Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions.
What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night.
Now the battle is easier: Decide once a day to put it there, and track how many days you succeed.
For me that's a lot easier than having it in my pocket, where the Internet is always a couple lazy taps away. Now I at least have to walk to it if I want it, and that often "breaks the spell."
I finish work and chores hours earlier when my phone is charging in another room, without consciously doing anything else differently.
It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.
Does everyone really mean doom scrolling when they talk about these issues? For me personally, it's definitely about dopamine and not about negative emotions, yet everyone uses the phrase doom scrolling - am I the odd one out?
For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
I don't think you necessarily have to be searching for bad news to be doom scrolling. The problem is with most of these services (this website included) is that even if you're trying to read limited topics, you'll still get bombarded with bad news
Take currently for example, every corner of the internet is saturated with US politics, even for those of us outside of the US. I just want to read about interesting technology.
I understand the "doom" in doom scrolling differently.
You're right that in general it's about getting those random dopamine hits when something nice appears in the news feed.
However, after some time, you got a lot of the nice stuff and no exciting stuff appears anymore. At that point, you're still scrolling, hoping for a dopamine hit. It does not come because you are satiated, desensitized and the algorithm no longer has good stuff to offer you.
I get it here on Hacker News. After coming too often and scrolling too much, I already clicked on all the good links. All that is left is either not interesting, or stuff I've looked at before. I still scroll, doomed to find nothing. And yet I scroll.
Interesting all the interpretations of the meaning of 'doom' in this context. I thought it was because the never-ending feed meant that you'd scroll until the end of time, which is called 'doom' (or judgement day or doomsday) in older literature.
No. I think it's one of those situations where the word has changed meaning for certain groups of people, like a game of telephone, because dopamine scrolling and doom scrolling are semantically close. It's kind of like how gen alpha has a different view of what "preppy" means than what previous generations would have thought.
I feel the phrase came into common use during COVID pandemic, so things certainly felt more doom and gloom then. The connotation I think is with the type of negative content being consumed, which exasperates your own feelings.
AFAIK - "Doomscrolling can also be defined as the excessive consumption of short-form videos or social media content for an excessive period of time without stopping"
I definitely associate negative emotions with my doomscrolling behavior. Angst is the best word I can find to describe the feeling. For me it usually focuses around some major news cycle (war, politics, catastrophes, etc.).
> For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
In history, what was the equivalent to this? I think a lot of the negative connotation is related to "it's new and therefore it's probably bad compared to whatever humans used to do".
Yeah, unless not stated in this article, this is not doom scrolling. This seems more like an addiction issue, which is great that it’s being addressed. But it wouldn’t fit the definition of doom scrolling, which is an obsessive compulsion for searching of negative news.
I wonder if there's a "minimum viable connectivity threshold" in modern life - you literally cannot function below a certain baseline of digital access. You could model the failure of "delete everything" strategies as hitting against this hard constraint: banking, authentication, and basic services simply assume browser availability.
Maybe the key insight here is the pivot from prohibition to differential friction. By architecturing high activation energy for distractions (black UI, location blocks) while maintaining low friction for utilities, you've essentially created a "price spread" between productive and unproductive uses of the same capability.
I suspect we're seeing an inevitable arms race: platforms driving activation energy toward zero (think TikTok's frictionless feed) versus commitment devices manufacturing artificial friction. Perhaps the sustainable equilibrium isn't digital abstinence but rather carefully engineered friction differentials that respect our inescapable need for connectivity.
There was a great UX principle around alternative mechanisms or backups. You can't have two rolls of toilet paper easily accessible in a public bathroom because people will naturally use them up at a similar rate.
You need to make ONE OF THEM more inconvenient to use, so that overall your bathroom experience remains useful and convenient. (You'll see this often with a sliding door between two installed rolls of paper, usually with a visible window showing the amount remaining)
Introducing "artificial" inconvenience can be a very powerful usability improvement.
> I wonder if there's a "minimum viable connectivity threshold" in modern life - you literally cannot function below a certain baseline of digital access.
Homeless people can't get access to govt. services if they don't have phone or callbacks in case they next in line to receive benefits. The following guy documents such problems that seem so obvious in retrospect.
Thankfully there are already gap fillers here, like (US) govt programs and private charities that give out cell phones with prepaid plans. They're not perfect by any means, but there are people and programs trying to solve these problems.
None of those ways are sustainable. Not only because there are good reasons to use those apps, but also because there are times when forcing yourself to work isn't going to work. I mean, if I am sick, tired, and just not feeling like working, I would go out of my way to beat the system I installed.
What has worked for me is: one-sec extension [1]. The extension asks you take a deep breath and confirms if I still want to open the app. What I have realized is I don't want to completely do away with time-sink websites, I only want to moderate my behavior of pressing Cmd-T and opening reddit/youtube/twitter in the middle of work. I have increased the length of the pause to 30 second and I am actively forcing myself to actually take the deep breath. Such a pause is enough to knock enough sense into me and return back to work. I think such kind of gentle nudging is better than being overly harsh on yourself.
a) Make your feeds more worthy and less attention grabbing by blocking anything that isn't one of your specific interests.
b) If you make good use of your time, you'll find doing stuff more interesting than scrolling.
"The wanting to not doom-scroll should be intrinsic"
For me, it is, but I would still automatically open Reddit or Twitter when compiling code, and then get stuck in a loop of looking at interesting and/or annoying stuff.
The solution was easy, though, I just put all of these sites, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc. into my hosts file and pointed them to localhost. It took about a week for this automatic behavior to stop. Instead, I have a language learning app, so now I go through some flashcards while my code compiles.
Or open news.ycombinator.com. Maybe the next addition to my hosts file.
I do the same. There's also the bonus that, even if you want to quickly remove the block, it'll take a few minutes to apply unless you go through the bother of wiping the DNS cache.
I’ve actually found using screentime limits on my phone for specific apps (which is essentially self limiting) to be very effective. Once time is up, there’s only a single button click stopping me from continuing doomscrolling, but that’s just enough friction that I’m able to say “oh right I don’t need to be doing this”.
This is just short-term vs long-term gratification and competing desires. That's not intrinsic, except insofar as newly formed habits are compulsive.
Choice and opportunity-cost is all "self-limiting", the only difference is perspective. It's better to have an additive-mindset, i.e. replace a habit with another that provides value rather than merely focusing on restricting something. This works for everything, including diet. In the words of Allan Carr, if you view your actions as sacrifice, you won't succeed.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is LeechBlock for Firefox. With it, you can set up block sites that will either never allow access or allow access after a period of time (60 seconds default).
I have found this helps because when the motivation is that dopamine hit, the delayed start generally gives me enough time to think, "I should be doing something better with my time."
Edit: of course you can reconfigure and delete it, but if you are committed to reduced scrolling it helps. (Obviously I haven't been able to do it with hackernews yet.)
Recently my coworker asked me if I could recommend any physical alarm clocks. He said that phone alarm causes him to pick up the phone the first thing in the morning and he wants to break away from this habit. I guess at some point the society as a whole will start fighting back.
My wife and I recently watched the HBO Dune miniseries (it’s great!) and I was thinking how bizarre it would be if people in that universe were spending their days passive scrolling the screen on their pocket computers.
Wall-E depicted a future like that, but I can’t really think of any other books or movies that imagine that kind of future for humanity. Surely this is a phase we are going through, right?
Fahrenheit 451 has the wife mindlessly listening to airpods all day, even while having conversations (requiring skill in lipreading to avoid interruption). The airpods are described as Seashells or ear thimbles, small radios with speakers that sit in the ear canal.
"Super Sad True Love Story" has that and some other interesting insights into potential evolution of existing media landscape, where watching full Narnia movie makes you movie buff and reading books makes you an icky old man. Book is fairly sad as the title suggests, but mostly due to world it portrays. Some of the trends were captures pretty well; some likely won't age that well.
"no it's dumb in all the right ways, which is the point"
Notably I have notifications but can't act on them, which prevents me from picking up the phone just to check notifications and then be drawn into doing actions. YMMV.
Agreed. My Garmin fenix is one of the most useful things I own. It's just 'smart' enough in the ways I need it to be (mostly for exercise/health), and 'dumb' enough not to bother me with useless dopamine nudges from apps from my phone. It's a delightful piece of technology that improves my life in subtle ways rather than detracts from it or saps it.
I've tried that, but found them to be too easy to sleep through unless my watch wrist is very close to my head (without a pillow between it and my ear). The sound isn't particularly loud and the vibration is similarly shallow. Useful for reminder alarms when I'm awake though.
My current success is using the Amazon branded wiretap for alarms. Interacting with the dumb cloth-eared irritation sometimes annoys me into being awake rather than hitting the virtual snooze yet again, and it doesn't have the doom-scroll potential of my phone.
Can you explain what the "Amazon branded wiretap for alarms" is? I did some searches with those terms but can't really understand what you're referring to.
if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway? if it was a bit smarter you can quickly act on it, but using a smartwatch is so uncomfortable you wouldn't want to use it for anything unnecessary.
>if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway?
Not necessarily. My smartwatch is basically a beeper. I see messages come in, then I mentally prioritize them. 90% of the time, it can wait at least an hour, maybe longer. It's conditioned me (and people around me) that instant reachability is neither necessary nor desirable. It makes it easier to focus on what's in front of me instead of constantly tickling a slab of glass.
I don't know how true this really is, but I read somewhere there is a generational divide now, where older people are happy to see an SMS and leave it to respond later, perhaps days later, while the younger generation would consider "being left on read" as an offence and therefore would feel compelled to immediately act on it to not offend.
It comes with other benefits as well. Not even the cheapest alarm clock has ever failed me. Sure, it can run out of battery power but the low power icon shows up months before it runs out of juice. Phone alarms on the other hand? I had them not triggering at all, or the vibration motor in the phone being stuck (?) and thus not working temporarily, etc... Hence I also prefer physical alarm clocks without software that have one job and one job only.
I've had strange time issues lately with iOS and macOS.
Initially I thought it was a TZ issue because of automatic location but the offset ended up being inconsistent with any TZ. Looks like a mix of RTC and NTP issue, the latter hiding the former when it works but revealing it when it fails.
Not really relevant but I'm going to say it anyway. I hate devices that tell me about "low" battery long in advance of actually going flat, it simply trains me to ignore the notification and then it unceremoniously dies on me at a later time.
In this particular case it's my use of NiMH batteries, which have a different discharge slope than normal Alkaline batteries. So it's not really a "feature" of the device but rather a limitation of the type of batteries used. With my alarm clock the signs when to charge the batteries are very obvious (the LCD starts fading away so it becomes hard to read, but the device is still functioning perfectly for some more weeks even then - it just doesn't much power at all).
Yes we are trying to fight back, but sadly I'm starting to think it will only be the next generations, the ones not even born yet that will fully internalize the lessons of our mistakes.
The only thing that ever really sucked me in like that was Tumblr. The stigma-less repost culture where most of what you encounter is reposted made it feel like I was building something by being on there and reposting things. It really just tickled the right part of my brain. My wife and I would spend literal hours every night scrolling Tumblr.
I've never really gotten anything near that level of enjoyment from another social network.
I still go on from time to time but knowing my friends are never going to see my feed kind of discourages major time investment.
I am so f-in glad I deleted facebook like 10 years ago and never hoped onto anything else. I only hate that I visit HN every few minutes, when I get bored at cagie.
But apart from that, just don't use social media. It's really as simple as it sounds. The only hard thing is to find something to fill the free'd up time with.
The other hard thing is finding out that you now find out personal relationships are hard work. Quality relationships were always hard work, but with social media it was way easier to keep shallow relationships. With social media gone, you find out you need to put in way more effort to keep those valuable relationships going (and find out the hard way which relationships weren't valuable at all).
A little over a year ago I gave away my flagship samsung phablet and bought one of their flip phones, in an attempt to change my habits by consciously making myself doubtful/anxious about the longevity of the flip phone's infamous hinge. The idea was that the little front screen would do everything that a semi-dumb phone replacement could (notifications, camera, calls, timers, calculator, calendar), but I'd also have a 'real smartphone' whenever I needed one - it's just that with this one, using it came at a cost. Every time I'd go to use the big screen I'd remember there was an anxious moment that stood in the way, and the paranoia would make me just anxious enough to question whether I really needed to do what I was about to do.
It's been about 15 months, and I haven't really had to compromise or sacrifice anything: I haven't uninstalled any social media apps, my banking apps are all still there, I have contactless payments on hand, etc.. However, I can say with absolute certainty that my habits have changed _drastically_. Interestingly, I'm not even hesitant to use the phone when I need to, I use it all the time - but when I use it I now use it intentionally, and very briefly; gone are the days of catching myself somehow scrolling through instagram just because 5 minutes ago I opened a whatsapp notification from my mum. It's like night and day, and what's more I feel like I barely had to try.
This is obviously sample of one anecdata, but I'm genuinely surprised at how successful it's been. A real 'life hack'.
(And no I don't have any samsung coupon codes nor do I particularly care for them as a company. Worth mentioning though - the hinge on the zf5 is still really solid 15 months in)
For Android folks, my friend built an app to limit / restrict the apps and websites your phone has access to. It's essentially like workplace fleet management, but for yourself.
I have a little more personal self control, but found his technical implementation pretty neat!
It not being able to uninstalled is a catch 22. I understand why it is uninstallable to prevent people from breaking, uninstalling it and getting around it but I also don't trust the app and it being uninstallable sounds like a risk.
Deleting apps doesn't work for me because there are topics I actually want to follow on places like X (e.g. ML / AI news). As soon as I reinstall, it will easily suck you in again with some distracting emotionalised / partisan current event.
There is an app called ScreenZen that was immediately effective in breaking my habit. It made me use social media much more consciously.
My go-to "social media" page has been GoodReads for a while, and I don't see a problem with it – not only because it is rewarding reading books, but because it doesn't have dark distraction patterns and is much more like the mid 2000s internet. Half my family is doing the reading challenges now.
Try to find the news for things you’re interested in on other platforms. A good subreddit will usually have all you need, but it’s not endless and it’s not actively trying to „upsell your visit” feeding you other topics (at least in the old interface).
It’s reasonable to want to keep up to date with some things. X is just not the best platform for that.
It's really too bad that you can't disable YouTube shorts. I like watching YouTube videos on my phone, but the shorts is too tempting and I find myself wasting so much time with totally useless content. I'll probably have to remove YouTube entirely.
If you're an android user, try the Revanced App. I use it to eliminate all ads and enable SponsorBlock on YT, but it also allows you to customize a lot of the experience. You can turn off shorts by[1]...
1. Open YouTube ReVanced
2. Tap profile picture (top right)
3. Tap Settings
4. Navigate to ReVanced > Layout
5. Tap "Shorts components" at the bottom of the list
This may not apply to you, but the way I consume YouTube is by turning off history and subscribing to the creators I want via RSS. That way I seldom even remember Shorts exist; they simply do not appear for me.
If that wouldn’t work for you, consider removing the app and accessing YouTube via the browser. I would be surprised it there’s not an extension or blocker which can disable those.
I do this as well but find it a bit of a pain to add/remove sources since YouTube doesn't offer any easily accessible RSS feed. Wish there was a way to sync subscriptions with the YouTube account but at the same time I would never allow third party access. I refuse Google login on third party sites.
Quitting is easy. I just remember the Before Times and how peaceful my life was when I gave zero fucks about outrage headlines that I couldn't do anything about even if I wanted to.
If you are on Android you might not want to delete Google Play Store. It provides services which many apps depend on. I have made use of a couple of old 8Gb Android phones and I found that was about the minimum.
If you factory reset and just allow enough time for Play Store to update, I found if you are quick you can switch off auto update on all the other apps (which are installed as stubs only) and end up with enough storage to be useful, yet one which can run other apps successfully.
I've been trying to switch from scrolling to reading my Kindle.
I aggressively curate who I do follow; on Twitter, I mainly use lists. At this point, I'm mostly just interested in AI news. I'm also subscribed to an AI newsletter, but it isn't as tightly scoped as my set of feeds.
I guess I could apply AI to this problem. I'd like a tool a bit like Yahoo Pipes, with email and Twitter integrations, and LLM transformation boxes for summarizing and making decisions.
I was trying to do that, then stumbled on the api costs for accessing anything other than your own posts. In the end, I don’t care going on Twitter again.
I have always deleted apps off my phone but still suffered from access via web.
My solution for X is to logout. This is enough since un-authed has no content and the login screen is enough to stop me.
Then for Youtube/Reddit I blocked on personal and work laptops by adding to /etc/hosts file. If I still had access to un-authed Youtube/Reddit homepage I would still find a way to enjoy it. Also Unhook is too easy to disable for me.
Then for my iPhone I have added both Reddit and Youtube to restricted sites via the iOS settings.
I'm currently reading Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism". Something about his approach that I really appreciate is that he doesn't just recommend abstention and ways to disconnect from social media.
His approach is on the one hand to focus on other rewarding offline activities that are creative or which help grow deep in-person relationships. And on the other hand, to engage with technology in specific ways when that usage is justified by being the best way to solve a particular need.
For an example of the latter, one suggested practise is to always keep your phone on do-not-disturb (except for certain important contacts who may genuinely need to phone you in an emergency) and then to triage any notifications only at specific limited times of the day. Avoid the buzzes and pings, but carry on conversations when you aren't trying to focus on something else.
I had reasonable success deleting Safari from my iPhone. I still need to hit weblinks sometimes, but iOS does a reasonable job at providing a basic web browser for those (no URL bar so I can't then waste time on it).
Of apps, I am currently using ScreenZen, which links into ScreenTime to provide a warning message and delay before I browse a customisable list of websites/apps. (HN is on it...) It seems to work better than OneSec, though it isn't perfect.
[update] Another thing I find useful is to regularly measure my screen time, and have a manageable goal for how long I spend. That's more productive than hoping to go "off-grid" forever.
X (Twitter) is best used as an RSS. Instead of going to the app and the feed, just make some bookmarks folder with the people you want to follow and read their feeds directly.
Occasionally rabbit-hole threads to find new interesting accounts to follow.
We need an app that starts a user defined timer when I open a doom scrolling app. Unless the timer reaches 0, I cannot use the app. So for example, in order to browse reddit, I need to wait a minute. Delayed gratification.
as a former sysadmin, dont mix work and personal profiles on same machine. treat your machine as not your property, please, unless you have a byod policy - it is simply bad practice. i understand the realities of super federated logins and am not innocent of some of this behavior, but if anyone interested cares to go digging, they probably can figure out exactly what you’re up to on a work device and that’s just not a situation I think people should be willingly entering into when you can just maintain separate, semi-isolated devices and accounts. if for some reason someone is making or encouraging you to use personal profiles for work stuff, treat that as a red flag.
This pretty much. The last time, I had a work machine, the only data there was my picture profile, that I needed for setting up account. I also needed to log in my github account. Apart from that, anything else I needed to do can be done on my personal computer or my phone.
I am struggling with this myself at the moment, but I find that just doing something else entirely - away from my phone or laptop - is way more effective than deleting apps.
Activities like buying groceries, cooking, going for a walk etc all create a sensation when I'm done with them, that I enjoy a lot more than what I feel after an hour of scrolling.
Im trying a ”new” thing, in fact something I abandoned years ago. Namely rss.
I made some scrapers for the sites i follow that lacks full rss feeds, and can now enjoy distraction free focused reading again, without inflammatory comment sections.
However, I’m here commenting so I guess im still under the spell. :-/
Tried this for twitter as there are some people I still like for their concise content, but I don't want to be drawn into curated corporate doomscroll. Doesn't work as good as I thought, but I still consider RSS to be a valuable tool to put a safe gate to personal internet use
The nature of programming means that there are a lot of small gaps while you work, for example as the code is compiling and deploying. These short breaks are not enough to pick up any long-term activity, so therefore the small bites of social media end up looking very appetising.
Other times you need to search for specific information. When you already have 25 tabs open, it doesn't seem that bad to open tab number 26.
The best solution that I've found was to work on cafés and libraries: places where I can easily let my eyes wander between blocks of focused work.
Under "later modifications" he mentions an app for web site access limits and a "new browser", but doesn't say which. I guess this is not meant to help others?
I can relate on so many levels, tried so many techniques and tactics and often returned back.
Now I have similar system in place, however I kept the Chrome installed because of the bank authentications just like you said. But I'm using the Wellbeing app (Pixel) to block all the social media domains so even if out of habit I start typing twitter, it does not load.
The daily game I play is rotaboxes that's super relaxing and exactly, has an end.
I really enjoy reading someone else who is going through the same struggles overcomes them. Good luck sticking to them.
Moderation is a high form of discipline. Keep the apps, learn to limit usage. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Keep food in the house, learn not to pig out on the sweets. Works in other areas of life where removing access is not an option.
I guess the problem is twofold:
some of your mental faculties rather want to drown in digital distraction
while you engage other mental faculties to stop the former
While some people can engage in moderation, abstinence has it's place so that you don't spend double your energy just to stay on track.
Imagine someone made a fresh cooked BBQ steak and puts it close to your work place and tells you "it's alright, moderation buddy! Keep working!".
So everything has it's place and time, it's usually the blending of different places and times that makes things difficult
Moderation is more difficult than abstinence because it means you are fighting an activated dopamine loop in real time.
I wonder: are there any good games where the game is literally to escape dopamine loops in various ways? That would actually be a novel and interesting game mechanic. You could make it a puzzle type game or even work it into a role playing or fighting game where sneaking you into some kind of addictive game loop is how the enemies get you.
yes, "distraction" but distraction from "what"? That's the subtle difference. Where basically back in the 1920s but instead of physical cocaine it's digital now
more like sleeping and dreaming I guess.
Do you think the more free people are the more they gotta somehow justify their freedom with simulated struggles?
tbh i have never been free all my life the cult is all I know idk how the mind of a free human being works
but if i had to guess it's the plotline of american psycho when basic needs are met people get bored maybe? and create struggles, games, simulate poverty
if you had a place to live, could work for minimum wage, are not being abused every day your biggest struggle would be scrolling whereas if you can't work, are being abused everyday, live with a bunch of cult fanatics scrolling even monitored feels nice
I don't think so. Pain exists as a signal to tell you that something is wrong with the body. Removing the pain doesn't help diagnose the condition. Though I agree that once a sound diagnosis has been found then pain relief can be pursued. Before then, though, you are throwing away a signal.
Idk... reading on a phone experience is so awful, I never really wanted to read anything there anyways. Every now and then I need to fight one or the other proprietary jail on the phone to get essential services to work. Like Google Play sometimes wants me to give it my email. So, I had to reset it to get around it. I don't read mail on the phone anyways. I have to have it to receive messages from son's school, the worthless but mandatory 2FA for work, GPS, bank...
I just don't understand how this can be such an enticing experience. I couldn't bring myself to read the news on my phone even when that was the only device I had for a few weeks.
So... maybe a solution is to try a better device / medium?
Also, being used to Linux, using Android feels really awful because of programs trying to control what you can do instead of the other way around. It could be really infuriating. Also, everything is mildly broken / really trashy quality in terms of UI interaction (things move on their own when they shouldn't, UI element partially drawn offscreen, very variable response time, absolutely garbage keyboard).
So... maybe another solution is to get used to Linux, and just the taste of freedom will deter you from using smartphones?
What's doom scrolling for you is user engagement for the company, and by their definition you're not wasting your time, you're increasing their revenue by seeing and clicking on ads. That's the only thing that really matters to them.
What are you guys reading from your infinite scroll suppliers? Are you really that dumb to cease reading (e)books for observing some stories written by no-names? And do you consider your pictures' ability to move as a superiority? How can you know at least anything about the world, the Nature and the agressive nature of the Government, how are you supposed to obtain this knowledge from your infinite scrolling devices?
Do you really want an answer to your questions, or do you just want to flaunt some misguided moral superiority? Insulting people isn’t an effective way to get them to do something for you.
Are you really that lacking in empathy that you’re incapable of understanding your fellow humans are being constantly bombarded with addictive messages and technology which—surprise!—makes them addicted? Are you really that cruel that instead of encouraging those trying to leave a bad situation, you find it more amusing to pile on and ridicule their efforts? Are you really that disconnected from society and the human experience that you have never even so much as skimmed any of the countless articles and books on the subject?
Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions.
What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night.
Now the battle is easier: Decide once a day to put it there, and track how many days you succeed.
For me that's a lot easier than having it in my pocket, where the Internet is always a couple lazy taps away. Now I at least have to walk to it if I want it, and that often "breaks the spell."
I finish work and chores hours earlier when my phone is charging in another room, without consciously doing anything else differently.
It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.
Does everyone really mean doom scrolling when they talk about these issues? For me personally, it's definitely about dopamine and not about negative emotions, yet everyone uses the phrase doom scrolling - am I the odd one out?
For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
For me it describes the feeling I have AFTERWARDS. It’s like eating a lot of sweets. They taste great while you’re at it. You feel awful afterwards.
I don't think you necessarily have to be searching for bad news to be doom scrolling. The problem is with most of these services (this website included) is that even if you're trying to read limited topics, you'll still get bombarded with bad news
Take currently for example, every corner of the internet is saturated with US politics, even for those of us outside of the US. I just want to read about interesting technology.
I understand the "doom" in doom scrolling differently.
You're right that in general it's about getting those random dopamine hits when something nice appears in the news feed.
However, after some time, you got a lot of the nice stuff and no exciting stuff appears anymore. At that point, you're still scrolling, hoping for a dopamine hit. It does not come because you are satiated, desensitized and the algorithm no longer has good stuff to offer you.
I get it here on Hacker News. After coming too often and scrolling too much, I already clicked on all the good links. All that is left is either not interesting, or stuff I've looked at before. I still scroll, doomed to find nothing. And yet I scroll.
No matter how much we wish we could stop, we are doomed to scroll.
It’s one of the lesser levels in Dante’s Inferno. We are in hell.
I believe it implies that it will inevitably result in your doom, because you won't be able to achieve much in life.
Interesting all the interpretations of the meaning of 'doom' in this context. I thought it was because the never-ending feed meant that you'd scroll until the end of time, which is called 'doom' (or judgement day or doomsday) in older literature.
No. I think it's one of those situations where the word has changed meaning for certain groups of people, like a game of telephone, because dopamine scrolling and doom scrolling are semantically close. It's kind of like how gen alpha has a different view of what "preppy" means than what previous generations would have thought.
What does preppy mean for alphas?
> adjective used to describe someone who dresses in fashion associated with college preparatory (“prep”) school that gives the impression of old money
I thought it was about stocking life supplies in the basement though.
Dictionary.com has an article about the current meaning:
https://www.dictionary.com/e/the-new-meaning-of-preppy/
Weird they do not even mention tiktok trend to intentionally mistype words (originally to circumvent certain content filters).
I would guess there is some link between this trend and the word `pretty`, but I'm no linguist or tiktoker
I feel the phrase came into common use during COVID pandemic, so things certainly felt more doom and gloom then. The connotation I think is with the type of negative content being consumed, which exasperates your own feelings.
AFAIK - "Doomscrolling can also be defined as the excessive consumption of short-form videos or social media content for an excessive period of time without stopping"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling
I definitely associate negative emotions with my doomscrolling behavior. Angst is the best word I can find to describe the feeling. For me it usually focuses around some major news cycle (war, politics, catastrophes, etc.).
I think this means doom scrolling for many people too. I feel “doom”, so I scroll to distract from the emotions.
> For example, if I'm feeling stressed/anxious, I'll scroll/browse/distract myself to avoid the negative feelings. I'm not seeking them like doom scrolling says.
In history, what was the equivalent to this? I think a lot of the negative connotation is related to "it's new and therefore it's probably bad compared to whatever humans used to do".
Yeah, unless not stated in this article, this is not doom scrolling. This seems more like an addiction issue, which is great that it’s being addressed. But it wouldn’t fit the definition of doom scrolling, which is an obsessive compulsion for searching of negative news.
That's not what I thought doom scrolling meant. I thought it specifically referred to the existential doom of endless scrolling for a dopamine hit.
The doom refers to the news and info type.
In 2025 it's fair to say it's just scrolling. The doom part is implied.
Very much depends on what content you consume. The shy has always been falling, but there's plenty of other stories.
Recommend olauncher, a text-based launcher, in lieu of default:
1. No icons -> less temptation to open another app
2. Faster because you only have to type part of the name, eg typing 'po' opens Spotify (for me)
3. Probably less resource-intensive since we're just rendering text
i use such a launcher and still do,
1. Unlock Phone
2. Swipe up, type "ti"
3. TikTok opens
4. Let the doomscroll commence
I do love these simple launchers, though!
I wonder if there's a "minimum viable connectivity threshold" in modern life - you literally cannot function below a certain baseline of digital access. You could model the failure of "delete everything" strategies as hitting against this hard constraint: banking, authentication, and basic services simply assume browser availability.
Maybe the key insight here is the pivot from prohibition to differential friction. By architecturing high activation energy for distractions (black UI, location blocks) while maintaining low friction for utilities, you've essentially created a "price spread" between productive and unproductive uses of the same capability.
I suspect we're seeing an inevitable arms race: platforms driving activation energy toward zero (think TikTok's frictionless feed) versus commitment devices manufacturing artificial friction. Perhaps the sustainable equilibrium isn't digital abstinence but rather carefully engineered friction differentials that respect our inescapable need for connectivity.
There was a great UX principle around alternative mechanisms or backups. You can't have two rolls of toilet paper easily accessible in a public bathroom because people will naturally use them up at a similar rate.
You need to make ONE OF THEM more inconvenient to use, so that overall your bathroom experience remains useful and convenient. (You'll see this often with a sliding door between two installed rolls of paper, usually with a visible window showing the amount remaining)
Introducing "artificial" inconvenience can be a very powerful usability improvement.
This is often framed in api design as make it easy to use it correctly and difficult to use it incorrectly.
> I wonder if there's a "minimum viable connectivity threshold" in modern life - you literally cannot function below a certain baseline of digital access.
Homeless people can't get access to govt. services if they don't have phone or callbacks in case they next in line to receive benefits. The following guy documents such problems that seem so obvious in retrospect.
https://www.youtube.com/@InvisiblePeople/videos
Thankfully there are already gap fillers here, like (US) govt programs and private charities that give out cell phones with prepaid plans. They're not perfect by any means, but there are people and programs trying to solve these problems.
None of those ways are sustainable. Not only because there are good reasons to use those apps, but also because there are times when forcing yourself to work isn't going to work. I mean, if I am sick, tired, and just not feeling like working, I would go out of my way to beat the system I installed.
What has worked for me is: one-sec extension [1]. The extension asks you take a deep breath and confirms if I still want to open the app. What I have realized is I don't want to completely do away with time-sink websites, I only want to moderate my behavior of pressing Cmd-T and opening reddit/youtube/twitter in the middle of work. I have increased the length of the pause to 30 second and I am actively forcing myself to actually take the deep breath. Such a pause is enough to knock enough sense into me and return back to work. I think such kind of gentle nudging is better than being overly harsh on yourself.
[1]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/one-sec-website-blo...
The struggle is real. I wrote about this a while back: https://renegadeotter.com/2023/08/24/getting-your-focus-back...
What you are doing is "self-limiting" which is not very effective. The devil on your shoulder will always fight this - "don't tell me what to do!"
The wanting to not doom-scroll should be intrinsic. I know that right now, for obvious reasons, it's easier said than done.
I think the secret is:
a) Make your feeds more worthy and less attention grabbing by blocking anything that isn't one of your specific interests. b) If you make good use of your time, you'll find doing stuff more interesting than scrolling.
I've written about this too: https://thisisjam.es/reflecting/on-information-diets/
This obviously doesn't work long-term because when it does, they change the algorithms, the UX, everything to hook you again.
"The wanting to not doom-scroll should be intrinsic"
For me, it is, but I would still automatically open Reddit or Twitter when compiling code, and then get stuck in a loop of looking at interesting and/or annoying stuff.
The solution was easy, though, I just put all of these sites, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc. into my hosts file and pointed them to localhost. It took about a week for this automatic behavior to stop. Instead, I have a language learning app, so now I go through some flashcards while my code compiles.
Or open news.ycombinator.com. Maybe the next addition to my hosts file.
I do the same. There's also the bonus that, even if you want to quickly remove the block, it'll take a few minutes to apply unless you go through the bother of wiping the DNS cache.
I’ve actually found using screentime limits on my phone for specific apps (which is essentially self limiting) to be very effective. Once time is up, there’s only a single button click stopping me from continuing doomscrolling, but that’s just enough friction that I’m able to say “oh right I don’t need to be doing this”.
Chrome on Android also has per-site limits, which I've also found useful in addition to the overall app limit.
15 minutes on HN, then I'm out even if I still have a Chrome limit.
It's really interesting that we have to resort to little jails like this to get our attention back.
This is just short-term vs long-term gratification and competing desires. That's not intrinsic, except insofar as newly formed habits are compulsive.
Choice and opportunity-cost is all "self-limiting", the only difference is perspective. It's better to have an additive-mindset, i.e. replace a habit with another that provides value rather than merely focusing on restricting something. This works for everything, including diet. In the words of Allan Carr, if you view your actions as sacrifice, you won't succeed.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is LeechBlock for Firefox. With it, you can set up block sites that will either never allow access or allow access after a period of time (60 seconds default).
I have found this helps because when the motivation is that dopamine hit, the delayed start generally gives me enough time to think, "I should be doing something better with my time."
Edit: of course you can reconfigure and delete it, but if you are committed to reduced scrolling it helps. (Obviously I haven't been able to do it with hackernews yet.)
Recently my coworker asked me if I could recommend any physical alarm clocks. He said that phone alarm causes him to pick up the phone the first thing in the morning and he wants to break away from this habit. I guess at some point the society as a whole will start fighting back.
My wife and I recently watched the HBO Dune miniseries (it’s great!) and I was thinking how bizarre it would be if people in that universe were spending their days passive scrolling the screen on their pocket computers.
Wall-E depicted a future like that, but I can’t really think of any other books or movies that imagine that kind of future for humanity. Surely this is a phase we are going through, right?
Fahrenheit 451 has the wife mindlessly listening to airpods all day, even while having conversations (requiring skill in lipreading to avoid interruption). The airpods are described as Seashells or ear thimbles, small radios with speakers that sit in the ear canal.
She also had a screen on every wall to watch content everywhere she looked. Fahrenheit 451 was prescient even if it was reacting to the times.
"Super Sad True Love Story" has that and some other interesting insights into potential evolution of existing media landscape, where watching full Narnia movie makes you movie buff and reading books makes you an icky old man. Book is fairly sad as the title suggests, but mostly due to world it portrays. Some of the trends were captures pretty well; some likely won't age that well.
I use a Garmin watch for alarms.
Frequent conversation:
"oh you have a smartwatch"
"no it's dumb in all the right ways, which is the point"
Notably I have notifications but can't act on them, which prevents me from picking up the phone just to check notifications and then be drawn into doing actions. YMMV.
Agreed. My Garmin fenix is one of the most useful things I own. It's just 'smart' enough in the ways I need it to be (mostly for exercise/health), and 'dumb' enough not to bother me with useless dopamine nudges from apps from my phone. It's a delightful piece of technology that improves my life in subtle ways rather than detracts from it or saps it.
> I use a Garmin watch for alarms.
I've tried that, but found them to be too easy to sleep through unless my watch wrist is very close to my head (without a pillow between it and my ear). The sound isn't particularly loud and the vibration is similarly shallow. Useful for reminder alarms when I'm awake though.
My current success is using the Amazon branded wiretap for alarms. Interacting with the dumb cloth-eared irritation sometimes annoys me into being awake rather than hitting the virtual snooze yet again, and it doesn't have the doom-scroll potential of my phone.
Can you explain what the "Amazon branded wiretap for alarms" is? I did some searches with those terms but can't really understand what you're referring to.
Same here. The most useful thing to me is it taps me awake instead of making a noise so my partner doesn't have to wake up when I do.
Same, especially important since my wife works night shifts.
if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway? if it was a bit smarter you can quickly act on it, but using a smartwatch is so uncomfortable you wouldn't want to use it for anything unnecessary.
>if you can't act on them, don't you have to pick up your phone anyway?
Not necessarily. My smartwatch is basically a beeper. I see messages come in, then I mentally prioritize them. 90% of the time, it can wait at least an hour, maybe longer. It's conditioned me (and people around me) that instant reachability is neither necessary nor desirable. It makes it easier to focus on what's in front of me instead of constantly tickling a slab of glass.
I don't know how true this really is, but I read somewhere there is a generational divide now, where older people are happy to see an SMS and leave it to respond later, perhaps days later, while the younger generation would consider "being left on read" as an offence and therefore would feel compelled to immediately act on it to not offend.
It comes with other benefits as well. Not even the cheapest alarm clock has ever failed me. Sure, it can run out of battery power but the low power icon shows up months before it runs out of juice. Phone alarms on the other hand? I had them not triggering at all, or the vibration motor in the phone being stuck (?) and thus not working temporarily, etc... Hence I also prefer physical alarm clocks without software that have one job and one job only.
I've had strange time issues lately with iOS and macOS.
Initially I thought it was a TZ issue because of automatic location but the offset ended up being inconsistent with any TZ. Looks like a mix of RTC and NTP issue, the latter hiding the former when it works but revealing it when it fails.
Luckily I don't use alarms on my phone.
Not really relevant but I'm going to say it anyway. I hate devices that tell me about "low" battery long in advance of actually going flat, it simply trains me to ignore the notification and then it unceremoniously dies on me at a later time.
In this particular case it's my use of NiMH batteries, which have a different discharge slope than normal Alkaline batteries. So it's not really a "feature" of the device but rather a limitation of the type of batteries used. With my alarm clock the signs when to charge the batteries are very obvious (the LCD starts fading away so it becomes hard to read, but the device is still functioning perfectly for some more weeks even then - it just doesn't much power at all).
Its a difficult problem to estimate remaining battery life with alkaline batteries. Devices can only use the voltage reading to make estimates.
I got this for Christmas and quite like it: https://de.braun-clocks.com/collections/digital-clocks/produ...
Yes we are trying to fight back, but sadly I'm starting to think it will only be the next generations, the ones not even born yet that will fully internalize the lessons of our mistakes.
The only thing that ever really sucked me in like that was Tumblr. The stigma-less repost culture where most of what you encounter is reposted made it feel like I was building something by being on there and reposting things. It really just tickled the right part of my brain. My wife and I would spend literal hours every night scrolling Tumblr.
I've never really gotten anything near that level of enjoyment from another social network.
I still go on from time to time but knowing my friends are never going to see my feed kind of discourages major time investment.
I am so f-in glad I deleted facebook like 10 years ago and never hoped onto anything else. I only hate that I visit HN every few minutes, when I get bored at cagie.
But apart from that, just don't use social media. It's really as simple as it sounds. The only hard thing is to find something to fill the free'd up time with.
The other hard thing is finding out that you now find out personal relationships are hard work. Quality relationships were always hard work, but with social media it was way easier to keep shallow relationships. With social media gone, you find out you need to put in way more effort to keep those valuable relationships going (and find out the hard way which relationships weren't valuable at all).
What is cagie?
A little over a year ago I gave away my flagship samsung phablet and bought one of their flip phones, in an attempt to change my habits by consciously making myself doubtful/anxious about the longevity of the flip phone's infamous hinge. The idea was that the little front screen would do everything that a semi-dumb phone replacement could (notifications, camera, calls, timers, calculator, calendar), but I'd also have a 'real smartphone' whenever I needed one - it's just that with this one, using it came at a cost. Every time I'd go to use the big screen I'd remember there was an anxious moment that stood in the way, and the paranoia would make me just anxious enough to question whether I really needed to do what I was about to do.
It's been about 15 months, and I haven't really had to compromise or sacrifice anything: I haven't uninstalled any social media apps, my banking apps are all still there, I have contactless payments on hand, etc.. However, I can say with absolute certainty that my habits have changed _drastically_. Interestingly, I'm not even hesitant to use the phone when I need to, I use it all the time - but when I use it I now use it intentionally, and very briefly; gone are the days of catching myself somehow scrolling through instagram just because 5 minutes ago I opened a whatsapp notification from my mum. It's like night and day, and what's more I feel like I barely had to try.
This is obviously sample of one anecdata, but I'm genuinely surprised at how successful it's been. A real 'life hack'.
(And no I don't have any samsung coupon codes nor do I particularly care for them as a company. Worth mentioning though - the hinge on the zf5 is still really solid 15 months in)
For Android folks, my friend built an app to limit / restrict the apps and websites your phone has access to. It's essentially like workplace fleet management, but for yourself.
I have a little more personal self control, but found his technical implementation pretty neat!
https://limitphone.com/
It not being able to uninstalled is a catch 22. I understand why it is uninstallable to prevent people from breaking, uninstalling it and getting around it but I also don't trust the app and it being uninstallable sounds like a risk.
Deleting apps doesn't work for me because there are topics I actually want to follow on places like X (e.g. ML / AI news). As soon as I reinstall, it will easily suck you in again with some distracting emotionalised / partisan current event.
There is an app called ScreenZen that was immediately effective in breaking my habit. It made me use social media much more consciously.
My go-to "social media" page has been GoodReads for a while, and I don't see a problem with it – not only because it is rewarding reading books, but because it doesn't have dark distraction patterns and is much more like the mid 2000s internet. Half my family is doing the reading challenges now.
Try to find the news for things you’re interested in on other platforms. A good subreddit will usually have all you need, but it’s not endless and it’s not actively trying to „upsell your visit” feeding you other topics (at least in the old interface).
It’s reasonable to want to keep up to date with some things. X is just not the best platform for that.
It's really too bad that you can't disable YouTube shorts. I like watching YouTube videos on my phone, but the shorts is too tempting and I find myself wasting so much time with totally useless content. I'll probably have to remove YouTube entirely.
If you're an android user, try the Revanced App. I use it to eliminate all ads and enable SponsorBlock on YT, but it also allows you to customize a lot of the experience. You can turn off shorts by[1]...
1. Open YouTube ReVanced
2. Tap profile picture (top right)
3. Tap Settings
4. Navigate to ReVanced > Layout
5. Tap "Shorts components" at the bottom of the list
6. Enable "Hide Shorts in feed"
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/156lw72/the_be...
This may not apply to you, but the way I consume YouTube is by turning off history and subscribing to the creators I want via RSS. That way I seldom even remember Shorts exist; they simply do not appear for me.
If that wouldn’t work for you, consider removing the app and accessing YouTube via the browser. I would be surprised it there’s not an extension or blocker which can disable those.
I do this as well but find it a bit of a pain to add/remove sources since YouTube doesn't offer any easily accessible RSS feed. Wish there was a way to sync subscriptions with the YouTube account but at the same time I would never allow third party access. I refuse Google login on third party sites.
> YouTube doesn't offer any easily accessible RSS feed.
Every feed reader I tried auto-detects the correct YouTube feed URL if you just give them the channel URL.
I found it very easy to avoid YT shorts when I realised it's just clips of youtube videos that I've already watched.
Quitting is easy. I just remember the Before Times and how peaceful my life was when I gave zero fucks about outrage headlines that I couldn't do anything about even if I wanted to.
If you are on Android you might not want to delete Google Play Store. It provides services which many apps depend on. I have made use of a couple of old 8Gb Android phones and I found that was about the minimum.
If you factory reset and just allow enough time for Play Store to update, I found if you are quick you can switch off auto update on all the other apps (which are installed as stubs only) and end up with enough storage to be useful, yet one which can run other apps successfully.
I've been trying to switch from scrolling to reading my Kindle.
I aggressively curate who I do follow; on Twitter, I mainly use lists. At this point, I'm mostly just interested in AI news. I'm also subscribed to an AI newsletter, but it isn't as tightly scoped as my set of feeds.
I guess I could apply AI to this problem. I'd like a tool a bit like Yahoo Pipes, with email and Twitter integrations, and LLM transformation boxes for summarizing and making decisions.
I should probably look at https://github.com/huginn/huginn
I was trying to do that, then stumbled on the api costs for accessing anything other than your own posts. In the end, I don’t care going on Twitter again.
I've done something similar recently..
I have always deleted apps off my phone but still suffered from access via web.
My solution for X is to logout. This is enough since un-authed has no content and the login screen is enough to stop me.
Then for Youtube/Reddit I blocked on personal and work laptops by adding to /etc/hosts file. If I still had access to un-authed Youtube/Reddit homepage I would still find a way to enjoy it. Also Unhook is too easy to disable for me.
Then for my iPhone I have added both Reddit and Youtube to restricted sites via the iOS settings.
Works well so far.
I'm currently reading Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism". Something about his approach that I really appreciate is that he doesn't just recommend abstention and ways to disconnect from social media.
His approach is on the one hand to focus on other rewarding offline activities that are creative or which help grow deep in-person relationships. And on the other hand, to engage with technology in specific ways when that usage is justified by being the best way to solve a particular need.
For an example of the latter, one suggested practise is to always keep your phone on do-not-disturb (except for certain important contacts who may genuinely need to phone you in an emergency) and then to triage any notifications only at specific limited times of the day. Avoid the buzzes and pings, but carry on conversations when you aren't trying to focus on something else.
My thing about doom scrolling is that if I’m scrolling for very long it likely means I’m not running into much worthwhile content…
At that point I’m just annoyed and I quit.
I wonder, are people doom scrolling for a long time seeing a lot of content they LIKE?
I had reasonable success deleting Safari from my iPhone. I still need to hit weblinks sometimes, but iOS does a reasonable job at providing a basic web browser for those (no URL bar so I can't then waste time on it).
Of apps, I am currently using ScreenZen, which links into ScreenTime to provide a warning message and delay before I browse a customisable list of websites/apps. (HN is on it...) It seems to work better than OneSec, though it isn't perfect.
[update] Another thing I find useful is to regularly measure my screen time, and have a manageable goal for how long I spend. That's more productive than hoping to go "off-grid" forever.
X (Twitter) is best used as an RSS. Instead of going to the app and the feed, just make some bookmarks folder with the people you want to follow and read their feeds directly.
Occasionally rabbit-hole threads to find new interesting accounts to follow.
We need an app that starts a user defined timer when I open a doom scrolling app. Unless the timer reaches 0, I cannot use the app. So for example, in order to browse reddit, I need to wait a minute. Delayed gratification.
as a former sysadmin, dont mix work and personal profiles on same machine. treat your machine as not your property, please, unless you have a byod policy - it is simply bad practice. i understand the realities of super federated logins and am not innocent of some of this behavior, but if anyone interested cares to go digging, they probably can figure out exactly what you’re up to on a work device and that’s just not a situation I think people should be willingly entering into when you can just maintain separate, semi-isolated devices and accounts. if for some reason someone is making or encouraging you to use personal profiles for work stuff, treat that as a red flag.
This pretty much. The last time, I had a work machine, the only data there was my picture profile, that I needed for setting up account. I also needed to log in my github account. Apart from that, anything else I needed to do can be done on my personal computer or my phone.
I am struggling with this myself at the moment, but I find that just doing something else entirely - away from my phone or laptop - is way more effective than deleting apps. Activities like buying groceries, cooking, going for a walk etc all create a sensation when I'm done with them, that I enjoy a lot more than what I feel after an hour of scrolling.
Im trying a ”new” thing, in fact something I abandoned years ago. Namely rss.
I made some scrapers for the sites i follow that lacks full rss feeds, and can now enjoy distraction free focused reading again, without inflammatory comment sections.
However, I’m here commenting so I guess im still under the spell. :-/
Tried this for twitter as there are some people I still like for their concise content, but I don't want to be drawn into curated corporate doomscroll. Doesn't work as good as I thought, but I still consider RSS to be a valuable tool to put a safe gate to personal internet use
Yea, I dont follow ppl on twitter anymore, but you can use nitter to turn any user into a rss feed.
https://nitter.privacydev.net/elonmusk/rss
For subreddit you can use redlib which has rss feeds, example https://redlib.zaggy.nl/r/insects.rss
Using this as a source, you can combine a bunch of subreddits you like to follow into a single feed for minimal usage effort.
Since you are processing the feeds by now, it is trivial to filter out crap you dont want, such as Musk news.
The nature of programming means that there are a lot of small gaps while you work, for example as the code is compiling and deploying. These short breaks are not enough to pick up any long-term activity, so therefore the small bites of social media end up looking very appetising.
Other times you need to search for specific information. When you already have 25 tabs open, it doesn't seem that bad to open tab number 26.
The best solution that I've found was to work on cafés and libraries: places where I can easily let my eyes wander between blocks of focused work.
Deleting Chrome on Android is difficult but you can go one better than disabling it.
It can still be put back, but you need a computer to do itUnder "later modifications" he mentions an app for web site access limits and a "new browser", but doesn't say which. I guess this is not meant to help others?
I can relate on so many levels, tried so many techniques and tactics and often returned back.
Now I have similar system in place, however I kept the Chrome installed because of the bank authentications just like you said. But I'm using the Wellbeing app (Pixel) to block all the social media domains so even if out of habit I start typing twitter, it does not load.
The daily game I play is rotaboxes that's super relaxing and exactly, has an end.
I really enjoy reading someone else who is going through the same struggles overcomes them. Good luck sticking to them.
Doom scrolling is when you endlessly scroll negative news and communities.
Try Inoreader. It can ingest and deduplicate most feeds oit there, ibcluding things like facebook groups, reddit and hacker news.
The paid version also can desuplicate across the sources, which is really nice.
Then just block every other source.
I use the strategy of not having any social media on my phone.
If I want to doom scroll, I have to open up the laptop.
Moderation is a high form of discipline. Keep the apps, learn to limit usage. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Keep food in the house, learn not to pig out on the sweets. Works in other areas of life where removing access is not an option.
I guess the problem is twofold: some of your mental faculties rather want to drown in digital distraction while you engage other mental faculties to stop the former
While some people can engage in moderation, abstinence has it's place so that you don't spend double your energy just to stay on track. Imagine someone made a fresh cooked BBQ steak and puts it close to your work place and tells you "it's alright, moderation buddy! Keep working!". So everything has it's place and time, it's usually the blending of different places and times that makes things difficult
So basically 'just be successful' it's easy: just learn everyday, do sports, eat well...
But hey thanks for your tip!
No one said it is easy to be virtuous
Moderation is more difficult than abstinence because it means you are fighting an activated dopamine loop in real time.
I wonder: are there any good games where the game is literally to escape dopamine loops in various ways? That would actually be a novel and interesting game mechanic. You could make it a puzzle type game or even work it into a role playing or fighting game where sneaking you into some kind of addictive game loop is how the enemies get you.
I can stop any time I want!
Of course I can! I just don't want to right now, maybe later!
Hmm meanwhile... I had a facebook tab in my browser...
... i switched back to it and noticed my login expired. Didn't bother to log back in.
Yes I'm bragging. Yes, I'm also commenting on HN :)
a lot of these posts usually deal with people that can work, have a life, are free human beings
what if you are not a free human being? scrolling the only source of entertainment till death
yes, "distraction" but distraction from "what"? That's the subtle difference. Where basically back in the 1920s but instead of physical cocaine it's digital now
slow death?
grew up in a cult now prevented from getting any employment living in a house full of cult fanatics scrolling the only thing to do.
way cheaper than drugs. less side effects. idk nice to have something to entertain me on the road to dying
imo it's not as bad as people make it seem people just like coming up with struggle stories once they have jobs and life etc
more like sleeping and dreaming I guess. Do you think the more free people are the more they gotta somehow justify their freedom with simulated struggles?
tbh i have never been free all my life the cult is all I know idk how the mind of a free human being works
but if i had to guess it's the plotline of american psycho when basic needs are met people get bored maybe? and create struggles, games, simulate poverty
if you had a place to live, could work for minimum wage, are not being abused every day your biggest struggle would be scrolling whereas if you can't work, are being abused everyday, live with a bunch of cult fanatics scrolling even monitored feels nice
And I thought that it was related to Doom. Disappointing. (tongue in cheek)
Brick has been very useful: https://getbrick.app/
Also, and slightly tangential, I added this to uBlock today:
www.linkedin.com#hashtag#main[aria-label="Main Feed"] .scaffold-finite-scroll__content
Which makes LinkedIn essentially write-only for content: I can share content I want to, but don't have to read brain-dead takes from other people.
Seems like solving the symptoms, not the cause, which is likely some deeper dissatisfaction
Shutting down the noise may help to find out the causes.
I don't think so. Pain exists as a signal to tell you that something is wrong with the body. Removing the pain doesn't help diagnose the condition. Though I agree that once a sound diagnosis has been found then pain relief can be pursued. Before then, though, you are throwing away a signal.
Idk... reading on a phone experience is so awful, I never really wanted to read anything there anyways. Every now and then I need to fight one or the other proprietary jail on the phone to get essential services to work. Like Google Play sometimes wants me to give it my email. So, I had to reset it to get around it. I don't read mail on the phone anyways. I have to have it to receive messages from son's school, the worthless but mandatory 2FA for work, GPS, bank...
I just don't understand how this can be such an enticing experience. I couldn't bring myself to read the news on my phone even when that was the only device I had for a few weeks.
So... maybe a solution is to try a better device / medium?
Also, being used to Linux, using Android feels really awful because of programs trying to control what you can do instead of the other way around. It could be really infuriating. Also, everything is mildly broken / really trashy quality in terms of UI interaction (things move on their own when they shouldn't, UI element partially drawn offscreen, very variable response time, absolutely garbage keyboard).
So... maybe another solution is to get used to Linux, and just the taste of freedom will deter you from using smartphones?
What's doom scrolling for you is user engagement for the company, and by their definition you're not wasting your time, you're increasing their revenue by seeing and clicking on ads. That's the only thing that really matters to them.
The Matrix was prophetic, only it’s a phone not a vat and it’s humans behind it not AIs. (Though you are providing training data for AI!)
I always thought a good twist on The Matrix would have been that as a big reveal: humans are running it.
What are you guys reading from your infinite scroll suppliers? Are you really that dumb to cease reading (e)books for observing some stories written by no-names? And do you consider your pictures' ability to move as a superiority? How can you know at least anything about the world, the Nature and the agressive nature of the Government, how are you supposed to obtain this knowledge from your infinite scrolling devices?
> Are you really that dumb
Do you really want an answer to your questions, or do you just want to flaunt some misguided moral superiority? Insulting people isn’t an effective way to get them to do something for you.
Are you really that lacking in empathy that you’re incapable of understanding your fellow humans are being constantly bombarded with addictive messages and technology which—surprise!—makes them addicted? Are you really that cruel that instead of encouraging those trying to leave a bad situation, you find it more amusing to pile on and ridicule their efforts? Are you really that disconnected from society and the human experience that you have never even so much as skimmed any of the countless articles and books on the subject?