4 ms·

> People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model. I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use s

> People increasingly behave like addicts because addiction is the business model. I sense my internet addiction got a lot worse in recent years. I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access - 20+ years ago. Like putting an alcoholic to work behind a bar and thinking he’d restrain himself. It seems to have worsened in recent years. I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner.

alightsoul 1mo ago
And even worse, if you're addicted to soda, it is cheaper than bottled water, what if you don't have tap water?
dexwiz 1mo ago
Pandemic really ramped it up. Also screen addiction has gone mainstream. In front of a screen 12+ hours a day 20 years ago? Total nerd. Now? Standard behavior.
- queenkjuul 1mo ago
  I started to notice a shift in how the recommendation algorithms worked probably around 2018-2019 and then the pandemic just took it to nuclear levels against the entire population
- asdfman123 1mo ago
  It's so weird. I used to consider myself a fringe internet addict in the 2000s but now everyone is like me. Like many of you, I deal with stuff like depression, anxiety, ADHD. Back in the 2000s it felt like I was the only weirdo out there. Now I cringe writing that out because it feels like everyone is like that now.
  - sefrost 1mo ago
    Everybody isn't like that. "The algorithm" might have made you think everybody is like that though.
    - asdfman123 1mo ago
      Meet a lot of Gen Zers. Far too many of them are.
      - rescbr 1mo ago
        Huh, maybe that’s why I’m more empathetic towards them compared to my fellow millennials?
- stackbutterflow 1mo ago
  I made the same observation recently. I think people under 25 probably don't even know how absolutely uncool it was to tell people you stayed at home in front of a computer on weekends or after school. Absolute pariah behavior on the scale of coolness. But now ? Totally normal.
- XorNot 1mo ago
  Okay but what should people be doing instead? The complaint that everyone is on their phone (or in front of screens) is less informative then the interlocutors ideas of what should be instead.
Aurornis 1mo ago
> I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access Interestingly, my digital consumption for idle entertainment dropped when I started working full time. I didn’t want to be in front of a screen when work was done. My screen exposure for fun is primarily this site (where I spend too much time), and games where my friends and I treat the time as a multi-way group call with long distance friends. I do know a lot of people who followed the exact course you describe: They watch screens at work and had periods where it was okay to spend a lot of time on social media or social news sites (Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, Digg, depending on the era). Checking those sites all day long became a habit for them and filled all idle time. Whenever they felt uncomfortable or bored, visiting a site would fix it. Some of them broke out of it when they switched to workplaces where it wasn’t acceptable to do non-work things during the day. This is almost inconceivable for a lot of tech workers who have had a lot of freedom to date, but it’s normal in some industries. As an example, I have friends who work in areas where security concerns are so high that they check their phones into lockers before entering their work areas. Others worked at companies who did over-reaching analysis of computer use. Many just moved to companies with packed open office spaces where it would be obvious to everyone around if you were on Reddit or looking at your phone instead of the computer for an excessive amount all day. What is interesting is that this seems to induce a split: Some people get broken of their Internet use habits this way and continue not using those sites outside of work. Others seem to have a rebound where they leave work and start gorging on Reddit or TikTok or their other preferred sites.
altmanaltman 1mo ago
Do you ever wonder, if you were born in a different era, like 1901, and still had the base drives behind this addiction, how would it channel itself? Like what would you replace the internet with in those days
- yoyohello13 1mo ago
  If my history reading is any indication the answer is ‘getting drunk at the pub’
- paxys 1mo ago
  Opium
TFNA 1mo ago
Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures. Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social media today, I think another aspect of the problem is that there is less connection to real-life socializing simply because that has collapsed in so many countries.
- anal_reactor 1mo ago
  > You could meet cool new people My first date was a guy with fake photos. Ten dates later I settled for a married guy cheating on his wife. He eventually divorced but then I left him.
  - abixb 1mo ago
    Username checks out. /s
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- elmomle 1mo ago
  This is a big part of it for me. The old Internet was full of individuals sharing deep passion--whether on a personal website or on a forum. There was a sense of connecting to another human being. This is the only forum-style site I regularly interact with, and I must admit that I rarely try to remember another username here. The effect is that I interact with ideas, not people. And there is some deep connection between behaviors I might label as addiction and a felt sense of isolation.
  - spicyjpeg 1mo ago
    The internet is still full of individuals sharing deep passion for all sorts of things, but only within the walls of invite-only communities you have to go out of your way to find (Discord servers, private forums) and/or make a financial commitment towards (Patreon). Or at least it was, before LLM "enthusiasts" started leaking into these otherwise hermetic communities and overrunning formerly safe spaces with mass-produced low-effort content nobody wants to see, particularly when anyone else could prompt the exact same thing into existence.
KellyCriterion 1mo ago
Im with you! The most times Im late for "some things on a project" at work is, because, I wasted time reading through dozens of feeds/news/comments on "too many" days so I got somehow a "delay" ;-) Esp. comments: Actually, I ready mostly those because usually they have more information or context etc.than the article itself. (BTW: thats the reason why Im here on HN :-)
Haga 1mo ago
Its because all of society moved interactions online, as the whole real space society got socially strangulated of discussions, arguments and anything meaningfull. If everything is a safe space- and democratic societies argueing and challenging of ideas is not "safe" - then the meaningfull interactions escape into the internet.
gizajob 1mo ago
The dealer is in your pocket.
sefrost 1mo ago
> Like putting an alcoholic to work behind a bar and thinking he’d restrain himself. I've been thinking about this recently. The tools we use as desk workers are only ever one step away from endless streams of addictive content. And in many cases the software we use to do our jobs are adopting dark patterns similar to those which have been successful in consumer apps. Often the advice is to opt out of the system. I make mobile apps, I can't simply drop out and use a dumb phone (unless I get a new career). My workplace is essentially inside the addictive environment. I have to keep my knowledge up to date and be on top of app/design trends to be successful in my job. This used to feel rewarding to me, but increasingly it doesn't. I used to be able to go to Twitter and read+learn+be inspired a lot about web development for example, but now it's almost entirely short form video content. And I fall for it every time. And I actively tried to avoid this from happening, I barely use YouTube and I've never used TikTok. My Dad was a carpenter and it's as if his day-to-day tools were cigarettes or something. It's hard/impossible to avoid this environment when we are increasingly working in it.
asdfman123 1mo ago
If you're interested in what helped me overcome the worst aspects of my internet addiction, I learned to reframe it. I wasn't overcome with addiction, but I was CHOOSING to take a break. There are good reasons to read the news, there are good reasons to take breaks. End the war against yourself and take more wholesome breaks, so your subconscious doesn't take over and force them. It may involve forcing yourself to be more realistic about what you can do in a given time period, but that's a good thing ultimately. I know it sounds like a minor change but the whole game is putting your life back in your own control. When you find yourself binging, say "I am choosing to do this," even if you don't immediately log off. Just observe your own choices as a first step. Another tip: when you're craving a hit of the internet, ask yourself "can I wait 5 minutes before checking my phone?" If you can't, no big deal. But if you do this enough time you build up the self discipline muscle.
- foobarbecue 1mo ago
  Forcing a short delay is such a powerful technique. I use this when I'm at risk of binging a show. If I'm tempted to let Netflix continue into the next episode, I say "ok maybe, but let's get up and do something else for a few minutes first and see if I still want to" and before I know it I'm building a robot instead.
  - bluefirebrand 1mo ago
    I'll vouch for this too This is something I've been working on a lot myself. It's so easy to wind up sliding into the familiar patterns and routines, and reaching for the phone. I'm finding that discipline is less about resisting it and more about redirecting it to something more productive
  - manuisin 1mo ago
    reverse/compliment to this to start working for me is just aiming to work for 1-2 minutes when it feels hard to get started. i usually end up getting immersed, and find it hard to stop.
- JustinJoshi 1mo ago
akudha 1mo ago
The most dangerous part of this addiction is that it doesn't feel like addiction. Suppose we spend 4 hours in an afternoon consuming random content - starting somewhere on a Google search, landing on Wikipedia, end up reading dozens of articles on various topics in that 4 hours. Unlike alcohol or drugs, this is knowledge addiction - afterall, we learned about a bunch of things in those 4 hours, didn't we? We didn't spend any money (well, other than the laptop, electricity and internet bills), we didn't harass anyone (like alcoholics sometimes do) etc. Heck, we didn't even "waste" time like we think we do, when we play video games. So it feels somewhat better. But, all that we learned in those 4 hours - is it really that useful? Some of it might be, lets say an hour of it. What about the other three? That could have been spent on something healthier - having fun with friends, play sports, or even just sleeping! I understand the irony of typing this, but I too am in the same boat - consuming things voraciously, most of which is just useless knowledge, at the cost of relationships, health etc.
- acid_fish 1mo ago
  Well, it depends. If it's not at the cost of relationship, sports and other important things, is it really an addiction? It can often be just a hobby like everything else.
- stackbutterflow 1mo ago
  It's all about balance. Learning about various stuff from well written articles and Wikipedia for one hour is good. Doing the same thing for the whole weekend isn't. Even reading books all the time to the detriment of other activities isn't good. What's good is doing a bit of everything. Reading a book an hour before sleep, doing a hour of exercise two to three times a week. Reading a few blog articles, wikipedia, long and well researched magazine articles. Making time for in person social interactions. Playing games, video games, board games, card games from time to time. Engaging in a few online discussions every week. Etc It's all about balance or at least that's the way I see it.
  - rTX5CMRXIfFG 1mo ago
    Doing a bit of everything is what’s good? Why? Because that sounds like aimless distraction. If you had a goal in mind, doing a bit of everything isn’t even an option
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
paxys 1mo ago
> I don’t use social media You are using social media right now.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  And it's exactly as addictive as Twitter.
  - stackbutterflow 1mo ago
    Exactly. Whether hn is a social platform is a hot topic for some, but in terms of addictiveness it's on the same level as reddit. And there's no algorithm and sub categories. But every day there's basically the same type of threads, with the same predictable discussions and you know just by the title and the amount of comments on a thread that you'll get you dose of dopamine whether you're pro or anti any topic that is regularly discussed.
    - ssl-3 1mo ago
      There was a time that whenever I got in front of a computer and opened a web browser, my hands would start typing "slashdot.org" into the address bar and my eyes would watch for autocompletion so I could enter the address as soon as possible. It was so automatic that when I was working on a new, not-at-all-internet-connected long-distance wireless IP network with the (quite apt) customer looking over my shoulder, well before the days of cheap or free phone hotspots and always-on pocket supercomputers, he laughed when he saw my hands start to type out slashdot and said: "Yeah, good luck with that." After Slashdot, it was Reddit. Now, it's mostly HN. I've mostly avoided traps like MySpace, FB, and whatever LinkedIn has become. But it's all social media, and all of it always has been. But HN is a little bit softer, I think. Whether it's design elements like the deliberately-quiet cooldown periods on serial comment replies, or the very apt and cordial moderation by dang and company, or some combination of that and everything else else: My compulsion to smash news.ycombinator.com into the address bar is not quite as intense as it was for Slashdot during its prime, or Reddit. For me, HN is mostly just a place to learn about some new things that are going on in the world (with a focus on tech) and find healthy responses that help me to do better in my little version of that world. Sometimes, I get to teach some things, and I also occasionally vent about some things. But sometimes, I get still find myself mired in responses from people who I feel are deliberately anti-helpful. This promotes involuntary responses in my brain chemistry that make me want to fight back as soon as I possibly can. I wish I could do better, and I wish that they would also do better. But! So far, that's usually been pretty easy to shut down or redirect here on HN when it occurs, before it all gets Godwin'd all to hell and back. (And before Slashdot, I used tin and an an ISP-provided news server. And before that, networked BBS systems; the whole of the 1990s were also rife with social media in my world. :) I even tried [and failed] once to implement an nntpcache box for a local ISP, to help them save on bandwidth and local storage. Before all of that, it was the 1980s and I was a little kid.)
KronisLV 1mo ago
> I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. Since the industry stops for noone (and you kinda have to keep learning in software dev) and due to the state of the economy it feels like one big rat race to me, I don't foresee that sort of outcome for myself. I can easily imagine how lazing in the sun in Italy or someplace like that (if the hot summers nowadays don't fuck that up), going swimming and eating healthy food with not a care in the world would surely help one get rid of the dopamine addiction, getting there being the hard part. The fast paced modern lifestyle and being always online can feel a tad anxiety inducing and unnatural.
- nrr 1mo ago
  > and you kinda have to keep learning in software dev It's less the constant need to keep learning that bothers me (my formal credentials involve a requirement to undertake a minimum of 30 hours of continuing education annually) than it is that the industry has focused on vendor-specific implementations of various concepts. I've built a lot of control planes like Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry (and its accompanying BOSH) over my career as a system administrator, but hiring managers and staff engineers these days specifically want Kubernetes experience. Likewise, I've built a lot of control planes like what backs AWS's EC2 (including multi-tenant accounting and quotas and MAC/RBAC!), but hiring managers and staff engineers specifically want production experience with EC2 (and, seemingly, the broader AWS ecosystem, which is nonetheless approachable for someone who has production distributed systems experience). At my most tinfoil hat, I want to say that this is blatantly in the interest of setting up a consulting industry around these vendor solutions, and it creates something of a monopsony situation for someone with my skillset. My formal credentials are as an actuary, so I can at least go back to pursuing claim severity modeling and pricing out when something has a hiccup as a primary responsibility, but this focus is almost certainly a deskilling move otherwise.
HSO 1mo ago
SelfControl app with restrictive whitelist Done
to11mtm 1mo ago
One of the things I liked about my Windows phone, was the relative lack of apps made it very hard to fall into addiction 'traps'. On the flip side, my partner has fallen deep into the cesspit, either seeing her doom-scrolling through Facebook for hours, or the way she talks about all the things she saw on there despite not handling any of the things that she said she would get done that day (FWIW... My partner does not work at this time, she quit her job under the auspices of taking care of the house. Has not gone well. I guess at least she stopped playing cow-clicker games on her phone...) If I will give my first 'real job' some credit for anything around their Blocking policies, they had extremely strict blocks around anything that could be 'personal use' and had very alarming warnings pop up if you happened to hit one of the blocks. (To the point where even doing legitimate work research I more than once freaked out and went right to my manager and the IT managers explaining my case and what I was doing.) But it's also part of why the open office / panopticon layout has become more popular; It provides at least some vague threat to somewhat lower the risk folks get sucked into their phones out of view...
agumonkey 1mo ago
The web changed too, early 2000s was a balanced between real world, old media and web trying to exist, then it swallowed more, and many old things had to migrate or imitate. Now the world is all streamed, always on..
jolmg 1mo ago
> I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. > It seems to have worsened in recent years. I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. That's just anxiety from worsening politics, don't you think? Getting out of that anxiety may just be a matter of recognizing that just because bad stuff's happening in certain places that may eventually have repercussions in your own individual life, it doesn't mean that it's going to affect you that bad. It's like someone jumping in the pool. The waves will dissipate by the time they reach you. You can ignore them and just pay attention to the water in your personal space.
- Biologist123 1mo ago
  I don’t think I’m necessarily caught in a doom loop news cycle. My reading habits are around philosophy, sociology, anthropology, technology. That’s not to say I’m immune to clickbait!
ed_elliott_asc 1mo ago
Just focus on putting your phone in a draw for as long as you can, leave a stopwatch on it running so you can see how long you have left it - it will be short to start with but with practice you’ll regain the ability to live without consuming information.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1mo ago
  >Just focus on putting your phone in a draw for as long as you can, I've had a smartphone since the iPhone 4, I think. And while I find it useful, I honestly don't understand how anyone can be addicted to it. Mostly stays in my pocket. If I need navigation, it's out in the car while I find the address. I use it for instant messaging for my wife and kids (rarely the phone call anymore... don't know the last time I answered a call, it's all robot scammers and telemarketers). The screen's not big enough to read anything, not large enough to watch anything. The sorts of games I enjoyed as a kid just aren't available. Sometimes I'll have an ebook on it, that's ok (it's nearly as big as a paperback used to be), but remembering to load one onto my phone before I got somewhere I'll be waiting doesn't always work out. I can spend hours online, if I'm not careful. At home, in front of the big monitor. How does anyone get addicted on a tiny little phone screen, with dumbed down apps? I can't even look at pages on Firefox on the phone, without adblock it's just abysmal.
grackasthebig 1mo ago
Huh mines been the opposite; I use the internet less and less the last few years. Difference maybe is during covid I got rid if my TV and got into guitar. I also deleted Twitter and Facebook in the early 2010s. Never fostered a sense of ownership over an account. Not having the "work laptop to TV" pattern created a need to fill time otherwise. Cooking skills have greatly improved. Home improvements are getting done much cheaper without labor costs. Sign ups and paywalls everywhere when I do take a minute to surf the web help. Anything that wants me to sign up is ignored. Further reinforcement during these windows of surfing comes from not being wrapped up in thought-less rush to join in. Just browsing makes the banal content stand out.
da02 1mo ago
What type of work was it? Customer service/tech support? Software development?
- Biologist123 1mo ago
  Corporate law.
DivingForGold 1mo ago
This is an amazing read. Hunter S. Thompson would be proud.
johnnyanmac 1mo ago
>I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. Having income and even better, time, to take out of the current workforce cog would do wonders. Sadly, we're in an employer's market and non-internet activities are only getting more expensive. Ideally, you'd have some getaway with family and/or friends to enjoy the beauty of the world we're in. That's the best antidote to such digital addiction. But I'm sadly been spending all my time trying to get back on the hamster wheel with the job search.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
Valakas_ 1mo ago
It's not you. This is the result of a simple equation: The more time you spend on an online website/app the more ads they can show you. And with that, the more info they make from you, the more relevant the ads become, and the more money they make. Keeping you glued to their website or app is the goal of "free to use" social media apps. If i had no ethics, and corporations as naturally amoral entities don't, i'd hire PhDs in psychology in order to try to employ tactics to keep you engaged and spending as much time in the app as possible. This, btw, is exactly what they have been doing. Tiktok became super big in western world around the time of covid, and that one was the first app i immediately noticed how stupidly addictive and "brain rotting" it was. Soon after Instagram introduced Reels, Youtube Shorts, and Facebook their own shorts.

alightsoul 1mo ago

And even worse, if you're addicted to soda, it is cheaper than bottled water, what if you don't have tap water?

dexwiz 1mo ago

Pandemic really ramped it up. Also screen addiction has gone mainstream. In front of a screen 12+ hours a day 20 years ago? Total nerd. Now? Standard behavior.

queenkjuul 1mo ago
I started to notice a shift in how the recommendation algorithms worked probably around 2018-2019 and then the pandemic just took it to nuclear levels against the entire population
asdfman123 1mo ago
It's so weird. I used to consider myself a fringe internet addict in the 2000s but now everyone is like me. Like many of you, I deal with stuff like depression, anxiety, ADHD. Back in the 2000s it felt like I was the only weirdo out there. Now I cringe writing that out because it feels like everyone is like that now.
- sefrost 1mo ago
  Everybody isn't like that. "The algorithm" might have made you think everybody is like that though.
  - asdfman123 1mo ago
    Meet a lot of Gen Zers. Far too many of them are.
    - rescbr 1mo ago
      Huh, maybe that’s why I’m more empathetic towards them compared to my fellow millennials?
stackbutterflow 1mo ago
I made the same observation recently. I think people under 25 probably don't even know how absolutely uncool it was to tell people you stayed at home in front of a computer on weekends or after school. Absolute pariah behavior on the scale of coolness. But now ? Totally normal.
XorNot 1mo ago
Okay but what should people be doing instead? The complaint that everyone is on their phone (or in front of screens) is less informative then the interlocutors ideas of what should be instead.

Aurornis 1mo ago

> I think the addiction began as soon as I started to work at a desk behind a computer which had internet access Interestingly, my digital consumption for idle entertainment dropped when I started working full time. I didn’t want to be in front of a screen when work was done. My screen exposure for fun is primarily this site (where I spend too much time), and games where my friends and I treat the time as a multi-way group call with long distance friends. I do know a lot of people who followed the exact course you describe: They watch screens at work and had periods where it was okay to spend a lot of time on social media or social news sites (Hacker News, Reddit, Slashdot, Digg, depending on the era). Checking those sites all day long became a habit for them and filled all idle time. Whenever they felt uncomfortable or bored, visiting a site would fix it. Some of them broke out of it when they switched to workplaces where it wasn’t acceptable to do non-work things during the day. This is almost inconceivable for a lot of tech workers who have had a lot of freedom to date, but it’s normal in some industries. As an example, I have friends who work in areas where security concerns are so high that they check their phones into lockers before entering their work areas. Others worked at companies who did over-reaching analysis of computer use. Many just moved to companies with packed open office spaces where it would be obvious to everyone around if you were on Reddit or looking at your phone instead of the computer for an excessive amount all day. What is interesting is that this seems to induce a split: Some people get broken of their Internet use habits this way and continue not using those sites outside of work. Others seem to have a rebound where they leave work and start gorging on Reddit or TikTok or their other preferred sites.

altmanaltman 1mo ago

Do you ever wonder, if you were born in a different era, like 1901, and still had the base drives behind this addiction, how would it channel itself? Like what would you replace the internet with in those days

yoyohello13 1mo ago
If my history reading is any indication the answer is ‘getting drunk at the pub’
paxys 1mo ago
Opium

TFNA 1mo ago

Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures. Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social media today, I think another aspect of the problem is that there is less connection to real-life socializing simply because that has collapsed in so many countries.

anal_reactor 1mo ago
> You could meet cool new people My first date was a guy with fake photos. Ten dates later I settled for a married guy cheating on his wife. He eventually divorced but then I left him.
- abixb 1mo ago
  Username checks out. /s
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
elmomle 1mo ago
This is a big part of it for me. The old Internet was full of individuals sharing deep passion--whether on a personal website or on a forum. There was a sense of connecting to another human being. This is the only forum-style site I regularly interact with, and I must admit that I rarely try to remember another username here. The effect is that I interact with ideas, not people. And there is some deep connection between behaviors I might label as addiction and a felt sense of isolation.
- spicyjpeg 1mo ago
  The internet is still full of individuals sharing deep passion for all sorts of things, but only within the walls of invite-only communities you have to go out of your way to find (Discord servers, private forums) and/or make a financial commitment towards (Patreon). Or at least it was, before LLM "enthusiasts" started leaking into these otherwise hermetic communities and overrunning formerly safe spaces with mass-produced low-effort content nobody wants to see, particularly when anyone else could prompt the exact same thing into existence.

KellyCriterion 1mo ago

Im with you! The most times Im late for "some things on a project" at work is, because, I wasted time reading through dozens of feeds/news/comments on "too many" days so I got somehow a "delay" ;-) Esp. comments: Actually, I ready mostly those because usually they have more information or context etc.than the article itself. (BTW: thats the reason why Im here on HN :-)

Haga 1mo ago

Its because all of society moved interactions online, as the whole real space society got socially strangulated of discussions, arguments and anything meaningfull. If everything is a safe space- and democratic societies argueing and challenging of ideas is not "safe" - then the meaningfull interactions escape into the internet.

gizajob 1mo ago

The dealer is in your pocket.

sefrost 1mo ago

> Like putting an alcoholic to work behind a bar and thinking he’d restrain himself. I've been thinking about this recently. The tools we use as desk workers are only ever one step away from endless streams of addictive content. And in many cases the software we use to do our jobs are adopting dark patterns similar to those which have been successful in consumer apps. Often the advice is to opt out of the system. I make mobile apps, I can't simply drop out and use a dumb phone (unless I get a new career). My workplace is essentially inside the addictive environment. I have to keep my knowledge up to date and be on top of app/design trends to be successful in my job. This used to feel rewarding to me, but increasingly it doesn't. I used to be able to go to Twitter and read+learn+be inspired a lot about web development for example, but now it's almost entirely short form video content. And I fall for it every time. And I actively tried to avoid this from happening, I barely use YouTube and I've never used TikTok. My Dad was a carpenter and it's as if his day-to-day tools were cigarettes or something. It's hard/impossible to avoid this environment when we are increasingly working in it.

asdfman123 1mo ago

If you're interested in what helped me overcome the worst aspects of my internet addiction, I learned to reframe it. I wasn't overcome with addiction, but I was CHOOSING to take a break. There are good reasons to read the news, there are good reasons to take breaks. End the war against yourself and take more wholesome breaks, so your subconscious doesn't take over and force them. It may involve forcing yourself to be more realistic about what you can do in a given time period, but that's a good thing ultimately. I know it sounds like a minor change but the whole game is putting your life back in your own control. When you find yourself binging, say "I am choosing to do this," even if you don't immediately log off. Just observe your own choices as a first step. Another tip: when you're craving a hit of the internet, ask yourself "can I wait 5 minutes before checking my phone?" If you can't, no big deal. But if you do this enough time you build up the self discipline muscle.

foobarbecue 1mo ago
Forcing a short delay is such a powerful technique. I use this when I'm at risk of binging a show. If I'm tempted to let Netflix continue into the next episode, I say "ok maybe, but let's get up and do something else for a few minutes first and see if I still want to" and before I know it I'm building a robot instead.
- bluefirebrand 1mo ago
  I'll vouch for this too This is something I've been working on a lot myself. It's so easy to wind up sliding into the familiar patterns and routines, and reaching for the phone. I'm finding that discipline is less about resisting it and more about redirecting it to something more productive
- manuisin 1mo ago
  reverse/compliment to this to start working for me is just aiming to work for 1-2 minutes when it feels hard to get started. i usually end up getting immersed, and find it hard to stop.
JustinJoshi 1mo ago

akudha 1mo ago

The most dangerous part of this addiction is that it doesn't feel like addiction. Suppose we spend 4 hours in an afternoon consuming random content - starting somewhere on a Google search, landing on Wikipedia, end up reading dozens of articles on various topics in that 4 hours. Unlike alcohol or drugs, this is knowledge addiction - afterall, we learned about a bunch of things in those 4 hours, didn't we? We didn't spend any money (well, other than the laptop, electricity and internet bills), we didn't harass anyone (like alcoholics sometimes do) etc. Heck, we didn't even "waste" time like we think we do, when we play video games. So it feels somewhat better. But, all that we learned in those 4 hours - is it really that useful? Some of it might be, lets say an hour of it. What about the other three? That could have been spent on something healthier - having fun with friends, play sports, or even just sleeping! I understand the irony of typing this, but I too am in the same boat - consuming things voraciously, most of which is just useless knowledge, at the cost of relationships, health etc.

acid_fish 1mo ago
Well, it depends. If it's not at the cost of relationship, sports and other important things, is it really an addiction? It can often be just a hobby like everything else.
stackbutterflow 1mo ago
It's all about balance. Learning about various stuff from well written articles and Wikipedia for one hour is good. Doing the same thing for the whole weekend isn't. Even reading books all the time to the detriment of other activities isn't good. What's good is doing a bit of everything. Reading a book an hour before sleep, doing a hour of exercise two to three times a week. Reading a few blog articles, wikipedia, long and well researched magazine articles. Making time for in person social interactions. Playing games, video games, board games, card games from time to time. Engaging in a few online discussions every week. Etc It's all about balance or at least that's the way I see it.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 1mo ago
  Doing a bit of everything is what’s good? Why? Because that sounds like aimless distraction. If you had a goal in mind, doing a bit of everything isn’t even an option

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

paxys 1mo ago

> I don’t use social media You are using social media right now.

inigyou 1mo ago
And it's exactly as addictive as Twitter.
- stackbutterflow 1mo ago
  Exactly. Whether hn is a social platform is a hot topic for some, but in terms of addictiveness it's on the same level as reddit. And there's no algorithm and sub categories. But every day there's basically the same type of threads, with the same predictable discussions and you know just by the title and the amount of comments on a thread that you'll get you dose of dopamine whether you're pro or anti any topic that is regularly discussed.
  - ssl-3 1mo ago
    There was a time that whenever I got in front of a computer and opened a web browser, my hands would start typing "slashdot.org" into the address bar and my eyes would watch for autocompletion so I could enter the address as soon as possible. It was so automatic that when I was working on a new, not-at-all-internet-connected long-distance wireless IP network with the (quite apt) customer looking over my shoulder, well before the days of cheap or free phone hotspots and always-on pocket supercomputers, he laughed when he saw my hands start to type out slashdot and said: "Yeah, good luck with that." After Slashdot, it was Reddit. Now, it's mostly HN. I've mostly avoided traps like MySpace, FB, and whatever LinkedIn has become. But it's all social media, and all of it always has been. But HN is a little bit softer, I think. Whether it's design elements like the deliberately-quiet cooldown periods on serial comment replies, or the very apt and cordial moderation by dang and company, or some combination of that and everything else else: My compulsion to smash news.ycombinator.com into the address bar is not quite as intense as it was for Slashdot during its prime, or Reddit. For me, HN is mostly just a place to learn about some new things that are going on in the world (with a focus on tech) and find healthy responses that help me to do better in my little version of that world. Sometimes, I get to teach some things, and I also occasionally vent about some things. But sometimes, I get still find myself mired in responses from people who I feel are deliberately anti-helpful. This promotes involuntary responses in my brain chemistry that make me want to fight back as soon as I possibly can. I wish I could do better, and I wish that they would also do better. But! So far, that's usually been pretty easy to shut down or redirect here on HN when it occurs, before it all gets Godwin'd all to hell and back. (And before Slashdot, I used tin and an an ISP-provided news server. And before that, networked BBS systems; the whole of the 1990s were also rife with social media in my world. :) I even tried [and failed] once to implement an nntpcache box for a local ISP, to help them save on bandwidth and local storage. Before all of that, it was the 1980s and I was a little kid.)

KronisLV 1mo ago

> I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. Since the industry stops for noone (and you kinda have to keep learning in software dev) and due to the state of the economy it feels like one big rat race to me, I don't foresee that sort of outcome for myself. I can easily imagine how lazing in the sun in Italy or someplace like that (if the hot summers nowadays don't fuck that up), going swimming and eating healthy food with not a care in the world would surely help one get rid of the dopamine addiction, getting there being the hard part. The fast paced modern lifestyle and being always online can feel a tad anxiety inducing and unnatural.

nrr 1mo ago
> and you kinda have to keep learning in software dev It's less the constant need to keep learning that bothers me (my formal credentials involve a requirement to undertake a minimum of 30 hours of continuing education annually) than it is that the industry has focused on vendor-specific implementations of various concepts. I've built a lot of control planes like Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry (and its accompanying BOSH) over my career as a system administrator, but hiring managers and staff engineers these days specifically want Kubernetes experience. Likewise, I've built a lot of control planes like what backs AWS's EC2 (including multi-tenant accounting and quotas and MAC/RBAC!), but hiring managers and staff engineers specifically want production experience with EC2 (and, seemingly, the broader AWS ecosystem, which is nonetheless approachable for someone who has production distributed systems experience). At my most tinfoil hat, I want to say that this is blatantly in the interest of setting up a consulting industry around these vendor solutions, and it creates something of a monopsony situation for someone with my skillset. My formal credentials are as an actuary, so I can at least go back to pursuing claim severity modeling and pricing out when something has a hiccup as a primary responsibility, but this focus is almost certainly a deskilling move otherwise.

HSO 1mo ago

SelfControl app with restrictive whitelist Done

to11mtm 1mo ago

One of the things I liked about my Windows phone, was the relative lack of apps made it very hard to fall into addiction 'traps'. On the flip side, my partner has fallen deep into the cesspit, either seeing her doom-scrolling through Facebook for hours, or the way she talks about all the things she saw on there despite not handling any of the things that she said she would get done that day (FWIW... My partner does not work at this time, she quit her job under the auspices of taking care of the house. Has not gone well. I guess at least she stopped playing cow-clicker games on her phone...) If I will give my first 'real job' some credit for anything around their Blocking policies, they had extremely strict blocks around anything that could be 'personal use' and had very alarming warnings pop up if you happened to hit one of the blocks. (To the point where even doing legitimate work research I more than once freaked out and went right to my manager and the IT managers explaining my case and what I was doing.) But it's also part of why the open office / panopticon layout has become more popular; It provides at least some vague threat to somewhat lower the risk folks get sucked into their phones out of view...

agumonkey 1mo ago

The web changed too, early 2000s was a balanced between real world, old media and web trying to exist, then it swallowed more, and many old things had to migrate or imitate. Now the world is all streamed, always on..

jolmg 1mo ago

> I don’t use social media, but I consume news, blogs and newsletters - and comment threads - voraciously. > It seems to have worsened in recent years. I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. That's just anxiety from worsening politics, don't you think? Getting out of that anxiety may just be a matter of recognizing that just because bad stuff's happening in certain places that may eventually have repercussions in your own individual life, it doesn't mean that it's going to affect you that bad. It's like someone jumping in the pool. The waves will dissipate by the time they reach you. You can ignore them and just pay attention to the water in your personal space.

Biologist123 1mo ago
I don’t think I’m necessarily caught in a doom loop news cycle. My reading habits are around philosophy, sociology, anthropology, technology. That’s not to say I’m immune to clickbait!

ed_elliott_asc 1mo ago

Just focus on putting your phone in a draw for as long as you can, leave a stopwatch on it running so you can see how long you have left it - it will be short to start with but with practice you’ll regain the ability to live without consuming information.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1mo ago
>Just focus on putting your phone in a draw for as long as you can, I've had a smartphone since the iPhone 4, I think. And while I find it useful, I honestly don't understand how anyone can be addicted to it. Mostly stays in my pocket. If I need navigation, it's out in the car while I find the address. I use it for instant messaging for my wife and kids (rarely the phone call anymore... don't know the last time I answered a call, it's all robot scammers and telemarketers). The screen's not big enough to read anything, not large enough to watch anything. The sorts of games I enjoyed as a kid just aren't available. Sometimes I'll have an ebook on it, that's ok (it's nearly as big as a paperback used to be), but remembering to load one onto my phone before I got somewhere I'll be waiting doesn't always work out. I can spend hours online, if I'm not careful. At home, in front of the big monitor. How does anyone get addicted on a tiny little phone screen, with dumbed down apps? I can't even look at pages on Firefox on the phone, without adblock it's just abysmal.

grackasthebig 1mo ago

Huh mines been the opposite; I use the internet less and less the last few years. Difference maybe is during covid I got rid if my TV and got into guitar. I also deleted Twitter and Facebook in the early 2010s. Never fostered a sense of ownership over an account. Not having the "work laptop to TV" pattern created a need to fill time otherwise. Cooking skills have greatly improved. Home improvements are getting done much cheaper without labor costs. Sign ups and paywalls everywhere when I do take a minute to surf the web help. Anything that wants me to sign up is ignored. Further reinforcement during these windows of surfing comes from not being wrapped up in thought-less rush to join in. Just browsing makes the banal content stand out.

da02 1mo ago

What type of work was it? Customer service/tech support? Software development?

Biologist123 1mo ago
Corporate law.

DivingForGold 1mo ago

This is an amazing read. Hunter S. Thompson would be proud.

johnnyanmac 1mo ago

>I’d like out, but the dealers are on every corner. Having income and even better, time, to take out of the current workforce cog would do wonders. Sadly, we're in an employer's market and non-internet activities are only getting more expensive. Ideally, you'd have some getaway with family and/or friends to enjoy the beauty of the world we're in. That's the best antidote to such digital addiction. But I'm sadly been spending all my time trying to get back on the hamster wheel with the job search.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

Valakas_ 1mo ago

It's not you. This is the result of a simple equation: The more time you spend on an online website/app the more ads they can show you. And with that, the more info they make from you, the more relevant the ads become, and the more money they make. Keeping you glued to their website or app is the goal of "free to use" social media apps. If i had no ethics, and corporations as naturally amoral entities don't, i'd hire PhDs in psychology in order to try to employ tactics to keep you engaged and spending as much time in the app as possible. This, btw, is exactly what they have been doing. Tiktok became super big in western world around the time of covid, and that one was the first app i immediately noticed how stupidly addictive and "brain rotting" it was. Soon after Instagram introduced Reels, Youtube Shorts, and Facebook their own shorts.