Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 305 posts

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#141

Post by 0xdeadb00f »

septimus111 wrote: post #126

I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.

I get it, I really do. Negativity is shit.

The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective.

Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking this way? (P.s. I have not yet read the OP's article)

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#142

Post by globular-toast »

septimus111 wrote: post #126

I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.

I started doing that in general several years ago. I now regularly cull anything from my life that I identify as a source of negativity. For me it's mainly relationships with people that end up generating high levels of negativity and I suppose Reddit does count as that. It was one of the first things to go. I deleted my accounts and the app and went completely cold turkey. I have more recently reintroduced it but more carefully, sticking to a few choice subreddits.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#143

Post by [deleted] »

lostmsu wrote: post #96
zozin wrote: post #59

I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…

The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…

[deleted]

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#144

Post by ersii »

As of a hundred comments, none seem to have mentioned that this is not inherent in social media but in media in general.

Remember to take breaks from the news cycles (whatever flavor of news and outlet you prefer) and try to not get emotionally engaged in what is really quite distant from your actual life.

The news, wherever they come from and regardless of what they are about are mostly just a distraction from what actually matters, your own life, family and mission.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#145

Post by TheCapeGreek »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #141
septimus111 wrote: post #126

I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.

I get it, I really do. Negativity is shit. The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective. Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking thi…

Definitely, one does still have to be aware of how bad things can get. The way I see it, that sort of information can filter through no matter what you do. Instead of compltely shutting out however, what I've read some say in regards to this digital minimalism is to keep just one or two news sources. For some that's HN, or a custom subreddit collection, or just opening your local news site once a day/week/whatever.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#146

Post by tomduncalf »

I definitely found myself wasting more time recently scrolling through Twitter e.g. in the evening or when compiling code. I actually quite like the site but I find there's more and more irrelevant stuff on my feed so I don't really like feel like I get as much value from it, yet the addictive nature of the feed still makes you refresh it.

I was aware I was doing this but didn't do anything about it until I was prompted by this article, which I think was posted on here recently: https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/. For me it really hit the nail on the head about wanting to reclaim your attention a bit, but that these companies have thousands of people working on systems to try and claim your attention for themselves, so it's no wonder it's hard.

I made a few small changes as a result of this:

- I used Screen Time on my iPhone to block all apps except essential ones (clock, calendar, notes, Philips Hue) for the first hour of my day

- I logged out of Twitter on my Firefox and instead logged into it in a container tab, which takes a few extra clicks to open

- I logged out of Twitter on my iPhone, so I have to log in to access it

- I didn't install Twitter on my new iPad

I've found these changes have made a big difference - I think particularly blocking apps in the morning. It feels like if you can "control" your attention a bit more in the first part of your day, that continues somewhat throughout the day, then adding in the slight hurdles to access the site throughout the day causes you to stop and think "do I really want to do this?" when your reflex to just open a new tab and type "tw" or to scroll while you're stood in a queue or whatever kicks in.

I still do browse Twitter and other time wasting sites a little bit, which I'm fine with, but I feel like I'm doing it more conciously - sometimes after a long day I'll think "I just fancy sitting on the sofa and reading the news and looking on Twitter" and I'm fine with that, as it's something I've chosen to do.

It's only been a few weeks so I don't want to speak too soon, but I'm feeling really happy with this approach so far, without having to go atomic and delete Twitter entirely as I do get some value from it.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#148

Post by nicky0 »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #141
septimus111 wrote: post #126

I have started unsubscribing to any subreddit the moment I notice a post is generating a negative emotion. Nowadays my feed is mostly woodworking, cooking and photography.

I get it, I really do. Negativity is shit. The world is a messed up place. Sure, we shouldn't be bombarded by this fact day in and day out, but I personally think it's a good thing to remind yourself now and then how fucked up the world we live in can be - to maintain a sort of tether to the "reality" of the world's current messed up situation; it puts a lot into perspective. Any thoughts? Am I wrong for thinking thi…

More important to maintain a tether to the immediate physical world around you, than to a notion of being "informed" about far-off events.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#149

Post by moksly »

lostmsu wrote: post #96
zozin wrote: post #59

I deleted my Twitter a few months ago and my life is better for it. The need to be “in the know” was powerful, but I realized that I was consuming vast amounts of shallow information that resulted in shallow, uninformed opinions. I’ve been reading a lot more long-form articles and books; I’ve finished reading three books in the last month or so. When my Twitter habit was strong I would often start a book and give up…

The problem I've been facing recently is that long form also turns out to be a waste of time after you go through the most informational/influential pieces. Lots of the articles thread the same water, dive into totally unnecessary details, or just tell a story that, while fascinating, does not really give you any important new information, or bury it in a few casual sentences, never elaborating on them. For books it…

I think the long form is really good actually, but it needs to be done by people who wrote it out of love. HN will sometimes lead you down that path, like that story about the diver who survived for many minutes on the floor of the North Sea without oxygen after his umbilical cord was severed. Mostly though, almost everything linked to by HN didn’t really need to be written and was likely written for clicks.

HN is still valuable for me because it sometimes leads to me discovering new frameworks I can actually use that I wouldn’t hear about anywhere else because people in my part of the world use JAVA, PHP or C#. But HN is mainly a social media and all the attention seeking that comes with that.

Re: 'Doomscrolling' breeds anxiety – how to stop the cycle

#150

Post by gadders »

maeln wrote: post #128
drevil-v2 wrote: post #125

The problem with this that there are actually massive cultural and ideological changes been imposed on the western society at this time. We are being dragged to the hard left across multiple institutions. Some of us might not want that Ignore it and you will be the quintessential lobster slowly being boiled to death.

Maybe I am confused and I didn't understand what you mean, but if you mean "hard-left" in the political sense, I feel I have to disagree. In a lot of western country, the "hard-right" has won: Trump in the US, Johnson in the UK, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, ... And in some other country they are maybe the strongest they ever been in recent memory (France, Belgium, arguably even Germany). I cannot think of a…

The OP said "cultural and ideological", not political.
Post reply on HN