8 ms·

Digital addiction: Focusing on the cure, not the disease

63 points by louison11 3y ago

superkuh 3y ago
The only instances where "digital addiction" is treated serious are authoritarian countries like China. In non-politically motivated indices it does not exist. Because it does not exist. No more than printed newspapers ruined people in the 1800s, electricity in the 1900s, radio in the 1920s or TV in the 1950s. This is basically just repurposing of future shock scares by scammers running "treatment" programs in the west and governments using it for social control elsewhere.
- Retric 3y ago
  People do get successful treatment for this in the US. Like most additions it’s a question of actual harm not the public’s acceptance. Thus millions of regular drinkers aren’t all alcoholics but there are also plenty of alcoholics. When someone with a reasonable income is losing their house after maxing their credit cards because they can’t stop buying loot boxes, it’s a really obvious problem.
- jack-bodine 3y ago
  I have to disagree with you. I know people who genuinely spend 10+ hours a day on the net, completely wasting their time. These aren't people who are browsing HN for short breaks while working. These are the people who live in their parents basements or dorm rooms playing league of legends, watching twitch or browsing reddit while ignoring classes, education and/or serious work. Newspapers and radio didn't result in people spending 40+ hours a week following the news. There probably are some people addicted to TV, but it's such a minority that we don't consider it an issue.
  - SomeDog76 3y ago
    Just a personal anectode, but I definitly agree. I've very likely had an average screentime of 8h on the phone per day for the past the past 10 years of my life. With only few timeframes inbetween where it has been less. Only this year it has gotten somewhat better. And I don't think I am the only perspn like that.
- aaroninsf 3y ago
  Language of "addiction" or not, your assertion is false. There are pragmatic and meaningful differences between different media and communications technologies, and these differences have been remarked upon and considered for decades. It is neither controversial nor remarkable nor indeed anything but common knowledge that algorithmic social media > social media > online media > televised media > radio > print for a related constellation of properties—many of which related, by design, to our relationship and attention to them. Our attention and reward systems in specific have been the explicit and focused target of billions of dollars of R&D and product testing, with the result that the dopamine pellet conditioning paradigm of contemporary social media and related online properties, are literally unlike anything we have encountered as a species before, and no exaggeration to say, that we are utterly defenseless in the face of. Understanding the mechanisms of attention and reward manipulation, and of the consequent utility and increasing application of such factors in service of using these systems as mechanisms of social influence and behavioral conditioning, is no defense. No more than understanding the mechanisms of the appeal to us of fat, salt, and sugar, or for that matter alcohol, nicotine, or opiates, is. There is no defense other than opting out, tuning out, blocking out. And that is not defense against being surveilled. Should we call meticulously tuned conditioned behavior addiction? Depends on the forum. Addiction medicine specialists will no doubt have their own opinion. For the rest of us, yes, it's obviously and undeniably addiction, in the lay sense, and this entirely by design.
- amelius 3y ago
  I'm sure that experts can diagnose addiction, e.g. by looking at changes in the brain using brain scans etc.
- leafstrat 3y ago
  Your comment is so naive in underestimating these incredibly powerful devices. You can't even begin to imagine what it's like because you're some old guy but these kids who don't know any difference have absolutely devastated their reward mechanisms. A newspaper is easy to skim in a half hour, you might be bored enough to re-read all the articles if you had nothing else to do. These devices however are constantly spewing out limitless novel information which creates FOMO dependency. Youth have had an infinite supply of 4K resolution stimulation in front of their faces ever since they could communicate. Persuaded by the biggest communications platforms to ever exist, and their algorithms to manipulate emotions and desires. These youth have been primed to be constantly engaged consumers by decades of advertising, technology, psychological studying and implementation. You are seen as "weird" if you don't have a social media that is posted on frequently. People cannot focus on reading a book anymore. People prefer to document an experience rather than "living in it". > Mar 15, 2023 — According to data from DataReportal, the average American spends 6 hours and 59 minutes looking at a screen every day.
- ksenzee 3y ago
  The term to look up here is "process addiction." You can be addicted to a number of things that are perfectly healthy in moderation, such as work, gambling, or shopping. Internet use falls into the same category.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  Just curious, do you happen to have a rubric for determining whether an addiction is legitimate or not? If so, what is it?
- Aaronstotle 3y ago
  The average American has somewhere around 4 hours a day of phone screen time, that's a serious issue for society at large. Tech companies have done exceptionally well at gamifying social media, which results in more screen time because it gives our brain dopamine. Walk around without your phone, and you'll probably notice that you find yourself checking your pocket to pull-out your phone, at least I do.
- com2kid 3y ago
  Every major mobile game company has psychologists on hand to design mobile experiences that are more addictive than what would be allowed in American casinos. Machine learning and adaptive gameplay ensures that players are always on the verge of the next dopamine hit, and when the time is right, a pay to win screen is shoved in their face. People spend hundreds of dollars on mobile experiences that they actively do not enjoy, it is behavioral manipulation of the worst sort. We need more regulation. For starters, gacha game mechanics should be banned. After that, adaptive algorithms should be looked into. It is really easy for a ML algorithm to find someone who is depressed and start feeding them more and more depressing content, ensuring engagement. Same goes for extremism of any type, or really any extreme ends of the human psychological spectrum, except, and this may be a sad statement on the nature of humanity, of positive emotions, the activation which do not create long term engagement.
  - nix0n 3y ago
    > mobile experiences that are more addictive than what would be allowed in American casinos Does the Nevada Gaming Commission have a specific standard here, which could be copied by other government bodies?
- fwipsy 3y ago
  I grew up with compulsively playing online shooters. I still can't play them in moderation. I always end up playing to the point where it impacts my work, my social life, and my mood over the long term. Most of my friends acknowledge that they've experienced similar effects to a greater or lesser extant. This is absolutely a problem and if you haven't experienced it yourself, you are lucky.
mnkv 3y ago
> The solvents we need in this case are the healthier methods of fulfilling these longings. Terrible take. Algorithmic feeds and ad-tech has continually optimized how to get and maintain our attention. It is ridiculous to think "going into nature" or any individual solution is the answer. We blame pharmaceutical companies for making addictive drugs, why don't we blame tech companies for making addictive apps?
- haswell 3y ago
  As someone who has started replacing online habits with outside habits with some pretty life changing results, I can’t agree with you. This isn’t to say that social media companies should be excused, and I suspect only regulation will force them to change. But it’s also up to individuals to take an active role in stopping and finding healthier outlets. For me, that had meant deleting apps, mostly getting off of Reddit, and intentionally building new habits that are not oriented around social media. Getting out in nature is more important than I think most realize. One need only look at the continued existence of smokers/smoking to highlight that short of an outright ban (which would cause other issues), the person is really at the center of quitting. Even if these companies started getting all of the appropriate blame today, that’s not going to change that people have possibly difficult changes to make. There is no magic or shortcut that undoes the habit patterns without the individual choosing to make changes and following through on implementing them.
  - arvinsim 3y ago
    Not everyone has the privilege of being near a nature park or the equivalent.
  - lumb63 3y ago
    > There is no magic or shortcut that undoes the habit patterns without the individual choosing to make changes and following through on implementing them. How dare you! This is victim-land, where nothing can be the fault of the individual! /s Seriously, though, this is the truth that nobody wants to hear, because it’s inconvenient. Want to stop facing the negative impacts of technology? Stop using it. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Want to gain muscle? Go to the gym. Want to quit smoking? Stop smoking. Study after study comes out showing that dietary restriction “doesn’t cause long-term weight loss”. Want to know why? Because people stop doing it! The solution to almost all problems that can be solved by forming or unforming a habit is, in my experience, two-fold. First, identify the thing you want to start or stop doing. Second, start or stop doing it. Anyone can cry for months about how hard it is to stop being distracted by their phone because of addictive ad tech, notifications, tailored AI algorithms, etc. I’m not saying all these aren’t issues and we shouldn’t fight these battles because they make it harder for people to enact their will, but I am saying people need to have some will, and use it! You can’t give up on stopping (or never try to stop) a bad habit and shrug your shoulders and say “I can’t do it because <insert reason habit is hard to stop>”. I mean, you can, but you’ll never stop your bad habit that way. Even if there is something that defeats your willpower, that you can’t beat, that’s getting in your way, identify it and find a way around it. Can’t eat less because you get tempted by snacks? Don’t have snacks on hand. Can’t stop looking at your phone because notifications spam you? Silence your notifications. Want to quit social media? Delete the apps. The most powerful form of willpower is the willpower that you saved for later because you architected your life to not need it.
hayst4ck 3y ago
I am extremely militantly atheist, but I remember growing up with the church and experiencing community. There were weekly potlucks and all the church kids would hang out frequently while the parents drank. There were various clubs like choir you could just show up and be accepted. Today we see things like christian parents abandoning their gay children, wanting to "cure" trans people, or "christians" voting for trump and it's clear that religion and therefore, for many, community has been corrupted by politics. From the outside religion seems more about hate than love. An irony considering the teachings of Jesus. The internet exposes people to other people all around the earth who grew up in different environments, it makes clear that religion is a tradition, not a truth to be measured and understood, it is clear that region is in decline. The tragedy is that what was once a centerpiece of community has dwindled, and I think we are seeing the effects across society. Lack of community promotes addiction. We used to be born into community and baptized into it, but now we are left seeking it ourselves without guides like pastors. Community has been replaced with therapy. What we were once born into is now something we have to work for and pay for, and I don't think that as a society we have figured out what the next evolution of community looks like.
- prottog 3y ago
  > From the outside religion seems more about hate than love. I'd wager the view is different from the inside. Communities of any kind can be condemned one way or another from the outside. The weekly potlucks and choirs still exist and I'll bet you way fewer Christian parents (of whatever denomination) see a gay child as a sin than whenever it was that you grew up. > I don't think that as a society we have figured out what the next evolution of community looks like. Honestly, it might look like a society in which people go back to church.
  - empyrrhicist 3y ago
    > way fewer Christian parents (of whatever denomination) see a gay child as a sin than whenever it was that you grew up. Maybe, but I'd need to see numbers - and certainly the hateful are very vocal. Anecdotally I've watched the moderate Lutheran church of my parents undergo the same schism between progressives and regressives we see everywhere else over the last 20 years. > Honestly, it might look like a society in which people go back to church. Perhaps, but that's simply not an option for many. After losing my religion and continuing to learn about the universe as seen scientifically, the idea of joining an organization with a supernatural doctrine is just impossible to imagine. The idea of people pretending to know such wildly specific things about the nature of reality without evidence is viscerally offensive to my sensibilities.
amelius 3y ago
Digital addiction is real. Some decades ago, when people didn't have personal audio players and youtube it was normal for people to sing in the street. Now just look what a pitiful society of consumers we have become. We are giving up our identities for more digital crack.
- op00to 3y ago
  Take a ride on the NYC Subway and tell me whether personal audio devices increase or reduce public singing.
blueyes 3y ago
Digital addictions are similar to pathologies of food, and unlike other things we usually think of as addictive, like hard drugs. That is because, as with food, most of us cannot escape the digital. Everyday, we are exposed to the thing that also incites pathological behavior. It's impossible to go cold turkey. People with food pathologies resort to things like time-bounding exercises (if it's noon, I can eat). Like processed food, digital experiences are backed by an industry whose profits are pegged to how much of us they consume. People with digital addiction are suffering from a kind of informational metabolic syndrome. The cure is harder than the author thinks. "Making our lives so warm that the digital is dull in comparison" sounds great, but our phones channel all the vices, titillations, and novelties of the world. It's actually hard to make that dull. I'm not sure there is a cure, but a good approach would be a digital purge -- take a month off if you possibly can. That will serve as a dopamine reset, and make many things IRL seem more interesting. Buy a device that limits what you can do, like a lightphone. https://www.thelightphone.com https://www.thelightphone.com Barring a light phone, various parental controls... Because if you let the digital channel duke it out with the analog without rigging the game, the digital will keep sucking you back in.
- tracerbulletx 3y ago
  Dopamine is a general purpose neurotransmitter used for all kinds of things, all of the time. There is no such thing as a "dopamine reset". If doing a digital purge is beneficial it has nothing to do with "resetting dopamine"
  - emptyfile 3y ago
    [dead]
  - kelipso 3y ago
    It's a term that's widely used by people who try to stop addictions like this and in topics related to dopamine's effects. Sometimes these terms get jargony/technical meanings and criticizing it or the entire topic just because you can't understand the meaning of these terms from the words themselves is not warranted.
  - 3y ago
908B64B197 3y ago
It's interesting that the only jurisdiction doing any thing about this is China, and they mostly only target online games. Games where young frustrated [0] [1] Chinese teenagers could talk relatively freely with others from different regions of China. Or god forbid, learn English and have contacts with westerners. Better to keep them grinding on shaving a few tenth of a second on basic algebra problems for the Gaokao. That will better prepare them for the factories. At the same time, of course, China pushes CCP-backed TikTok to American Teens (gathering huge amount of intelligence and data in the process). [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-... [1] https://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance-china-one-child-law-backfired-men-336435.html https://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance-china-o...
dahwolf 3y ago
In the spirit of anything that helps should be considered: Disable all notifications except for direct messaging from family/friends, banking and other important stuff. Everything else cannot possibly be urgent, see next point. Do social networking/news from a desktop only. 30 mins per day, 3 times per week, once a week, doesn't matter. This beats being exposed all day every day. When in your home, get used to putting the phone in the next room for a while. This is perhaps the simplest but most powerful tip. You're (re)learning that you do not need this device to feel whole. Don't bring your phone into the toilet, no matter how enjoyable these "peaceful" sessions are. Get used to "missing" things. Your morning routine of taking a full hour to catch up, reduce it to 5 mins. Just scan news headlines. For your so-called "hobby/work" interests, stop following experts on social media. Instead, subscribe to weekly newsletters in your field, and set apart some time per week to read them. Massive time-saver plus you don't have to get annoyed with all the noise of their personal lives and political views. I can assure you that you won't miss anything noteworthy. If it's important, it's in the newsletter. When in public or generally just waiting for something, try out this thing we used to call boredom. Just watch the world. The environment. It's people. Or just the wall. It's refreshing. And don't put on headphones. Don't expect perfection. Have 10 time wasters? Reduce to 5. Fill in your new non-digital time at first with low ambition activities. Do a chore. Walk the dog, or yourself. Even the act of watching a movie uninterrupted is an improvement. But be sure to fill the void with something, otherwise you'll fall back. The next step up is group activities and shared obligations. And if you're really ready to slash it, try brutal rationality. For every digital activity, track usage, review it and write down what tangible positives it brings into your life. Do this with an accountant hat on, sans emotion. Good luck!
- juliusgeo 3y ago
  One small thing that I have done that I have found leads to at the very least more productive use of my spare digital time—and that is just setting up the Apple night-time DND feature. It doesn’t give you a very prominent notification, so I often find myself checking my phone far less because I don’t even see the notifications, and don’t even realize I’m in DND mode. You can also set up pass-through for trusted contacts or urgent calls, but I find it is a very easy measure to implement and I’ve seen it’s value in my own life. You can also do similar things for work related notifications (ie. I had github and slack apps automatically muted after 5pm). I find that the approach of letting the notifications pile up and then checking at my leisure let’s me slowly start to forget about my phone except when it serves an actual purpose.
thenerdhead 3y ago
Focus on not falling for the same playbook used in big tobacco and big food: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879177/#sec-2title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879177/#sec-2t...
fwipsy 3y ago
Digital entertainment has already replaced the healthy lifestyle the author recommends. Things like exercise and socializing help, but they're not sufficient to completely prevent excessive use in my experience. Something else is needed; I've had some luck using commitment devices and trying to make the option less accessible to myself. But I think we need cultural solutions, not personal ones.
nicbou 3y ago
I spent a few months reducing the effect of addictive technology: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence . Fewer triggers make such an addiction more manageable. It works, but only as long as I can fill the void with meaningful activities. There are days when I have nothing to do, or I am too tired to do anything. People who quit weed reported the same problem. If you use a quick fix for boredom for a long time, replacing it means finding other ways to deal with boredom.
- Aromasin 3y ago
  Your journey in that article is very similar to the route I took. I quit video games, TV, and social media together at the beginning of 2021. I blocked Reddit, and also installed Unhook for YouTube so I see nothing but my subscriptions now. I probably relapsed around 100+ times in the subsequent years before I got a handle on it, and it all stemmed not from an addictive "urge" - like that for food or cigarettes' - but simply from being bored. I agree, it's impossible to replace something without filling the hole it left in your life. I needed to have something I could do when I had evenings free or a weekend to kill. For me, I filled it with sports/working-out, miniature painting, writing fiction, and making (speakers, dioramas, gadgets, and other fun things I find on Hackster.io). My life is so much more fulfilling now. I've shifted from one of sedative consumptive to active creation. I can't recommend it enough.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    That matches my experience. I am far less involved in internet drama, my computer feels more like a tool, I read more books, and I spend more time on my bicycle. The main takeaway is that the benefits outlasted the initial surge of motivation. These changes had a lasting impact on my quality of life.

63 points by louison11 3y ago

The only instances where "digital addiction" is treated serious are authoritarian countries like China. In non-politically motivated indices it does not exist. Because it does not exist. No more than printed newspapers ruined people in the 1800s, electricity in the 1900s, radio in the 1920s or TV in the 1950s. This is basically just repurposing of future shock scares by scammers running "treatment" programs in the west and governments using it for social control elsewhere.

Retric 3y ago
People do get successful treatment for this in the US. Like most additions it’s a question of actual harm not the public’s acceptance. Thus millions of regular drinkers aren’t all alcoholics but there are also plenty of alcoholics. When someone with a reasonable income is losing their house after maxing their credit cards because they can’t stop buying loot boxes, it’s a really obvious problem.
jack-bodine 3y ago
I have to disagree with you. I know people who genuinely spend 10+ hours a day on the net, completely wasting their time. These aren't people who are browsing HN for short breaks while working. These are the people who live in their parents basements or dorm rooms playing league of legends, watching twitch or browsing reddit while ignoring classes, education and/or serious work. Newspapers and radio didn't result in people spending 40+ hours a week following the news. There probably are some people addicted to TV, but it's such a minority that we don't consider it an issue.
- SomeDog76 3y ago
  Just a personal anectode, but I definitly agree. I've very likely had an average screentime of 8h on the phone per day for the past the past 10 years of my life. With only few timeframes inbetween where it has been less. Only this year it has gotten somewhat better. And I don't think I am the only perspn like that.
aaroninsf 3y ago
Language of "addiction" or not, your assertion is false. There are pragmatic and meaningful differences between different media and communications technologies, and these differences have been remarked upon and considered for decades. It is neither controversial nor remarkable nor indeed anything but common knowledge that algorithmic social media > social media > online media > televised media > radio > print for a related constellation of properties—many of which related, by design, to our relationship and attention to them. Our attention and reward systems in specific have been the explicit and focused target of billions of dollars of R&D and product testing, with the result that the dopamine pellet conditioning paradigm of contemporary social media and related online properties, are literally unlike anything we have encountered as a species before, and no exaggeration to say, that we are utterly defenseless in the face of. Understanding the mechanisms of attention and reward manipulation, and of the consequent utility and increasing application of such factors in service of using these systems as mechanisms of social influence and behavioral conditioning, is no defense. No more than understanding the mechanisms of the appeal to us of fat, salt, and sugar, or for that matter alcohol, nicotine, or opiates, is. There is no defense other than opting out, tuning out, blocking out. And that is not defense against being surveilled. Should we call meticulously tuned conditioned behavior addiction? Depends on the forum. Addiction medicine specialists will no doubt have their own opinion. For the rest of us, yes, it's obviously and undeniably addiction, in the lay sense, and this entirely by design.
amelius 3y ago
I'm sure that experts can diagnose addiction, e.g. by looking at changes in the brain using brain scans etc.
leafstrat 3y ago
Your comment is so naive in underestimating these incredibly powerful devices. You can't even begin to imagine what it's like because you're some old guy but these kids who don't know any difference have absolutely devastated their reward mechanisms. A newspaper is easy to skim in a half hour, you might be bored enough to re-read all the articles if you had nothing else to do. These devices however are constantly spewing out limitless novel information which creates FOMO dependency. Youth have had an infinite supply of 4K resolution stimulation in front of their faces ever since they could communicate. Persuaded by the biggest communications platforms to ever exist, and their algorithms to manipulate emotions and desires. These youth have been primed to be constantly engaged consumers by decades of advertising, technology, psychological studying and implementation. You are seen as "weird" if you don't have a social media that is posted on frequently. People cannot focus on reading a book anymore. People prefer to document an experience rather than "living in it". > Mar 15, 2023 — According to data from DataReportal, the average American spends 6 hours and 59 minutes looking at a screen every day.
ksenzee 3y ago
The term to look up here is "process addiction." You can be addicted to a number of things that are perfectly healthy in moderation, such as work, gambling, or shopping. Internet use falls into the same category.
kelseyfrog 3y ago
Just curious, do you happen to have a rubric for determining whether an addiction is legitimate or not? If so, what is it?
Aaronstotle 3y ago
The average American has somewhere around 4 hours a day of phone screen time, that's a serious issue for society at large. Tech companies have done exceptionally well at gamifying social media, which results in more screen time because it gives our brain dopamine. Walk around without your phone, and you'll probably notice that you find yourself checking your pocket to pull-out your phone, at least I do.
com2kid 3y ago
Every major mobile game company has psychologists on hand to design mobile experiences that are more addictive than what would be allowed in American casinos. Machine learning and adaptive gameplay ensures that players are always on the verge of the next dopamine hit, and when the time is right, a pay to win screen is shoved in their face. People spend hundreds of dollars on mobile experiences that they actively do not enjoy, it is behavioral manipulation of the worst sort. We need more regulation. For starters, gacha game mechanics should be banned. After that, adaptive algorithms should be looked into. It is really easy for a ML algorithm to find someone who is depressed and start feeding them more and more depressing content, ensuring engagement. Same goes for extremism of any type, or really any extreme ends of the human psychological spectrum, except, and this may be a sad statement on the nature of humanity, of positive emotions, the activation which do not create long term engagement.
- nix0n 3y ago
  > mobile experiences that are more addictive than what would be allowed in American casinos Does the Nevada Gaming Commission have a specific standard here, which could be copied by other government bodies?
fwipsy 3y ago
I grew up with compulsively playing online shooters. I still can't play them in moderation. I always end up playing to the point where it impacts my work, my social life, and my mood over the long term. Most of my friends acknowledge that they've experienced similar effects to a greater or lesser extant. This is absolutely a problem and if you haven't experienced it yourself, you are lucky.

mnkv 3y ago

> The solvents we need in this case are the healthier methods of fulfilling these longings. Terrible take. Algorithmic feeds and ad-tech has continually optimized how to get and maintain our attention. It is ridiculous to think "going into nature" or any individual solution is the answer. We blame pharmaceutical companies for making addictive drugs, why don't we blame tech companies for making addictive apps?

haswell 3y ago
As someone who has started replacing online habits with outside habits with some pretty life changing results, I can’t agree with you. This isn’t to say that social media companies should be excused, and I suspect only regulation will force them to change. But it’s also up to individuals to take an active role in stopping and finding healthier outlets. For me, that had meant deleting apps, mostly getting off of Reddit, and intentionally building new habits that are not oriented around social media. Getting out in nature is more important than I think most realize. One need only look at the continued existence of smokers/smoking to highlight that short of an outright ban (which would cause other issues), the person is really at the center of quitting. Even if these companies started getting all of the appropriate blame today, that’s not going to change that people have possibly difficult changes to make. There is no magic or shortcut that undoes the habit patterns without the individual choosing to make changes and following through on implementing them.
- arvinsim 3y ago
  Not everyone has the privilege of being near a nature park or the equivalent.
- lumb63 3y ago
  > There is no magic or shortcut that undoes the habit patterns without the individual choosing to make changes and following through on implementing them. How dare you! This is victim-land, where nothing can be the fault of the individual! /s Seriously, though, this is the truth that nobody wants to hear, because it’s inconvenient. Want to stop facing the negative impacts of technology? Stop using it. Want to lose weight? Eat less. Want to gain muscle? Go to the gym. Want to quit smoking? Stop smoking. Study after study comes out showing that dietary restriction “doesn’t cause long-term weight loss”. Want to know why? Because people stop doing it! The solution to almost all problems that can be solved by forming or unforming a habit is, in my experience, two-fold. First, identify the thing you want to start or stop doing. Second, start or stop doing it. Anyone can cry for months about how hard it is to stop being distracted by their phone because of addictive ad tech, notifications, tailored AI algorithms, etc. I’m not saying all these aren’t issues and we shouldn’t fight these battles because they make it harder for people to enact their will, but I am saying people need to have some will, and use it! You can’t give up on stopping (or never try to stop) a bad habit and shrug your shoulders and say “I can’t do it because <insert reason habit is hard to stop>”. I mean, you can, but you’ll never stop your bad habit that way. Even if there is something that defeats your willpower, that you can’t beat, that’s getting in your way, identify it and find a way around it. Can’t eat less because you get tempted by snacks? Don’t have snacks on hand. Can’t stop looking at your phone because notifications spam you? Silence your notifications. Want to quit social media? Delete the apps. The most powerful form of willpower is the willpower that you saved for later because you architected your life to not need it.

hayst4ck 3y ago

I am extremely militantly atheist, but I remember growing up with the church and experiencing community. There were weekly potlucks and all the church kids would hang out frequently while the parents drank. There were various clubs like choir you could just show up and be accepted. Today we see things like christian parents abandoning their gay children, wanting to "cure" trans people, or "christians" voting for trump and it's clear that religion and therefore, for many, community has been corrupted by politics. From the outside religion seems more about hate than love. An irony considering the teachings of Jesus. The internet exposes people to other people all around the earth who grew up in different environments, it makes clear that religion is a tradition, not a truth to be measured and understood, it is clear that region is in decline. The tragedy is that what was once a centerpiece of community has dwindled, and I think we are seeing the effects across society. Lack of community promotes addiction. We used to be born into community and baptized into it, but now we are left seeking it ourselves without guides like pastors. Community has been replaced with therapy. What we were once born into is now something we have to work for and pay for, and I don't think that as a society we have figured out what the next evolution of community looks like.

prottog 3y ago
> From the outside religion seems more about hate than love. I'd wager the view is different from the inside. Communities of any kind can be condemned one way or another from the outside. The weekly potlucks and choirs still exist and I'll bet you way fewer Christian parents (of whatever denomination) see a gay child as a sin than whenever it was that you grew up. > I don't think that as a society we have figured out what the next evolution of community looks like. Honestly, it might look like a society in which people go back to church.
- empyrrhicist 3y ago
  > way fewer Christian parents (of whatever denomination) see a gay child as a sin than whenever it was that you grew up. Maybe, but I'd need to see numbers - and certainly the hateful are very vocal. Anecdotally I've watched the moderate Lutheran church of my parents undergo the same schism between progressives and regressives we see everywhere else over the last 20 years. > Honestly, it might look like a society in which people go back to church. Perhaps, but that's simply not an option for many. After losing my religion and continuing to learn about the universe as seen scientifically, the idea of joining an organization with a supernatural doctrine is just impossible to imagine. The idea of people pretending to know such wildly specific things about the nature of reality without evidence is viscerally offensive to my sensibilities.

amelius 3y ago

Digital addiction is real. Some decades ago, when people didn't have personal audio players and youtube it was normal for people to sing in the street. Now just look what a pitiful society of consumers we have become. We are giving up our identities for more digital crack.

op00to 3y ago
Take a ride on the NYC Subway and tell me whether personal audio devices increase or reduce public singing.

blueyes 3y ago

Digital addictions are similar to pathologies of food, and unlike other things we usually think of as addictive, like hard drugs. That is because, as with food, most of us cannot escape the digital. Everyday, we are exposed to the thing that also incites pathological behavior. It's impossible to go cold turkey. People with food pathologies resort to things like time-bounding exercises (if it's noon, I can eat). Like processed food, digital experiences are backed by an industry whose profits are pegged to how much of us they consume. People with digital addiction are suffering from a kind of informational metabolic syndrome. The cure is harder than the author thinks. "Making our lives so warm that the digital is dull in comparison" sounds great, but our phones channel all the vices, titillations, and novelties of the world. It's actually hard to make that dull. I'm not sure there is a cure, but a good approach would be a digital purge -- take a month off if you possibly can. That will serve as a dopamine reset, and make many things IRL seem more interesting. Buy a device that limits what you can do, like a lightphone. https://www.thelightphone.com https://www.thelightphone.com Barring a light phone, various parental controls... Because if you let the digital channel duke it out with the analog without rigging the game, the digital will keep sucking you back in.

tracerbulletx 3y ago
Dopamine is a general purpose neurotransmitter used for all kinds of things, all of the time. There is no such thing as a "dopamine reset". If doing a digital purge is beneficial it has nothing to do with "resetting dopamine"
- emptyfile 3y ago
  [dead]
- kelipso 3y ago
  It's a term that's widely used by people who try to stop addictions like this and in topics related to dopamine's effects. Sometimes these terms get jargony/technical meanings and criticizing it or the entire topic just because you can't understand the meaning of these terms from the words themselves is not warranted.
- 3y ago

908B64B197 3y ago

It's interesting that the only jurisdiction doing any thing about this is China, and they mostly only target online games. Games where young frustrated [0] [1] Chinese teenagers could talk relatively freely with others from different regions of China. Or god forbid, learn English and have contacts with westerners. Better to keep them grinding on shaving a few tenth of a second on basic algebra problems for the Gaokao. That will better prepare them for the factories. At the same time, of course, China pushes CCP-backed TikTok to American Teens (gathering huge amount of intelligence and data in the process). [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-men/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/world/too-many-... [1] https://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance-china-one-child-law-backfired-men-336435.html https://www.newsweek.com/2015/06/05/gender-imbalance-china-o...

dahwolf 3y ago

In the spirit of anything that helps should be considered: Disable all notifications except for direct messaging from family/friends, banking and other important stuff. Everything else cannot possibly be urgent, see next point. Do social networking/news from a desktop only. 30 mins per day, 3 times per week, once a week, doesn't matter. This beats being exposed all day every day. When in your home, get used to putting the phone in the next room for a while. This is perhaps the simplest but most powerful tip. You're (re)learning that you do not need this device to feel whole. Don't bring your phone into the toilet, no matter how enjoyable these "peaceful" sessions are. Get used to "missing" things. Your morning routine of taking a full hour to catch up, reduce it to 5 mins. Just scan news headlines. For your so-called "hobby/work" interests, stop following experts on social media. Instead, subscribe to weekly newsletters in your field, and set apart some time per week to read them. Massive time-saver plus you don't have to get annoyed with all the noise of their personal lives and political views. I can assure you that you won't miss anything noteworthy. If it's important, it's in the newsletter. When in public or generally just waiting for something, try out this thing we used to call boredom. Just watch the world. The environment. It's people. Or just the wall. It's refreshing. And don't put on headphones. Don't expect perfection. Have 10 time wasters? Reduce to 5. Fill in your new non-digital time at first with low ambition activities. Do a chore. Walk the dog, or yourself. Even the act of watching a movie uninterrupted is an improvement. But be sure to fill the void with something, otherwise you'll fall back. The next step up is group activities and shared obligations. And if you're really ready to slash it, try brutal rationality. For every digital activity, track usage, review it and write down what tangible positives it brings into your life. Do this with an accountant hat on, sans emotion. Good luck!

juliusgeo 3y ago
One small thing that I have done that I have found leads to at the very least more productive use of my spare digital time—and that is just setting up the Apple night-time DND feature. It doesn’t give you a very prominent notification, so I often find myself checking my phone far less because I don’t even see the notifications, and don’t even realize I’m in DND mode. You can also set up pass-through for trusted contacts or urgent calls, but I find it is a very easy measure to implement and I’ve seen it’s value in my own life. You can also do similar things for work related notifications (ie. I had github and slack apps automatically muted after 5pm). I find that the approach of letting the notifications pile up and then checking at my leisure let’s me slowly start to forget about my phone except when it serves an actual purpose.

thenerdhead 3y ago

Focus on not falling for the same playbook used in big tobacco and big food: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879177/#sec-2title https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2879177/#sec-2t...

fwipsy 3y ago

Digital entertainment has already replaced the healthy lifestyle the author recommends. Things like exercise and socializing help, but they're not sufficient to completely prevent excessive use in my experience. Something else is needed; I've had some luck using commitment devices and trying to make the option less accessible to myself. But I think we need cultural solutions, not personal ones.

nicbou 3y ago

I spent a few months reducing the effect of addictive technology: https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence . Fewer triggers make such an addiction more manageable. It works, but only as long as I can fill the void with meaningful activities. There are days when I have nothing to do, or I am too tired to do anything. People who quit weed reported the same problem. If you use a quick fix for boredom for a long time, replacing it means finding other ways to deal with boredom.

Aromasin 3y ago
Your journey in that article is very similar to the route I took. I quit video games, TV, and social media together at the beginning of 2021. I blocked Reddit, and also installed Unhook for YouTube so I see nothing but my subscriptions now. I probably relapsed around 100+ times in the subsequent years before I got a handle on it, and it all stemmed not from an addictive "urge" - like that for food or cigarettes' - but simply from being bored. I agree, it's impossible to replace something without filling the hole it left in your life. I needed to have something I could do when I had evenings free or a weekend to kill. For me, I filled it with sports/working-out, miniature painting, writing fiction, and making (speakers, dioramas, gadgets, and other fun things I find on Hackster.io). My life is so much more fulfilling now. I've shifted from one of sedative consumptive to active creation. I can't recommend it enough.
- nicbou 3y ago
  That matches my experience. I am far less involved in internet drama, my computer feels more like a tool, I read more books, and I spend more time on my bicycle. The main takeaway is that the benefits outlasted the initial surge of motivation. These changes had a lasting impact on my quality of life.