% of it. Of course, many never get started, once I do a quick scan. I estimated how many more books I would likely read before I die, and it's a shockingly small number, even though I read a lot! So - choose wisely.
• sidcool 5y ago
  I think it's akin to addiction. Internet secretes the pleasure chemicals in brain. And it's fun.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• statquontrarian 5y ago
  I'm taking intermittent internet & phone fasts.
  • leodriesch 5y ago
    Could you expand on that? Does it mean you don’t use your phone till 10AM or not after 9PM or something like that?
    • statquontrarian 5y ago
      I'm still experimenting; so far, it includes: 1. Turning off my phone at night. This removes the risk of looking at my phone in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom. 2. Consciously waiting to turn on my phone until I'm ready, which usually means after breakfast. I want to lead my phone, not the other way around. 3. Intermittent fasts of addictive computer behavior; in particular, I found I was checking news sites and HN addictively throughout the day, so I take some days off from that, completely.
• MilnerRoute 5y ago
  A big part of the problem: brain plasticity. (Which, ironically, I read about on the internet....) But the idea is if you're doing a lot of one thing, your brain adapts. So if that one thing is "quickly scrolling headlines" or "consuming bursts of updates," over time your brain just atunes itself to that form of stimulation. If that's true, who knows how far it will lead? I was on jury duty, and spoke to the prosecuting attorney afterwards. And his complaint was that over the years, "juries have gotten dumber" -- that he'd consistently seen the attention span of a typical juror getting shorter and shorter....
  • danenania 5y ago
    The positive side of plasticity is that your brain can also re-adapt fairly quickly to a lower (healthier) level of stimulation if you can get over the initial hump. My understanding is that most of this is regulated by dopamine, and your dopamine system needs time to reset in order to adapt to new patterns. In the meantime, it's normal to feel bored or lacking in motivation; that's part of the reset process and you just need to wait it out. Personally, I've found it's easiest to change habits and patterns via some sort of healthy distraction that takes my mind off whatever I'm trying to change. Travel, getting into a new hobby/project, or starting a really good book are all great for this. Andrew Huberman goes into this stuff in depth in his podcast, especially this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU
• 411111111111111 5y ago
  Because I don't have a life.
• aantix 5y ago
  I wonder if this is because we're lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. E.g. Twitter - feels like many of the "thought leaders" I follow, their "friends" are also on Twitter. And they tweet/respond so much I often wonder if they're really ever "building a business". And are they ever interacting with their real-world friends or family? Or if their lives just consist of a constant refresh of their feed. Even at dinner, I wonder if they're even present? And I wonder if that's why podcasts have become so popular - it's someone talking to you. Someone having a conversation, albeit one-sided, but usually it's pretty interesting. For the same lonely reasons, I wonder if this is why public radio has been so popular with long haul truck drivers. Everyone wants to hear a human voice once in a while. The constant reading, listening and entertaining videos... The voice in your head generates a discussion, with itself. At least it's something. We work from home. It's quiet. With no one around. We're looking for a preoccupation. We're just desperate for any type of human interaction. "Likes", hearts, thumbs-up, upvotes, +1, PR merge, etc. - are we just clinging to anything that acknowledges our existence and humanity.
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    > I wonder if this is because people are lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. Discord has propped up my social life for years now. And I mean outside of the internet as well! I also engage in independent, more traditional social engagement and it usually ends in nothing more than a hangover. Not unexpectedly, the internet makes it easier to bring people with similar interests/believes/personalities together. There’s also some weird demographic issue where apparently the internet is the only place where people my age seem to exist. I meet a ton of people irl m, mostly much older, with some only several years younger or several years older. In the past year for example, I’ve met maybe 2-3 people who were within a year of myself. Also I often find myself mindless swapping discord channels or refreshing HN or Twitter constantly, when I’m bored and want to talk/argue/whatever, typically at night.
    • Der_Einzige 5y ago
      Discord is most likely the most phallocentric large scale platform ever made. It is an abysmally terrible place to go to meet people, and particularly to go argue. Ever seen what the most popular politics server on discord looks like? 4chan is tame by comparison...
• HoraceSchemer 5y ago
• est 5y ago
  I am so used to Internet since young, and sometimes feel guilty of the time wasted on it. So I spent sometime completely cut off from the online world, go back to books and in-person interactions. Ironically, books and people kept telling me: why r u hearing this now? It's already all over the Internet.
• uvu 5y ago
  I am also in similar situations. Currently, I stopped using all social media. This video help me https://vimeo.com/97415346 https://vimeo.com/97415346 in some way as well. I think its a habit and addiction combination.
• mrwnmonm 5y ago
  Feeding your identity?
• eimrine 5y ago
  Where to spend my time else?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• pde3 5y ago
  Split this into two questions: (1) Why do we procrastinate? (2) What is it about various Internet platforms and patterns that makes them so addictive, and good for procrastination? For me, (1) turned out to be about not having a clear picture of what exactly I needed to do next for my goals, and sometimes not having enough social reinforcement and accountability for the things I'm working on; (2) there are lots of tricks and accidents that have made modern platforms really addictive, but one of the big ones is uncertain reward. I reload all sorts of things hoping for something new and interesting. Noticing that pattern is the first step to damping it.
• lazyjones 5y ago
  Because you don't have important goals and the discipline to focus on them. If the Internet didn't exist, it would be TV or something...
• thenerdhead 5y ago
  Addiction. I’ve been addicted to the internet since a teen. I have worked to moderate my time on it for the last 5 years and have changed my life significantly. Technology is beautiful, but there’s more to life than sitting in front of a screen doing exactly what the author mentions. I’m writing a book right now that is talking about this challenge and the various things I had learned to find balance.
• coolhoody 5y ago
  My excuses: 1. No free will. 2. Bad parenting. 3. Witches.
• twobitshifter 5y ago
  Has anyone tried?: * Using an apple cellular watch and leaving your phone at home * Using a smaller phone like an iphone mini * Using a lower tech feature phone * Using screentime And found success that way?
  • Tade0 5y ago
    My previous phone died on me suddenly and at that time I didn't have spare cash for another one, so I got an old Nokia 3600 classic from a friend and spent 9 months using it while I was working my way to get my finances in check. The moment I bought a new phone all the old habits came back, so I guess the answer is "nope".
  • dbalatero 5y ago
    Yes, I use an Apple Watch for maps/subway directions and a flip phone for my phone. Works well, best of both worlds. Apple Watch is hard to waste time on due to the cramped UI.
    • criddell 5y ago
      Do you also have an iPhone that you just leave at home?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • windowsrookie 5y ago
    I tried an Apple Watch. It had a couple of issues that prevented it from working for me. When it's on LTE the battery only lasted me about 5-6 hours. It's just not designed to be used away from an iPhone for more than a couple hours. So you have to carry an Apple Watch charger with you, and it can only charge if you take it off your wrist. Also while iMessages would come thru, text messages would not reliably get sent to the watch while it was on LTE only. Another issue is you can't send/receive messages from social media apps like instagram/snapchat. 80% of my communications with friends is through Snapchat. Maybe there's a Facebook messenger or telegram app for the watch but I don't use those apps. Also, there's no way (that I know of) to stream music to your car radio from the watch, streaming music over LTE to your headphones drops the battery life to 2-3 hours. I then tried the light phone 2. https://www.thelightphone.com https://www.thelightphone.com Similar to the Watch it has short battery life. Maybe ~8 hours with sending some texts and listening to an hour long podcast or music. It uses Micro-USB so you have to carry one of those around because everything is USB-C now. It can receive texts but no images. So anytime someone sends you a picture in a text you have to ask them what it is. Again no way to send messages in social media apps. Also there is no way to stream music from any streaming service. I then tried an iPhone SE. It can do everything you need, but not very well. It's screen was often too small, and too dim outside. Compared to high end phones the camera sucks, and again it has bad battery life. I eventually came to the conclusion that if I'm going to carry a full smartphone It may as well be a good one. So after all that I'm back on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Not using a smartphone for a few months did seem to "reset" my brain tho. I don't really use any Apps on the iPhone aside from safari, camera, YouTube music, and Snapchat for messaging. Having a good camera on you at all times is really hard to give up.
• tester756 5y ago
  Partly? because I feel like I should learn stuff, get better at computers and then translate it to bigger total compensation - I'm young, later I will have less desire to put effort into that or other things like kids and stuff but very often it ends on HN/9gag or similar :D
• carlgreene 5y ago
  For me it's a busy brain with any information it wants to consume at my finger tips. This is something I'm working incredibly hard to combat, but my brain is constantly going a million miles a minute with the most meaningless and out of my control crap. The way I can "close" the thought is by looking stuff up on the internet related to that thought, or just distracting myself with some garbage. A calm mind to me at this point is one of the most valuable things. I seldomly experience it, but thankfully it's been happening more often lately now that I'm conscious about it.
• specialist 5y ago
  FOMO
  • amelius 5y ago
    Solution: every day, make a list of stuff you found on the internet that you couldn't possibly live without. Chances are your list is empty all the time.
    • specialist 4y ago
      Good plan. What I did instead is break my laptop. Forced to use desktop for next week. Tada! Good so far. I might just get rid of the laptop, since I have such poor self control.
• georgia_peach 5y ago
  Dear Bearblog, Coffee. Stimulants. A M P H E T A M I N E S ! You're welcome. -GP
• dcolkitt 5y ago
  > Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do this? I'll push back on this. I think we have such a deep inbuilt instinct to lie about the things we enjoy that we often delude ourselves. Humans are social creatures, and the things we say, especially the things we say about ourselves almost are heavily biased by what we think will make others like and respect us. You know this as well as I do. When people ask you what your favorite music, movies or foods are you'll almost always prominently declare the high status things you want and omit the low status. It doesn't even feel misleading. Of course my favorite food is sushi and not french fries, even if truth be told and I spent a minute introspecting I'd have to admit that in the moment I probably enjoy McDonalds more than Nobu. Why would it be any different about the moment-to-moment activities we enjoy? Note this is very different that what produces a sense of fulfillment on a broader, zoomed-out level. If I think of any abstract weekend a year in the far future, of course my far mode self-image tells me to say I'd prefer to spend it doing a cool hobby like hang gliding than binge watching reality TV. And afterwards, I'll have fonder memories of the hang gliding adventure than the 9th season of The Bachelor. But in the actual day itself, I'm almost certain binge watching is more enjoyable on a moment-to-moment level than hang gliding. There might be some short exhilarating intervals that slightly edge out the dopamine peaks of the reality TV reveals and drama. But the day of hang gliding also involves a ton of boring monotony and sweaty gruntwork. The medians and especially the lows are much more enjoyable vegging out on the couch. What even is the point of driving this home? Because I think the lying is counter-productive to actually changing the behavior. Like the drunk who paints a romantic narrative about how the reason he drinks is to numb the pain, when in reality he's just lazy and undisciplined and really genuinely enjoys getting loaded, especially compared to applying to jobs. If you've deluded yourself into thinking you don't even like some habit, then you've also deluded yourself into how easy you can change that habit. "I don't even like endlessly mindlessly scrolling through my YouTube feed, so all I have to do is build a better system and remove the triggers and it will be a problem". But if you really, really enjoy mindlessly scrolling YouTube, that won't work. Little, arbitrary barriers aren't going to stop you. The only fix is to do the deep psychological work it takes to build discipline and impulse control.
• caffeine 5y ago
  There is a great episode of Jocko podcast with Andre Huberman that just came out where he carefully addresses this specific issue. Worth listening to (it’s in the first hour or so, I mention it because it’s 5 hours long!!)
• epalm 5y ago
  Something that really helped me with YouTube was installing the Unhook browser extension https://unhook.app/ https://unhook.app/ Unhook can remove all 'suggested' videos. The home page will just be blank, and when watching a video, there will be no other video links on the page. This means I can still use YouTube, but I have to search for what I'm looking for. This alone has completely solved the endless video merry-go-round sessions.
  • ericskiff 5y ago
    Thank you! Just installed
    • epalm 5y ago
      No problem! The real problem is "The Feed", the never ending infini-scroll. I don't think it's a coincidence that usually the item you're looking at in The Feed is shorter than the frame, so you can always see at least part of the next item, and when you scroll, you see part of the next item, and so on. I need Unhook for Facebook and Reddit.
• smeej 5y ago
  I had to reach a point where I admitted to myself that, as much as I may wish I were a person who could handle having a smartphone in my pocket, I'm not. If I have one there, it will suck up time I don't want to give it. I tried putting all kinds of guides in place until I just...got a flip phone that, yeah, can run Android apps, but absolutely sucks to use. It doesn't have a touch screen, so I have to navigate with a D pad and type with T9. It's awful. That's paired with a color eInk device that can also run Android apps. It's wonderful for reading things that have discrete pages (ebooks), but awful for anything that moves or requires scrolling. My personal computer sucks too. This happened totally by accident, but I wound up with a machine that won't sleep properly, so I have to shut the thing all the way down every time I'm done using it. It's a pain to use. When I reached the point where I actually wanted to change, I had to make it suck to do the things I used to enjoy. I kind of envy the people who can add smartphones to their lives and have their lives get better. Mine got worse. But at least now, when I'm looking at some free time, I don't want to pull out my phone (I hate using my phone), I might want to read an ebook, and I don't want to pull out my computer. I wish it didn't come to this, but at least it works.
  • el_benhameen 5y ago
    I am much the same way. I use more of a half measure than you, which is to physically remove the phone from my proximity as much as possible unless I’m intentionally trying to zone out. So if I’m working, the phone is in another room on silent. When I’m done with work, I do a hard “screens off” time for family time from 6-9 or so. That, combined with deleting fb/ig and logging out of twitter (still sometimes useful for news so I haven’t deleted it), has helped me exercise more control over my habits versus just sheer willpower.
    • smeej 5y ago
      I think you're in that category of people whose discipline I envy/admire! Half measures are so much better at mitigating the downsides of any tradeoff. I totally recommend them for anyone who can use them and make them work!
  • Crabber 5y ago
• orbit7 5y ago
  I recall life before smart phones either feeling bored or being looked at strangely for sitting on a laptop at a bus stop, not that I cared.
• operon 5y ago
  I am compulsively curious.
• andi999 5y ago
  It just makes you feel slightly better. Same reason why the TV was on 15 years ago. Or the radio 40 years ago.
• sys_64738 5y ago
  It's when you have an power cut for a number of hours do you realize what a waste of time it is. When you have no electric then there's many other things to think about.
• kshacker 5y ago
  Why do we? I am currently in a 25+ people weekly sync up that is completely meandering. I can't do anything productive since it is hard to focus but I can read hacker news or Reddit because it does not strain the mind that much. Do this 9 times a week, and pretty soon it is a habit.
• juanani 5y ago
• praptak 5y ago
  "Procrastination Monkey" series from waitbutwhy is the best treatise on this that I know.
• sarsway 5y ago
  Because we humans have a lot of idle time. We feel like we're wasting it, and we feel we should instead spend time archiving goals, to better ourselves, to do something more meaningful. But that is not how life works. You are just unnecessarily burden yourself with guilt. Thinking you should be doing something else. There are so many things to learn about, so many things to experience, right? We fear on missing out on life, chasing something, but what exactly we don't really know. But maybe you just don't need to? Most of us are exactly fine with where we are. Of course you should always strive to improve, but truth is "killing time" is a big part of life. Especially for top of the food chain animals like humans. Watch some livestreams of lions on youtube, what do they do? 99% of the time they just sit under a tree doing absolutely nothing, and I bet they don't feel guilty about it. People used to walk labyrinths for hours and hours, just to kill time. This whole notion that you need to make the most out of every moment, live life to the fullest, see all the places, chase the uncomfortable! - I don't think it's necessarily the best advice, the happiest people I've met tend to have very simple boring routines.
  • minroot 5y ago
    > People used to walk labyrinths for hours and hours, just to kill time. I walk and ride bicycle just to kill time to this days
  • Sujeto 5y ago
    I agree with this. Not to mention that being idle still involves complex thought processes, like treating traumas and understanding concepts.
  • pugets 5y ago
    Maybe that’s true, but it doesn’t provide me with any comfort. I’m only going to live once. When I’m old and bound to a chair (hopefully due to frailty and not because a psychiatrist strapped me to it), I want to feel like I achieved something more than a passive human existence. All these hours spent consuming forgettable garbage on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and in video games… these are hours not spent learning recipes, making music, writing programs, lifting weights, or practicing Spanish. If I could channel my energy towards these things, then the long-term payoff would be much more enriching. Not only that, but I’d probably be a happier person if I was disconnected from whatever daily drama social media wants me to care about. If I spend the next 10 years of my life the way I spent the last 10, I’ll approach my midlife with no discernible talents, ambitions, or meaningful lived experiences.
• kurofune 5y ago
  >sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much of time on internet I enjoy my time on the internet and I treasure it as a tool for reaching new intellectual heights but not in a straightforward fashion. I speak two languages more than my own native one thanks to the time "wasted" on the internet shitposting on imageboards & forums, watching JP vtuber clips and anime, playing CRPGs or MMORPGs, etc... and that's just the one quantifiable metric I can offer, cause to me it's pretty clear I would be a worse, less polished version of myself if I hadn't spend so much time on the internet running in circles. >not even doing productive work >back to that unproductive and mindless pithole What a tragic and servile mentality to think we are always meant to be productive to deserve enjoying our time on this Earth; guilt-tripping yourself back into the cog in the machine mindset to force yourself to become something you don't really want to be seems a terrible choice. That path will only lead to wearing you down, eroding your actual capability to be productive in the process. PS: Try to improve your experience on the internet by constantly filtering your information sources until you find you stay here useful.
  • bradstewart 5y ago
    I don't think OP is implying all time on the internet is wasted. Or that we are meant to always be productive. Speaking personally, I think all of the time I spent gaming and "hanging out" in specific internet/gaming circles when I was younger was hugely valuable. I think some portion of the time I currently spend reading HN is valuable. But there are absolutely times where I want to be doing something productive, to be accomplishing a task, but I mindlessly browse the internet instead.
• thingification 5y ago
  The mechanism of https://www.beeminder.com/ https://www.beeminder.com/ is unreasonably effective at limiting this kind of thing.
• spark3k 5y ago
  When I was a kid my parents had a big physical encyclopaedia set. I used to lose myself in those things just as much as I scroll through stuff now. Just because in both instances, it’s “interesting”. But my brain doesn’t necessarily discern between “good” interesting and “bad” interesting without me trying to work it out and guiding it. Which I normally fail at.
• devmor 5y ago
  I am addicted to absorbing information. Always have been. I had textbooks about random subjects as a kid (my favorite was a geology book mainly on Groundwater), and my most used computer program before my family got internet access was an interactive encyclopedia.
  • emadabdulrahim 5y ago
    I'm curious, do you feel the motives for your voracious information digest are positive or negative? By that I mean, do you feel you're making up for something by wanting to learn as much as you can about different subjects? perhaps some kind of insecurity? Or is it just good old curiosity about the world and trying to be less ignorant each passing day?
    • devmor 5y ago
      I dont think it's either really. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It's the same feeling I get from binging a snack or spending hours on a video game.
• trophycase 5y ago
  Addiction/Coping Mechanism
• rossjudson 5y ago
  During the pandemic I realized that I love power outages, and we should have more of them. Make them long enough that all the phone batteries run out.
• pythonb3sss 5y ago
  I wouldn't say I'm addicted to them, but when I find myself bored, I open a meme site (which shall remain unnamed) and just look at mildly popular memes. Doesn't matter what they're about. I just like the occasional laugh I get out of them. I also like social topics being turned into dark, twisted humor which is sometimes captured perfectly in memes. But when I was going through a rough patch of my life (depression, suicidal tendencies), I would doom scroll said website every free second I could. I just didn't have anything in my life that gave me joy, apart from dark, twisted memes. I'm doing much better now and even though I am an extreme introvert with social anxiety, I find that I have replaced my time that I would spend on that site with time I spend with my colleagues. I still don't have friends, but Rome wasn't built in a day. Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every once in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I would just keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will make my day a bit more bearable. Just my experience though. IMO, generally speaking, people are spending more and more time on the internet because the products, or rather the content factories, have become so good at capturing and keeping our attention on them, that in comparison the real world seems bleek and bland. EDIT: Fixed some grammar. English not native language
  • s5300 5y ago
    > Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every once in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I would just keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will make my day a bit more bearable. Battling long term physical illness here that is an absolute fucking slog. Can very much relate to this sentiment.
  • davesque 5y ago
    Well said. Internet is a very good coping mechanism.
• willchis 5y ago
  I downloaded Duolingo and now every time my finger itches for reddit/instagram/YT at quiet point, I force myself to do a few exercises on Duo instead. I'm not going to master a language like this, but it feels a bit more worthwhile.
  • juanani 5y ago
• whycombinetor 5y ago
  I read another techno-dystopian rambling within the last 24 hours that this text strongly reminds me of. It even has spelling mistakes too (stratergy). "i swear its always the days where i cannot help but fall asleep during the day, which always starts as a nap that is supossed to take no more than 20 minutes but ultimately takes more than 2 hours, where i learn something great about myself and feel giddy and silly the rest of the day or utterly destroyed by my own previous obliviousness.... i gott lucky today i took a nap today and feel extremely silly, goofy, and content, the euphoric high of a drained and noided individual..(corny i know but whatever) i swear all the computer generated music and single-wavelength light i see looks and sounds a bit better today.... i think the zuck has infiltrated my brain but i kinda like being online idk about yall... i think i have reached the zenith of what consumer culture and the mall aesthetic inspires in people... i feel as if i have traveled back to the extremely-early 2000s and also simultaneously 50 years in the future..." From the description of this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSMaKWzz8Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSMaKWzz8Q
• dcatx 5y ago
  The folks building the internet are very, very good at exploiting our weak points to keep us scrolling. I've recently gotten way more aggressive about managing my screen time because I realized I had become incapable of just sitting in silence and peacefully focusing on a single task — even while working I was constantly using my phone to open Reddit or Twitter or Discord, for reasons that I couldn't explain. My brain needed constant dopamine hits to function and spending more than a few minutes on any particular task was extremely difficult. I've had a lot of success recently by leaving my phone in another room and replacing as much of my non-work screen time as possible with slow, screen-less activity — writing in a notebook, reading real books, walking through the neighborhood (with my phone left at home), gardening, cooking. Basic stuff, but all things that had gradually disappeared from my life as my smart phone and laptop took over every part of my brain. The first few weeks of this were pretty tough, I was constantly looking to where my phone normally would have been and I had to relearn how to just focus on one thing at a time. Now that I'm in the groove my brain feels dramatically more clear and calm and the urge to grab my phone every 30 seconds has mostly faded away. I'm getting more comfortable feeling "bored" again. As a bonus, I've regained my ability to read novels — I've read more fiction this year than I did in the last 10 years combined.
• burntoutfire 5y ago
  ... what else there is to do? The days are 14 hours long (assuming healthy 10 hours of sleep), but I have energy for maybe 4-8 hours of activity on average. Rest of the time needs to be filled with some form of "time wasting".
• layer8 5y ago
  It’s an addiction. The internet works like loot boxes — the randomness with which you find something that gives you a quick dopamine kick keeps you scrolling/refreshing and keeps you coming back.
• goy 5y ago
  And here we are, wasting time to write for the n-th time 'if feel the same". Someone even write it's refreshing ...
• PeterStuer 5y ago
  As opposed to wasting so much time on ... ?
• oicU00 5y ago
  Because my career has curved away from solving problems to find/replacing parameters in template repos
• ruined 5y ago
  sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much time high, not even doing productive work. Just drinking and smoking and sometimes doing lines. Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do this? I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I do, it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. I haven't achieved anything in life, but i want to, i want to own things...i want to have friends...i want to have fun....but this....something is just holding me. I could simply just say i'm lazy, but is that a good reason..why would i even need a reason. I would like to think its not laziness, but then what even is it? And again i will search on the internet about this, find some videos that talk about this, then some people in the comments will say the "i suffer from the same things",,,and then? then i will feel better that there are people that are similar to me....and? guess what? back to the same routine. I am sick of this...its like i know i will not have these comfortable days, these days where i just sit down and stay sober. But what will be at the other side of it? A person who i would envy and want to be like or someone who no one cares about and is pathetic
• hussainbilal 5y ago
  It sounds like their habits are influenced by your environment. Just tie the habit to a new productive habit. Make it work for you. Example 1: start learning a new natural language, and also switch all your social media feeds to only provide content in that language. You'll either lose interest in learning the language and start withdrawing from social media, or your unbreakable habit will sustain your new language learning habit. Example 2: I listen to a lot of music. I don't feel right unless it's running in the background. So I tried learning french and listen to only french pop. It worked for a few months, but then I hit the problem of not being able to pick up spoken (not written) french and parse its grammar while also trying to pick up the phonetics of native speakers. But I then learned about creole and its more flexible and simpler grammars and phonetics. I was able to start thinking in the language using french vocabulary. So I pivoted my habit to learning Haitian Creole and listening to Haitian music.
  • hawksprite 5y ago
    This sounds like a methodology I’d like to try. I’ve not heard of it before. Do you have any suggested Haitian musicians or artists? Thank you for sharing.
    • hussainbilal 4y ago
      You've probably heard of this: atomic habits. The idea of an atomic habit is that there is no disconnect between a habit and the objective you're aiming for. So in this case, the habit was not to learn a new language, but just consistently and constantly engaging with French. When I hit a wall, I doubled down my atomic habit to a simpler macro-french where all my past knowledge would still be applicable due to the etymology heavily influenced from french colonization. I have no suggestion for artists, because the point is to pickup phonetics under variation. If you listen to the same artist, you're only picking up their way of speaking. i.e. I'm guilty of playing dubmatique and maitre-gims on loop. Did nothing for improving my ability to parse a spoken french sentence in real-time. I just ended up memorizing the lyrics. I suggest listening to pop music on shuffle, even if it's not your cup of tea. Pop music is usually very good with enunciating words. Additionally in my experience, pop music lyrics align really well with a language's IDF.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• coldtea 5y ago
  >why do you waste so much time on the internet. Because it's better than your regular life and what you have to do at work. And nothing realistic will give you the means to go beyond those.
• whoomp12342 5y ago
  grayscale your phone. Its subtle psychology that keeps you coming back
• gcheong 5y ago
  " I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I do, it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. " You could view it as a failure or you could view it as something that worked for 2-3 days and go from there.
• daenz 5y ago
  I waste time on the internet when I am "compiling" My thoughts. Being in knowledge work, like many others here, means that most of the work is performed by thinking about a problem. After the problem has a good solution or set of solutions, there's only so much active thinking you can continue to do about it. I like to take a break and screw around while the solutions percolate some more. I usually see something I didn't afterwards.
• Havoc 5y ago
  I've personally focused on improving the quality rather than trying to push down the time. i.e. browse more /r/selfhosted and less /r/ukpolitics Leaves me in a slightly better mental state - less continuous outrage vibes. And same for twitter - I never post, and follow a handful of the hn gang basically. Not perfect but adjusting reddit subs and follows is a mechanical actionable action you can take and get done today where "spend less time" is a vague aspiration for the future that requires continuous motivation
• zackmorris 5y ago
  For me it's because I come up with roughly 10-100 ideas per day that I'd like to do, but there is (and will never be) enough time to do them all. So I live vicariously through all of the other people doing the tiny handful of things that they manage to do in their entire lives. This brings me down periodically, but then I remember that time is an illusion, and our perception that we're wasting time on the internet would seem comical to people who had never seen it (as recently as 1995) and will be remembered with fondness when we near the singularity (as soon as 2035). Practicing non-attachment and understanding that this is not forever has really helped me rise above the downward spiral of depression, back to the upward spiral of gratitude for being here as part of the human experience.
• MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  When I was a child, my father decided to convert from Catholicism to Evangelical Protestantism. For reference, both sides of my family have been Catholic going all the way back for at least 300 years. So a schism occurred. My dad dragged me to his church services and wasted my entire Sunday mornings, and my sisters remained in the Catholic faith. My mom told me on the day that I was to first go to his church service that if I went with him, that she was not my mother anymore. So I went with my dad, because even at that age, I didn't do emotional terrorism. Because this was in the 80s and we only had one television, books were my refuge. I was a voracious reader. In standardized testing, I went from having a 1st grade reading ability in 1st grade to college level by 3rd grade. That tapered off because I wasn't a huge fan of reading fiction and I had basically read all the interesting non-fiction in the local library by 5th grade. Being an 80s kid, I had a lot more personal autonomy than kids since and started spending a ton of time outdoors, riding my bike to go fishing and playing sports outdoors. When it got really cold, I'd write code in GW-Basic, but that was mostly to enter competitions to miss school (state science fair for the win). So then I got to college, and was able to browse the web on NCSA Mosaic. And there was just TONS of new things to read. My ADHD went full blast reading article after article and my grades suffered a bit. Every new day is an attempt to avoid falling down the rabbit hole.
• escapedmoose 5y ago
  I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on the social media, not really enjoying myself. I tried taking breaks for a month or so at a time, but would get sucked right back in because of some dumb meme or hype train or something. Then after a while something snapped. I realized everything I saw online was extremely boring and shallow, and I had no desire to see it. I didn’t log out of any of my socials, and I still have the apps installed, I just have 0 desire to use them. Same goes for news sites and blogs (I used to read an article or two a day on at least a dozen sites). I don’t know what in my brain changed, but I’m glad it did because now I get about 4 hours of every day back. Most of what’s online is just so pointless, but even worse, it’s not very enjoyable, and is often anxiety-inducing. I’d rather literally stare at the ceiling and just let my mind wander. Hacker News is the last site I still frequent, but even this has seemed extremely dull lately.
  • swah 5y ago
    Do you still have interest in other things like reading, movies or exercising? Or its a general dullness?
    • escapedmoose 5y ago
      Not a general dullness. I’ve gotten really into things I’ve never been interested in before, like gardening, bike-riding, and strength training. And there are several old nerdy hobbies I still enjoy—the internet is just very suddenly not one of them.
• hintymad 5y ago
  The cure does not come from discipline but from finding things that are more fun to do. I'd rather read a book or tinker with a program instead of wasting time on the internet, but somehow my phone alone still recorded at least more than three hours of use and usually sometimes more than four. Reflecting upon this, I identified two reasons for such irrational behavior. First, I was afraid of getting carried away from reading a book, while checking timeline of twitter seems non-committing. Second, this little dose of dopamine from reading a short update from the internet seems really addictive. Luckily, I find a treatment that seems working: 1. I realize that reading a book or a long article is not as addictive as before, for whatever reason. In addition, I use a timer to remind myself just in case. 2. I surround myself with many types of books, videos, articles, magazines, and some exercise routines and equipment. Whenever I have an urge to take a break, I first ask myself if I really need to get distracted. It's amazing how awareness itself can reduce the urge to check updates from the internet. If I do want to take a break, I pick the book/video/article/exercise that's most appealing at the moment. This little trick works quite well. My phone usage has been consistently below 2 hours, with nearly half of them coming from reading Kindle and Apple Books. I finished multiple books in the past few months, including tombs like Programming Rust, and Isaacson's Leonardo Da Vinci. I wish I could spend even less time on social media, but at least I can see concrete improvement now.
• notreallyserio 5y ago
  I waste time on the internet because I don't have enough contiguous blocks of time to do anything productive or interesting outside of work (which is boring and repetitive and not automatable). I'm hoping to retire early so I can spend time on better things.
• mescaline 5y ago
  Ads, mostly. If you work on ads, or support ads, fuck you.
• chrsig 5y ago
  The author's post aligns with a lot of ADHD narrative. If the author is reading, consider getting evaluated. That said, why do we spend so much time not being productive? Because we're not obligated to be productive 24/7. It's ok that you're browsing youtube instead of being productive! You're demanding too much from yourself -- not because you can't live up to it, but because the expectations are too damn high.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  I spend many hours on the internet because it is endless source of information plus I listen music when I'm doing research. I can also say I'm not enjoying it 10/10 but I'm addicted to information and I'm in pursuit of knowledge.
• fabk 5y ago
  There is something in the animal brain that enjoys _variable reinforcement_ more than other kinds of behavioral reinforcement. I am not an expert, but if something gives you a reward _partially randomly_ -- e.g., the one cool (or otherwise captivating) post on Facebook that sometimes comes out of the 200 you scrolled through -- this kind of reinforcement produces the behaviors most resistant to extinction. See "Effects of different types of simple schedules" on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement.
• antipaul 5y ago
  I have started hiding my personal laptop behind a drawer. Phone too
• XCSme 5y ago
  > Why do you waste so much time on the internet? Because our brain doesn't like to get bored. We need to constantly do things. Also, the brain doesn't really like to start doing the right thing because that feels too much like work, even though once we start being productive we do feel good and enjoy it.
• chefandy 5y ago
  This sounds like a major depressive episode. A very experienced psychologist recently told me that even folks with no hint of mental health trouble started having a hard time with motivation and mood in the pandemic, but many with existing tendencies towards depressive states were plunged straight into oblivion. Talk therapy and medication can be a big help, but CBT exercises can also help if you're against using medication and can't imagine going into a deep dive about your feelings with a therapist. Even if it's not depression, this poster should talk to a psychologist. They're not able to right the ship themselves which doesn't bode well for it improving on its own. Finding a therapist sucks but telemedicine is more accessible than ever at this point. As an aside— folks love dismissing mental health concerns by saying things like "everybody has a hard time getting motivated." That completely ignores the scope of the problem— it's no different from telling someone their motorcycle accident is no big deal because kids fall off their bikes all the time. There's a boatload of peer reviewed research out there that discusses the debilitating effects of depression. Go read it if you're skeptical— I'm not your research assistant.
  • motoboi 5y ago
    For those who didn't get the memo: Be warned, folks! Depression is not about sadness, but about not being able to do things. If you are feeling incapable of doing things, like physically siting in front of the computer and not being able to do any work, you are probably depressed. Sometimes you'll sit in front of the computer, try to start some task but somehow end opening hackeer news, digg, youtube. Seek help as soon as possible, do not wait until you are fired.
    • 331c8c71 5y ago
      > Sometimes you'll sit in front of the computer, try to start some task but somehow end opening hackeer news, digg, youtube. I have to strongly disagree. If that kind of behavior gets out of control it sounds like typical adhd. One still wants to do stuff but unable to get oneself into actually doing it. Depression IMO is when one starts losing motivation and ability to derive pleasure from activities that were normally pleasant.
• peter_retief 5y ago
  You need more coffee.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• sdo72 5y ago
  I think the internet just feeds what most people want or our minds want. It can be in a form of happiness, agreement, entertainment, etc... It's just part of spending time on things that we like to do. It may be considered as wasteful to some, but may not since that's what we want. There are many people who have tried to quit and eventually gotten back because life out there may be boring, at least to their mind temporarily. Until there're some serious conditions that cripple our physical bodies, then we consider some changes. I think it's all a part of living things. We don't normally say "why does human waste so much time on earth?"
• modinfo 5y ago
  Honestly I have the same problem, but I found a very simple solution to be productive. The problem is not the internet itself, but a fast internet that allows you to watch videos. A simple and yet very effective solution is to have 64kbps internet, at first sight it sounds absurd, but actually it's a very good solution for people who want to be productive, with such internet you can easily browse the most important sites like Stackoverflow/GitHub/HN, download packages from npmjs or use IRC/SSH. I've been working on 64kbps for two years now and if it wasn't so, I wouldn't get as much as I did thanks to the low speed internet.
• darioush 5y ago
  Usually this happens when I am bored or blocked at work or I am in a meeting where there is nothing for me to say or do 90% of the time. Slack creates a culture that is built around response time but often topics on slack are low urgency and of little long term value. Heavy use of slack requires people to be around synchronously and inevitably people will be blocked on others. This is inefficient. Daily stand-ups are a similar routine that provides not much value in terms of unblocking people. I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack.
  • satsuma 5y ago
    > I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack. this is (at least how i'm reading it) a similar issue i've seen in hobby spaces that have moved from forums to platforms like discord for support. discord is great for right now collaboration but the archival process is like pulling teeth. it leads to repeated questions being asked because threads aren't often used and one problem's solution is mishmashed in with ten other conversations. sometimes there are links to a wiki in the discord, which is nice. but it's still only sometimes, and if you have a problem that hasn't come up yet, you're stuck navigating discord.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  We are sensory creatures. The brain used to have to move the body along to see new things, but now it has realized that it is far more efficient (calorie-wise) to sit and bring sensations to the eyes (mind’s eye as well). If you weren’t reading/viewing with your eyes/ears, what are you missing? Taste, but you can eat while viewing. Touch, this is missing, but the negative survival/health feedback loop is slow, so we ignore the loss of touch i nour lives. Smell, this is missing, but we can smell our food. Basically it is inevitable that the future of humanity will spend more and more time stationary while enjoying the internet.
• 29athrowaway 5y ago
  RSS was better. You could mark feed items as read and save time. Feeds that do not implement mark as read are an waste of time.
• ge96 5y ago
  Can't afford to move out to some place with land yet. Otherwise I'd spend a lot of my time tinkering with stuff outside. I always have something playing whether it's music or tv (form of YT or some Netflix-type place mostly YT though). Also my friends are not in the same state as I am so I don't really have a life.
• taurusnoises 5y ago
  I'm repeatedly amazed by what makes it to the front page on HN. I'm not judging, really I'm not, but this is the first post on a blog (so, basically unknown) and is essentially two paragraphs asking "why is it so hard to not stare at the internet all day?" I'm stoked for the author to be getting some HN love, but what about this deserves such an esteemed placement on HN??? It's literally the same question every single person is asking and has probably posted a thousand times before.
  • metadat 5y ago
    We like thought provoking discussion.
    • taurusnoises 5y ago
      As do I. I'm just genuinely curious how this caught people's eye. There's no way through the sea of "content" that these two paras could stick out without an artificial boost.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• sedatk 5y ago
  Dopamine addiction. Thank you for attending my TED talk.
• albertTJames 5y ago
  Because I have absolutely nothing else than work in my life. Staying connected constantly is the only way I excape the dread of the abyss.
• neriymus 5y ago
  I have the EXACT same problem. Constantly refreshing and refreshing insta, reddit, hackernews, etc etc. Shameless plug, I built this to try to curb my addiction -> https://github.com/neriymus/Fetcher https://github.com/neriymus/Fetcher, maybe it'll help someone else.
• galgot 5y ago
  I think there is a kind of zapping effect with that. The internet is a constantly changing thing with informations constantly added, and our brain is rewarded with a bit of dopamine each time we find a new interesting stuff for us (even very small, and can be completely unconscious) . Not that we will keep our attention to the new found stuff very long, it’s just the fact of finding something new that becomes an unconscious reward, thus this endless zapping.
• gerash 5y ago
  The Tiktok, Instagram feed or YT feed (or even HN feed or any other news feed) feel like snack food. They taste more delicious than other food but at the same time we aren't evolved to consume them in huge amounts so too much consumption is harmful. So we always need ways to constrain the amount of snack food and snack media we consume
• oldinternet 5y ago
  The internet is where we learn, create, express, communicate, and be. The internet is the most interconnected part of our world.
• djsamseng 5y ago
  Find something better. Don’t quit social media. Don’t restrict yourself by setting rules you’ll break a few days later. Why? Because it doesn’t work. Life can be and will be about what you are passionate about. So sure go ahead and enjoy wasting time on the internet. But after 15-30 minutes when it’s no longer enjoyable but rather you are seeking that enjoyment you first had, get up and try something new. It might be awful (so one and done), but it also might be amazing. It might just become the activity you wake up excited to do every day that social media/web scrolling doesn’t even compare to.
• geniium 5y ago
  So I can reply to that kind of question
• rocky1138 5y ago
  I experience this and go through periods where I get away from it all by setting Reddit and other sites to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts file.
• LeoPanthera 5y ago
  I'm approaching my 50s, and for me, it's because I am still astounded by the achievement of a global, low-cost, communications network. When I was a child, international phone calls were still rare, expensive, and unreliable things, and if you left your home country, staying in touch mostly involved getting newspapers from home (24 hours late), or maybe getting lucky and receiving shortwave radio broadcasts like the BBC World Service or Voice of America. First getting internet access seemed amazing, and for me it's still amazing. Even when you were first tethered to a copper phone line, that line seemed like a pipe to the entire world. Cellular internet blew my mind, and satellite technologies like Starlink are blowing my mind again. What an absolute privilege to be living in an age of almost universal global communication.
  • ineedasername 5y ago
    Yes, I remember that early thrill of a chat room or forum where I was communicating with someone on the other side of world. And not only that, the marginal cost to do so was practically free once I already had a cheap second hand computer and a dialup connection, and during college my school ran a free dialup ISP for times when I was at home. The shine has worn off though. The fact that you might be 10,000 miles away or even typing you comments from the International Space Station no longer thrills me. It's all become mundane. (Well, if it was the ISS then I suppose that would still be pretty awesome)
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Because large companies have built the most popular places on the internet to intentionally be addictive (but call it engagement instead). Their massive wealth relies on converting engagement into ad spend.
• ggregoire 5y ago
  Broader questions for the author: - Is entertainment a waste of time? - What's "too much" when we talking about entertainment consumption? Where is the limit? - Do you consider YouTube/Instagram a form of entertainment? If not, why not?
• ahallock 5y ago
  The why is easy. I mean, you basically have infinite entertainment and information at your fingertips. And it's all tailored to your interests. This is unprecedented. I don't think anything comes remotely close in human history.
• lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  Right now it's because I don't want to go and do the thing that makes me sad to even think about. Sometimes it's because I am frustrated with the thing I'm supposed to be doing. Well, now I will go make food and tell myself I will do the sad thing afterwards.
• jmrm 5y ago
  No one mentioned, but when we are here, looking anything at the screen, we aren't thinking about those thing we don't want to do, and this could be a coping mechanism to avoid doing those things. After a severe burnout I would also say that we need some time everyday to not do anything who require some mental or physical energy, and that could be browsing the internet, watching the TV, or just laying in the sofa looking at the ceiling.
• holyknight 5y ago
  Everything on the internet is made to be as addictable as possible. Anyways i don't "love" social media, but I just want to have free time to spare, but between my job and my wife only Friday nights are the only time i can really enjoy and i mostly don't enjoy it as much because I'm exhausted from the week and I just want to sleep. I use social media in between my daily life as a guilty pleasure to feel free to waste some time in some mindless shit without having to plan anything.
• swayvil 5y ago
  Sometimes I have intelligent conversations about stuff that matters to me. I really like that. Admittedly, it can be like sifting a public beach for pennies. And 99.999% of the time I end up talking to people who can't see a paving brick if it's wedged under their eyelid. But I suspect that a really eloquent style can penetrate even the thickest. Well, I suspect it less lately. And I just like talking to people.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Recovering from eye surgery. Nothing else I can do.
• stevecalifornia 5y ago
  Install a scheduled host blocker and block all your time wasters until the hours of 10PM until midnight. Don't be afraid to admit that the moment you feel a touch of boredom you reflexively type 'reddit'. Tools like 'Freedom.to' block these time sinks and you don't even realize how frequently you visit these sites until you get the block notification. After a week or two your cured.
• kabdib 5y ago
  A week ago I deleted my Twitter account. Today I'm deleting my Reddit account. I'm keeping Facebook simply to stay in touch with family and a few friends, otherwise it would definitely go. I'm on the fence about HN, but it will probably go as well. These online communities are a net negative in my life, and I'm done.
  • b555 5y ago
    when folks talk about going cold turkey like this, I have a question for them - do you think they were a net negative or our capability to moderate our use of these social media was not controllable?
    • kabdib 5y ago
      I think that platforms like Reddit and Twitter have been designed and tuned to keep people in "violent agreement". I found myself engaging in conversations that ultimately were just a time sink. I have better things to do with my time. I think I wasted two years of my life doom scrolling. Time to be done. We'll see about HN. This might be my last comment here.
  • fbrncci 4y ago
    I deleted Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and other social accounts five years ago. Now I am refreshing HN all day, and other sites too. This problem really not about the platform, its about the consumer here.
• lbriner 5y ago
  I suspect lots of different reasons but for me I think it is simply catharsis to engage with something that doesn't require effort or reaction unless I want to, I can just consume. This helps my brain recover from the focussed deliberate work I do during the day. Of course, this does beg the question, if we took steps to stop doing it, would it give us more time to do useful focussed work or would we instead just watch TV, read a book, go to the part or whatever.
• FoolishOne 5y ago
  Because it sucks my brain away from the real world to the virtual world!
• inafewwords 5y ago
• laurex 5y ago
  I think an underappreciated aspect of this phenomenon is loneliness. Many of the things that suck us in (including HN) have this aspect of being with other people, though they don't actually lead to us feeling actually known or cared about in the same way as our bodies/minds evolved for. Thus, it's very easy to feel an ambient loneliness, go online where there are other people saying things, sharing things, sending us emails (even if they are not actually "to us" like newsletters) and getting sucked in, then feeling like "where did that time go" because it was not really an investment in any of those top-of-pyramid needs, but instead 'empty calories' of socializing.
• senjin 5y ago
  I know exactly why I do it and it feels impossible to stop. I scroll endlessly to avoid the pain of everything else in life. Doing work, doing chores, doing hobbies, talking to anyone, making decisions even about projects I'm excited to work on, it all causes a small hit of emotional pain. I don't really know where this pain comes from either. Maybe some childhood trauma that I can't even remember? I don't know. The 2nd part that cements this into what feels like an unbreakable habit is that I feel like I'm constantly learning. It's partly true, I'm constantly learning about things that have even benefited me and my team at work, but in general it's low quality garbage I'm learning about or just the surface of a good/useful topic. Like the author I have recognized this and done research on it and have no idea how to fix it. I remember finding the word akrasia [1] years ago that has stuck with me since but no help actually getting past it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia
  • drpotato 5y ago
    Mate, if you haven’t already, go talk with a therapist. I’ve struggled with avoidance my entire adult life – avoiding awkwardness, pain, risk, “bad”emotions, difficult conversations, conflict – and talking with a professional has really helped me.
    • rchaud 5y ago
      Much like making new friends past university, therapists are a crapshoot. Some simply aren't a good fit or have poor sofa-side manner or fail to develop a sense of trust. If the therapy is part of an employer funded benefit, you also only get a limited number of sessions, and only with the employer-approved provider.
      • bluefirebrand 5y ago
        Also, your employer funded therapist will likely have a specific mandate to basically help you get back to work, meaning no longterm solutions or help, only bandaids.
        • 5y ago
• adra 5y ago
  If you have social media apps, TURN off notifications, block them forever! I also tried using greyscale screen modes in accessibility and I found it cut my phone usage in half. Definitely a cheap win for me to the point that I barely ever use my phone for "idle" time anymore, and certainly not "the" place I go to satisfy my need to spend time.
  • 331c8c71 5y ago
    I don't get how people could have them on. I have a tendency to put my phone in absolutely silent mode so it's a pain to find at home -- simply calling doesn't work)))
• oliv__ 5y ago
  This link should be pinned to the top of HN permanently: what a time saver! I've impulsively opened up HN at least 5 times today, then closed the tab feeling shamed by this link haha.
  • praptak 5y ago
    HN has built in antiprocrastination controls.
• tOUSSia 5y ago
  finally a hackernews article I feel qualified to have an opinion on...
• 65 5y ago
  If you live in the boring suburbs where you have to drive everywhere to do things and see people, then yeah there's basically nothing to do except watch television and browse the internet. My general theory of existence is that your environment makes up a huge portion of your overall wellbeing. Boredom, happiness, depression, anxiety - it all comes from your environment. If you set your life up in such a way that the only thing to do is browse the internet, then yeah... you're going to waste a lot of time on the internet. Trying to block the sites, to resist the temptation, etc. is not going to work if there's nothing else to fill your time with.
  • davesque 5y ago
    This comment sums up what I was trying to say in another comment quite nicely, except in a more direct and practical way. Sometimes, I feel like this boring dystopia you describe is found in so many places as to seem inescapable. It's something intrinsic to modern life. Every building looks the same. Every road looks the same. Everyone's clothes and haircuts look the same. Everyone has the same attitude. Why? As Steve Ballmer would say, "Corporations, corporations, corporations, corporations." What do we get when the entire world, both physically and mentally, is shaped by the same style of hierarchy whose sole purpose is to extract human effort from the population for cash while ignoring the long term cost?
  • rakejake 5y ago
    +1. I came to the same conclusion. The pandemic sped up the timeline of my mental processes and illustrated all the holes in my model of the world. That way, I am glad this lockdown happened before I made any life-altering and hard-to-reverse decisions.
• goldenshale 5y ago
  I wonder if this is why the internet hasn't led to the dramatic increase in productivity that one would have predicted a global communications network would have produced? Instead we are turning ourselves into mice with a dopamine feed on tap. Maybe we need to find ways to value creation far more than consumption. Missing new and cool ideas is peanuts in comparison to creating something from nothing, whether that be art, technology, or friendship.
• davesque 5y ago
  I think we'd all be spending more time doing things that are "worthwhile" if we felt like they were worth the while. As it stands, I think the vacuousness of modern day life is hiding in plain view. Why put more effort in at work if it just amounts to a lifetime of toil for only the chance at a few years of rest far outside of your prime? Why bother learning something when you have the keen sense that a thousand other people are already working on it who are more talented and resourced than you? Long story short, we live in a world now that doesn't much value people but rather strives to capitalize on the value that people represent. Corporations and institutions have been given relatively free reign to kick people below the belt of their attention and to try and squeeze another ounce of effort, however misdirected, out of them. It's all a numbers game.
• u2077 5y ago
  Stress for me is an equation. When # things I need to do > # things I want to do, I become more stressed. Although each task has a weight to it as well. Needs are weighted on importance and wants are weighted on desire. This allows the “stress scale” to tip with many tasks or a few larger tasks.
• dgunay 5y ago
  For me it feels like at some point, I stopped feeling like I could throw myself into hobbies that require real engagement. Long video games, deep dive coding, instrument practice sessions, etc. Once I got a job, partner, and pets, at any moment something can demand my attention. Enough times of having to abandon a multiplayer game, break concentration, break my flow, and at some point I just started choosing to do things that have zero commitment. I still play games, but only ones that I feel I can drop at a moment's notice and don't require practice. Music is a faint echo of the presence it used to be in my life. The only thing I still get to do every single day is code, because I have to do it in order to live. I also feel the loss of the "third spaces" in my life. It used to be a few select hangout spots with my friends, then it was the rest of the college campus. I've lived in a car dependent hellscape my entire life and it only got worse when I moved to the US capital of suburban sprawl for work. None of my friends live within ten miles of me anymore.
• davesque 5y ago
  I love how this very rough but very honest and relatable expression of despair over the loss of self control has won out over all the other tech news right now. That says a lot.
• johnvega 5y ago
  Attention hijacking becomes micro-habbits that become a rourtine. After just a few days, it becomes very difficult to undo, even if being aware of what's going on. This is what I understood from Tristan Harris several years ago and it's still happening today.
• 1024core 5y ago
  My habit of scrolling through my FB feed endlessly went away after I unsubscribed from every "friend"'s feed. I had random people in there, people I had met just once, or people I had dated just once, or even one-night stands and FWBs. One day I scrolled through the feed and for every item in the list, I clicked "unfollow". Soon, my feed was practically empty, except for the feeds of a couple of cooking pages I follow, and friends who rarely post.
• jbjbjbjb 5y ago
  Unless you’re at work, on vacation or meant to be spending time with others at dinner or some social event it’s ok to waste time on the internet. You were not going to do something useful anyway. Before the internet people watched too much tv, played video games, read the newspaper, watched the news on repeat, read crappy books, ate crap, drank, smoked. We need downtime stop the self-flagellation.
• roguas 5y ago
  The algorithm. It can offer you a very decent local maximum. So you keep riding the wave of decent local maximum. If you stray from this path you might find a better value but you also may find (more often than not) no progress at all. For the bigger journeys "career" and what not I do not recommend to follow local maximum paths you will go very on the surface and true fun is in the depth.
• omalleyt 5y ago
  Variable reward schedules. Like slot machines.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• grappler 5y ago
  I set a points threshold on what hacker news stories I see. This article broke through that threshold even though it is not worth my time, so the thing I'm going to do immediately after posting this comment is raise the threshold some more. That's the action that should always follow, any time something gets through the filter. Make the filter more restrictive. Over time, that should clear out the low value things.
  • ineedasername 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, what's your threshold?
    • grappler 4y ago
      It's now 700 points
• llaolleh 5y ago
  It's the hedonic dopamine treadmill. It's not the content that drives this endless dopatrain, it's the nice UI and interactivity of the spinning window and flashing pages.
• mikotodomo 5y ago
  I only use it for 1 or 2 hours a day. But this was one of my worries about becoming a programmer. Will it cause me to spend ten hours a day on the computer?
• annadane 5y ago
  I think the problem is I don't waste enough time on the internet (where 'waste' is a loaded word) - there's so much on there and yet I'm relegated to the same 5 or 10 pages I always go to
• fleddr 5y ago
  When you're past the denial stage, you're already halfway there. Glass half full and such. From the blog it is clear that the real problem is a lack of a meaningful physical/social life, as the person indicates they have no friends, hobbies, etc. Therefore, none of the tips on cutting down screen time are likely to address the fundamental issue. If you free up time this way but have no better purpose for this time, you still end up in the same spot. So you need to rebuild your physical/social life and I have a solution at hand: volunteer work. An animal shelter is incredibly fun and rewarding work. Another thing I tried is to help out the elderly. Where I live you can volunteer to "walk" them. You can chose the commitment in hours per week. These people are very old, typically lonely, and immobile. So I go outside with them, push the wheelchair whilst chatting with them. I figured this would actually kind of suck, a job nobody wants to do. I was totally wrong, it's awesome. They are so incredibly grateful and the chats are tons of fun. They're full of stories. In case you're socially awkward (I personally am not), this is a safe way to practice just making casual conversation. The great thing about volunteer work is that you will be universally accepted and LOVED, there's no anxiety of being rejected like you might have in making new friends. The reward is infinite. I'm a stoic but truly there is nothing in this world more rich and rewarding than the response you get from helping others. You can see it in their eyes. This tiny commitment from your side means the world to them. A beacon of light in darkness. Your work changes lives and you get to feel good about yourself. Your time has meaning and you have meaning. Volunteer work is also a great proxy to get to know the community, make new friends, etc. Do it. Look it up in the local directory and just try it.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• bricemo 5y ago
  The simple answer is machine learning algorithms. AI are very effective at this, it is the same thing at YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok. They will optimize to get you to want to come back
• qiskit 5y ago
  Why not? What should we waste our time on instead?
• mfgs 5y ago
  Once you have an internet connected phone or PC (as we all do) then the cost in physical or mental effort, time, or money to click another link or watch another video is basically zero. It also gives relatively high levels of dopamine as you're constantly seeing or learning new things. So with practically no barrier to sitting there longer and a constant stream of stimulation the cost to benefit _ratio_ is incredibly low, arguably lower than anything else we're likely to do regularly. Any real world activity, which all require time and mental or physical effort, yield likely a much higher cost to benefit ratio. Wasting time on the internet is basically just the path of least resistance and the best "deal" in your own mental economy.
• karmakaze 5y ago
  I only have a certain amount of energy to be creative or productive so I spend my other hours somehow on tradional media (music, movies) or consuming internet content or videogames. I don't fool myself that it's anything but. I could spend more time IRL but my patterns haven't changed back since lockdowns even though largely lifted. Maybe this summer will be the time.
• hathawsh 5y ago
  Sometimes I also spend too much time on mild entertainment. The solution, for me, has always been to identify what I'm afraid of. For me, procrastination always seems to be rooted in some hidden fears, and if I bring those fears to the forefront, I can understand them better and work on them. Once the fears are quelled, progress is no longer difficult. Therapy helps you get out of a funk. Therapy takes many forms. As another poster suggested, volunteer work can be one of the best and most effective kinds of therapy. The important thing is to recognize that while you can very likely achieve many of the things you want to do, you probably need help to do it. People really do enjoy helping you (especially if you are grateful for their help.)
• aaron695 5y ago
• Frodo478 5y ago
  I think that there are remedies to overcome your situation. First of all try to remove the source of distraction and force yourself to take only one thing at a time. Open a webpage and read it entirely, read a book from start to finish (not necessary in a single day), try to work on your tasks without background music or podcast. Eliminating the distraction usually improve productivity. Second try meditation. You can think that is a "radical chic" rubbish, but it really works. Start reading "Zen and Japanese Culture" and "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" and try to practice meditation, maybe with the help of an expert. You will see an improvement on focus and clear thinking. Third, take time off your pc. If you understand that most of what you doing in front of the PC is not valuable, just close it and go out, or read a book, practice sport, cook, etc. Learn to recognise when you're waisting time and do something else. Try to make time at the pc more valuable. Use it for coding and research, not much more. Improvements take time and consistency. We're used to get everything fast, but your cannot buy self-improvement in a course or a book. So start with basic steps and stop complaining.
• synergy20 5y ago
  811 points 428 comments so far and staying at the top at HN for a full day, that alone explains "why do you waste so much time on the internet?" :) I spent about two hours online daily for job-unrelated stuff, on average: 30 minutes youtube, 30 minutes twitter, 30 minutes HN, and 30 minutes email/general news etc. Half of the time is wasted. As software developer we're trying to optimize our code for the CPU all the time, but we're wasting our own CPU, the brain, which is ironic.
  • santa_boy 5y ago
    Seriously! Now, I will end up spending 3 hrs trying to figure out why `807 points and 426 comments` for such a trivial and common experience!
    • bigthymer 4y ago
      It is one of those experiences people ruminate about on their own about but this post has given us an opportunity to talk about it with others that experience the same.
• yarg 5y ago
  Because it has a significantly lower cognitive overhead than the more complicated shit that I'm working on.
  • yarg 5y ago
    And because I'm procrastinating when it comes around to learning the bloody rust borrow checker; but I need to know at least one WASM language.
• LiquidPolymer 5y ago
  I’m going out salamander hunting tonight. The target is the Pacific Giant Salamander. I’ve been a pro photographer and producer for nearly 30 years. If I’m successful, if I get interesting footage- you folks might see it. My Tik Toc record is 60 million. FB is 120 million. Instagram is 11 milllion. I have no idea if these stats are correct (I have trust issues with these services). Yet I don’t engage with SM personally but make decent $$ from it. It all seems so shallow and fake. Yet here I am being paid for content. I’m looking forward to the adventure. Meeting people in person. Driving for hours, crawling around remote streams till 2AM. Getting wet in the rain. Feeling uncomfortable- either too warm, too cold, or too wet. Sleeping the sleep of the exhausted whenever I get to my bed. I’ve withdrawn from the internet more and more. I’m not clean. I’m not a purest. The internet is an incredible window to the world. I use it frequently. But it is more polluted by blatant $$ and manipulation (which I profit from). But my 24 year old daughter is consumed by the online world. So many sedentary hours scrolling. Fearful of genuine human interaction. Fearful of the discomforts of the real world. I’m paying more and more for mental health care for her. I invite her to these adventures. She just went to Mexico with me. She had panic attacks followed by profound depression. It breaks my heart. She barely left the Airbnb. What are we doing? What am I doing? I used to think I was contributing to a better world.
• a_square_peg 5y ago
  Perhaps it's just a series of dopamine hits but there is some strange feeling of being satiated from consuming new information while browsing. It's only when I switch off I realize that there is no substance to it or even worse, I have information embedded in my head that I would rather not know but even knowing this, when I'm back online, it's almost like I'm being hypnotized and in a trance, in a much weaker way, but one where it's become addictively comforting. It's become a real struggle for me.
• wly_cdgr 5y ago
  I dunno man, why do you waste so much time working?
• Vladimof 5y ago
  Why do I waste all my time on the internet?
• alephnan 5y ago
  > haven't achieved anything in life, but i want to, i want to own things Funny this is actually when you’ve “achieved” financial* success you kind of don’t want to own things.
• noduerme 5y ago
  I'm in my 40s. I've been online since dialup BBS's in the 80s. I never had this kind of addiction to screens before the pandemic took away all my other outlets for novelty and interpersonal communication. I loved to travel, to go out every night, meet people in person. It's terrible. It's a terrible world we've created. I'm really scared for the generation of kids who are growing up with no memory of what human interaction was like before this. I think it's lowered my IQ significantly. And I think it's worse for people with curious minds, people who are formatted to absorb information. When I was a kid, I read the encyclopedia for fun. I was on the debate team. I ran forums. 90% of my interactions were offline. There was a gradient between real life and online life that made online life a tool, not a habit. The current modality of endless scrolling harnesses both the debating impulse and the information-gathering impulse in the most harmful, least useful, most meaningless way possible. I'm an alcoholic, and I smoke cigarettes. I am sure the modern internet is worse than both those things for my health and mental well-being. Having struggled with other addictions, I'm really only just starting to recognize it for what it is. I think I need to find some kind of AA for internet junkies. Sitting around with a bunch of sad sacks and drinking bad coffee can't be worse than whatever I was doing at 4am last night.
• awsrocks 5y ago
• cyranodeshell 5y ago
  I find it interesting that most of the top replies here skew philosophical - death of religion, boredom due to being at the top of the food chain, and so on. In my opinion my relationship to wasting time on the internet more resembles what I know about chemical addiction. I want to quit it, but I can't, and it's because when I turn away from it I crave the feel-good juice I get from mindlessly scrolling through twitter. I have concluded that I am not mentally strong enough to quit - and I consider myself to be reasonably happy and fulfilled in life other than the outrageous amount of time I spend online.
• archhn 5y ago
  I didn't read the article. My response is addressed to the headline. I waste so much time on the internet because I'm alone. I'm an atomized worker drone spawned from a pipeline designed to service corporations and governments. I have very little personal human contact. Sometimes I walk the streets at night. I see a glowing box in almost every window. Almost everyone is extracting parasocial interactions from their TV sets as they mostly lay alone at night. I crave human interaction. The internet is the only place where I can feel connected to others. That's why I'm here, that's why I waste so much time on the internet: it makes me feel more connected, less alone.
• dghughes 5y ago
  For me I've found over my 27 years of browsing (I'm 53) for each decade there is less substance and more fluff. There's far more stuff out there on the Internet for sure but much I find is vapid and that seems to be attractive. Like fast food it's empty calories but satisfying. Years ago it took effort to be on the Internet you made sure the phone was available, you started a program, a dial-up modem connected (or not), you opened up Internet application not a Web application. It took work just to get to step 1 now it's instant. More and more interactions but no substance just people trying to be witty - so much witticism, memes, echo chambers, anger. Now I find I am to the point where most times I just use a mouse or tap on an icon very little typing and I seem to stick to the same ten websites. I think it's basic stimulus, response, reward. Just seeing two vertical arrows one pointing up and one down has a visceral effect on me. We've conditioned ourselves to be like this. The bell rings and we salivate.
• ulisesrmzroche 4y ago
  Because you're avoiding something. What "that" is depends on you, so that's why there's no clear answers. But it's usually some giant shit sandwich you're gonna have to eat and there's nothing you can do about it. "If you gotta eat shit, do it first thing in the morning." like Albert Einstein used to say.
• chooma 4y ago
  I spend too much of my life behind a computer screen, which I only notice when I take a long break. Working remote doesn't help either.
• bikamonki 4y ago
  Don't say the Internet. There are tons of good information/tutorials/reads/etc on the Internet. You have a social net addiction. You spend so much time on it b/c it is designed for that: catch your attention, sell ads. I already see the parallels between social nets and tobacco. We are at the stage where we realize it is harmful. Eventually, it will be regulated. But then again, you do not need to wait for it to be regulated. Quit now. Be disciplined. Find a hobbie that is offline. Become a maker.
• ineedasername 4y ago
  About a year ago another HN commenter really helped me out with this and recommended an application called Cold Turkey [1]. It lets you lock yourself out of specified websites and applications for a scheduled period of time. You can break out of it by either rebooting or setting a long string of random text you have to enter, but it basically stops impulsive browsing. It helps me a fair bit to stay on task at work. I whitelist only the sites I need for work and take away the ability to randomly alt-tab into a browser "just for a minute". If your looking for a way to discipline your computer habits, I highly recommend this program. It's not a cure, but it does help. [0] https://getcoldturkey.com/ https://getcoldturkey.com/
• langsoul-com 4y ago
  I don't think it's bad to spent so much time on the internet. Let suppose you have a 9-5 job, after travel and basic hygiene, cooking etc, there's around 2-4 hours before needing to sleep (8-10 hours). So what's wrong with spending time on your favourite leisure activities?
• Geee 4y ago
  There is no bottom to it.
• Drblessing 4y ago
  https://hmpg.net/ https://hmpg.net/
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• giulio 4y ago
  I don't. These days I try to be online only to do something specific: searching for specific, writing, email etc. I am online for 2/3 hours/day. I use Facebook Twitter etc. but not that much. Here's a trick: turn notifications off on all your devices and you'll be happier. The idea is to "consume" only the content you want and only at the time you want.
  • indigodaddy 4y ago
    Turning off notifications is extremely effectual. I did this years ago for FB and really all apps on my iPhone and it’s the best thing I ever did. The point about consuming what and when you want is right on.
    • jwmoz 4y ago
      Next step is delete the fb app. Next delete the account. Profit.
      • hackernewds 4y ago
        Middle ground. Delete the app. Browse on mobile-web. Facebook unfortunately is still important to maintain real world connections. Once you stop letting Facebook monitor your usage, the feed is not as tempting either.
  • degosuke 4y ago
    Worked only partially for me. I still go to aggregate sites and just browse when I'm bored (or anxious, or both).
  • m463 4y ago
    I can't help but think - the people who don't waste time on the internet won't be replying to comments here. It's sort of like a self-unselecting population
    • lowwave 4y ago
      HN is one of the places online that is NOT a wast of time. It is full of useful informations. After using internet since mid 90's, and being one of first people that got the first gen iPhone, now days I try to NOT use smart phone or internet unless I need to. This is has significantly improved my life quality. Having more fun, I focus on the people around me and the 3d reality more. Then when I was using a lot of smart phone. Of course that is not the only thing, I had to do however it is a VERY good starting point. Highly recommend everyone who owns smart phone to try using it only in airplane mode.
• rnd0 4y ago
  Dopamine? Dopamine.
• mmlkrx 4y ago
  The only times in my life where I stopped "wasting time on the internet" was upon returning from a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. Especially after the first one this lasted for around 3-5 months. There was no effort involved on my side. It simply came very naturally to me to not check reddit/hackernews/fav blog first thing in the morning or during idle time (or at all really). Some of that I can probably attest to the disruption in my media routine for 10 days, but that doesn't explain that it lasted for 3-5 months. During the first 3 months I overwhelmingly felt very peaceful, good, and even joyful at times, with negative emotional reactions being a very rare occurrence. I can't help but think that this was the main driver for my lack of habitual "wasting time on the internet". I just didn't need it. If I could choose, I would prefer how it used to be instead of my current routine of checking reddit/hackernews/youtube multiple times a day. I think it's mostly not nurturing the mind in a good way. But I'm not beating myself up about it, and that's good.
  • bowsamic 4y ago
    Why not continue the practise to a greater degree? My social media use negatively correlates with my effort put into zazen
• ohcomments 4y ago
  Because it's my job... I search for answers that others are too lazy to find, so I can help them fix their stuff. Can't do that without internet... Sadly. Also, Twitch's a drug and YouTube's my dealer...
• kraf 4y ago
  I feel you! What helped me was Mindfulness meditation, this in particular: https://wakingup.com/ https://wakingup.com/. You can get at least one year free there.
• n_ary 4y ago
  Loneliness. We don't have meaningful social connections anymore like our parents or their parents geeration had. We are so scattered, that I am unsure how many of my friends are actually friends and how many are just professional contacts. Everytime I switch job, almost 70% of my friends suddenly fall out of contact. Heck, I don't even know the people who live in next apartments both left, right, up and down on the same building. Socializing with my friends mean, setting up an appointment weeks ahead to see if we can align on a free-slot and this often involves all of us commuting to somewhere and disbanding by 22:00 hours because family, work next morning, chores to do, doctor appointment and other human things. Interestingly, in this rat race, a lot of people suddenly inherited significant wealth and managed to use those wisely to have enough return to maintain a minimal lifestyle without working a primary 9-5. Some of us also achieved significant wealth by our early youth that we can afford to chase our hobbies for long time without worrying about the rents and bills and other responsibilities. Add social network to this, and these people cumulatively pursue things like world travelling, elaborate vacations, own businesses, YOLO etc.. , an endless stream of "other people doing YOLO" while us being worried what did I achieve so far? So, yeah, we feel lonely, go to social sites(which is appearently the whole "internet" to non tech-savvy groups) to see how others are having it good. Then suddenly we realize we wasted a lot of time on watching others having fun and decide that, we need to get better hobbies and stop this. But the loneliness never goes away as hobbies are extra toppings when we have a complete social life, so we are again pulled back to the cesspool, because at least there we can get some connection in forms of comment, likes and we can post our opinions as well or get into hours of comment-wars(which counts as social connection too).
  • zhdc1 4y ago
    > Loneliness I had to read through your comment a couple of times. From the sound of it, you’re likely in a better position than many other people here, and what worries you isn’t the lack of social contact but the depth and quality of it. This is a common issue that a lot or even most people face as they get older. I think that a lot of us have been able to fill this gap by finding significant others and starting families. I wonder if the trend towards settling down at later ages and holding off on having a child - or forgoing it altogether - is also part of the issue. Social media doesn’t help, but the answer to that is to stop using it, or, at the very least, to keep yourself from using platforms that encourage comparisons.
• seydor 4y ago
  What is there left to do?
• dt3ft 4y ago
  This thread should be our collective start page. Whenever you open a new tab, this should be the first thing we see :)
• sidcool 4y ago
  This thread is golden. It has the answers to the questions raised in the post.
• grozzle 4y ago
  The Answer, the thing that Helps, might be just around the next click. I know, rationally, what I have to do, but the part of myself with all the neurotransmitters is convinced there must be an easier way, and it'd be more efficient to keep looking for it.
• buntha 4y ago
  As a husband & father, forcing myself to do some core household activities every day keeps me away from the Internet. Every weekend, cooking is my responsibility and every day I make sure to walk with my toddler outside the home WITHOUT a phone.
• oofnik 4y ago
  One strategy I've found helpful in my own life for addressing that hopeless drowning feeling brought on by doomscrolling or other mindless activity incentivized by The Algorithm is to actively intervene and remind myself that this is noise. All of it is ephemeral, meaningless noise. It is not important. It is not nourishing my soul, and now is the time to turn the dial to a different station. Attention is a limited resource that I am currently squandering, and I better go find something else to do. And then I do it, and just like that, the hopeless drowning feeling subsides. I too once felt aimless and demotivated like the author. But the desire to own things and have friends, as the author put it - this is Nietzsche's will to power, and it is one of the most profound insights into the human condition expressed in modern times. This desire was ultimately what drove me to move across the world, channel my energy and curiosity into learning a productive and marketable skill and ultimately make something of myself. Humans have evolved over millions of years to be a goal-seeking, load-bearing species not content with mere survival. Our predecessors who were cool with hunting and gathering and spending all of their waking moments trying not to die have by now been largely subjugated out of existence by nations, civilizations, and religions / ideologies expressing a moral obligation to have dominion over the earth. In a world with unprecedented surplus for the select few of us who are privileged enough to complain on the Internet about feeling lazy but not quite knowing why or what to do about it, is psychologically debilitating to focus all or most of one's attention on meaningless noise. We need more than that to achieve a life worth living. All of the world's major wisdom traditions contain this grain of truth, either expressed implicitly or explicitly. I believe that there is an evolutionary reason why these traditions have persisted for the thousands of years they've been with us; adopting them has clearly bestowed some advantage, over many generations, in adapting to one's environment - and, perhaps more importantly, molding it to one's desires. Best wishes for the author in finding their passion and purpose in life that will propel them out of the realm of survival and into the realm of thriving.
• leksak 4y ago
  For me, ADHD. I don't have a solution for OP. I'm going to go out of bounds with regards to the original question and maybe overstep but I would suggest that the mindset that this statement hints at > A person who i would envy and want to be like or someone who no one cares about and is pathetic is going to detract far more from life than idle Internet-browsing would. I used to make similar judgement statements with regards to myself and my future but once I realized I don't devalue anyone that spends a lot of idle time online I shouldn't allow myself to devalue myself. I strive to direct my attention to where I want it to go, and I fail routinely. I've attached my self-worth more to the fact that I strive to direct my attention, and while I do allow myself to take it seriously when I fail I do not allow myself to take it personally. Attaching my self-worth to if I succeeded or failed was a too fickle and shallow well from which to derive something so important.
• jdthedisciple 4y ago
  I feel almost lucky that I consciously never chose to use twitter, I don't use instagram nor facebook, and - and this is a major one - since a few months I only ever browse in incognito mode just so my sessions and logins are never saved. I.e. I'm not logged into YouTube anymore -> I don't get distracted by new video uploads of the 100s of channels I'm subbed to. I just don't care anymore, I even miss out on lots of "important political news" but I don't care anymore. It's not worth my time and attention, and most of the stuff out there is 1) negative and 2) I can't do anything about it. So why bother? I think this has helped me save some time, even though sometimes it makes you feel oblivious and like you're living in a bubble, and friends/family will make you feel almost guilty but ... I don't care anymore.
• jhugo 4y ago
  When I read stuff like this I feel a huge disconnect from the modern world. I have never enjoyed social media other than HN. It all seems like a vapid waste of time. Sometimes I start to scroll Instagram to see what I'm missing out on, and by the second interspersed ad I'm bored and mildly disgusted, so I close the app. Maybe it's just that the algorithm isn't giving me the content I really want/need, so I'm stuck in some kind of social media purgatory, but I really don't understand how people get addicted to it.
  • codetrotter 4y ago
    > Maybe it's just that the algorithm isn't giving me the content I really want/need (Don’t) try TikTok.
  • whomst 4y ago
    To be fair almost all of Hacker News is a vapid waste of time too
    • jhugo 4y ago
      But the 10~20% that is very high quality is worth it. The link to something interesting that starts a meaningful, nuanced discussion that often includes people close to the topic at hand. I've never seen that kind of content on other social media.
      • whomst 4y ago
        There are meaningful things on other social media that make them Pareto distributed too and I disagree that the SNR of HN is higher than elsewhere
        • jhugo 4y ago
          Well, that's the point of my comment - HN to me has much higher SNR. Would love to learn how to find the meaningful things on other social media without scrolling through the 99.9% of noise.
• habosa 4y ago
  I have come to believe that the algorithmically curated personal feed should be illegal. It’s too powerful and we can’t handle it. Any social network should either have: a) One feed for everyone (like news website) b) A personalized feed that only contains things you’ve explicitly subscribed to in chronological order. No recommendations allowed or suggestions of “you might also like” Yes we’d still waste a lot of time online because there’s an infinite amount to see in these glowing little boxes. But at least we’d be in control and we’d stop letting these big companies have complete control over our emotions
• avereveard 4y ago
  Can we stop the hustle culture and the productivity guilt? Consuming entertainment is just fine.
• gverrilla 4y ago
  Generational conflict.
• DavideNL 4y ago
  This comes to mind... “A restlessness has seized hold of many of us,” wrote the American author Rebecca Solnit, “a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing”. It’s the same restlessness that reminded Franzen of “what Marx famously identified as the ‘restless’ nature of capitalism.” https://benwajdi.com/2021/12/18/is-internet-addiction-eradicating-the-habit-of-reading/ https://benwajdi.com/2021/12/18/is-internet-addiction-eradic...
• ehPReth 4y ago
  I don’t like being alone with my thoughts. I always have something playing to distract me
• Nasreddin_Hodja 4y ago
  > Why do you waste so much time on the internet? Why not? It's not a problem. Before internet era people spent much time on useless things like reading books (mostly fiction), watching TV, playing video games etc. Internet is just a communication tool people use to exchange information.
• gdubs 4y ago
  There’s actual science on this. Evolution wired our brains to place a VERY high value on novel information. Something out of the ordinary could mean you were about to get attacked by a lion. Or, could be something useful to your survival. Technology places novelty at our fingertips, and can be very alluring. Also, the more time we spend multitasking — something we’re not actually capable of doing in a truly parallel sense — the more energy we expend, weakening our ability to focus, making the lazy cycle of endless scrolling even more appealing. There’s a pretty simple way to break the cycle: go for a walk, spend time in nature, have an old fashioned phone call with a friend… Source: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/distracted-mind https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/distracted-mind
• jbirer 4y ago
  I have done it all, from large amounts of money from online businesses, to travels, to drugs, to sex (not trying to brag here). Nothing really stimulates me except interesting articles and weird technology blogs, I really just want to learn new things and drink coffee.
• sevenstar 4y ago
• eternityforest 4y ago
  Well, I live in Montana and I don't drive. There are busses, but they stop at 6PM, so I'm not sure where I would go, until I get a job that isn't remote, unless I suddenly developed an interest in going out to eat. But tech jobs here are mostly multi-location and require a car. I leave the house maybe 1/5th as much as I did in Seattle, and I don't really have many other ideas besides wasting time online.
• s-xyz 4y ago
  Looking for the next thing to become financially independent, such that I can quit my current job and pursue an independent life. If you know something that can help, please let me know.
• fuzzfactor 4y ago
  I try to get most really worthwhile things accomplished without the internet, so I feel I owe it to myself to waste a little time on the web when I do feel like it.
• ichi_01 4y ago
  Maybe I'm just being kept alive by Twitter's algorithm after all. I'm a little sad that it's not even a "waste" anymore, because I haven't found anything more interesting than that. (Deepl)