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

Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 111 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#51

Post by qwerty456127 »

Isn't "dopamine addiction" (as well as "dopamine fasting") a scientifically-debunked myth?

Also why would I block a website if reading it is what I enjoy? Won't this just make me less happy?

I personally am blessed to have zero interest in Facebook and Instagram but I procrastinate a huge lot (seemingly way more than I should) by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge (more than half of which, picked by my attention, is unrelated or loosely related to IT) and most of the idea about what's going on outside of my home and office. Should I block HN?

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#52

Post by tonymet »

treat your future self like a friend or client and set him up for the activities and habits you want. in the moment you’ll never make a good decision. but if you make commitments to be more social and active it will take up the time wasted on social media

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#53

Post by ppg677 »

james-bcn wrote: post #44
raspyberr wrote: post #9

There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. If you want to stop eating sugar then stop eating it. If you want to stop drinking alcohol stop drinking it. If you want to get fit start exercising. If you want to stop being addicted to social media then delete it. You can make all the excuses about how you need it to stay in contact with friends, or deals on the local market, or find events in groups but in the end i…

> There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. This is bullshit. There are lots of simple tricks you can employ to improve yourself. For example: >If you want to stop eating sugar If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products. This gets recommended a lot, but because it is good - Atomic Habits by James…

"""If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products."""

So much easier when you live alone. My spouse buys sugary crap for my kids and then I have to resist all the time. Which I can't. Thus I am overweight.

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#54

Post by ayberk »

I've recently read "Dopamine Nation" by Anna Lembke, and most of the stuff in the book resonated well with me. I really don't spend too much time on social media, but my addiction has been online gaming for awhile. The book does a great job of describing the chemical imbalance caused by immediate access to dopamine we all have with the internet.

The key takeaway from the book for me was that abstinence is necessary and withdrawal is part of getting better. I have tried all kinds of tools and tricks to avoid gaming before, but learning "why" it's happening has been the key to actually succeed.

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#55

Post by nine_k »

ppg677 wrote: post #53
james-bcn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. This is bullshit. There are lots of simple tricks you can employ to improve yourself. For example: >If you want to stop eating sugar If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products. This gets recommended a lot, but because it is good - Atomic Habits by James…

"""If you want to stop eating sugar, throw it all away, and when you go to the supermarket go when you have just eaten, and avoid buying sugar and sugary products.""" So much easier when you live alone. My spouse buys sugary crap for my kids and then I have to resist all the time. Which I can't. Thus I am overweight.

Talk to your kids :)

Also, suggest lower-calorie snacks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#56

Post by hh3k0 »

slickdork wrote: post #18

I did two things recently cause I've wasted just about half my life on reddit: - Blocked reddit at a dns level across my entire network via pihole (I run a personal vlan so the rest of the house network wasn't affected). - Disable my internet completely on this vlan after working hours via a schedule in pfsense. I get around the reddit block sometimes by enabling a VPN, which is only a few button clicks. But since th…

Personally, I found Leechblock to provide adequate extra steps for what you're describing. I agree with your point, what generally needs to be done is adding some sort of brain-teasing inconvenience. Adding some sort of "roadblock" against your brain going auto-pilot is what always helped me making more conscious decisions.

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#57

Post by Youden »

> A complete deletion is not really an option since I enjoy Twitter, Reddit, HN to stay up-to-date with the tech world :)

For me, there are two primary negative aspects of social media and two "cancellations" (at least partial) to address them:

- The time lost to not even slightly productive content like memes and anime fanart. The solution for me was to cut Reddit out entirely since I was primarily subscribed to such content there. Most of the time that was spent on Reddit is now spent reading books (which at least improve my vocabulary) or watching educational YouTube videos about maths, science, electronics or CNC machining. I consider this problem mostly solved.

- The stress, frustration and hopelessness of participating in online discussions. My solution has been to try and reduce the frequency with which I interact with people on HN and other platforms. When I do interact, I try (not always successfully) to avoid controversial topics and to engage in such a way that the chances of conflict are minimal. For example instead of saying "you should use X", I'd say something like "I'm surprised you're not using X, how come you decided to use Y instead?". This has mostly addressed the problem, when I have issues now it's usually because I made the mistake of commenting on something somewhat controversial (e.g. touching anything to do with COVID).

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#58

Post by marginalia_nu »

yosito wrote: post #40
raspyberr wrote: post #9

There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. If you want to stop eating sugar then stop eating it. If you want to stop drinking alcohol stop drinking it. If you want to get fit start exercising. If you want to stop being addicted to social media then delete it. You can make all the excuses about how you need it to stay in contact with friends, or deals on the local market, or find events in groups but in the end i…

> There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. This is simply not true. There are tons of tricks and strategies. For me, the best strategy is to replace a bad habit with a good one. For example, replace going to the bar after work with going for a run after work.

Isn't this just not going to the bar, except reframed using the somewhat nebulous concept of "habits" that are implied to be some sort of external force that steers our fate and determines our action, not entirely dissimilar to the gods of old.

Re: Ask HN: How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

#60

Post by yuppie_scum »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #51

Isn't "dopamine addiction" (as well as "dopamine fasting") a scientifically-debunked myth? Also why would I block a website if reading it is what I enjoy? Won't this just make me less happy? I personally am blessed to have zero interest in Facebook and Instagram but I procrastinate a huge lot (seemingly way more than I should) by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge (mo…

Walk into a casino sometime during the day and report if you still think it’s a myth.
Post reply on HN