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

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

#91

Post by low_tech_love »

laurex wrote: post #88

Much like eating healthily, this seems to be something where it takes a while to detox, but once you do, you have less and less interest in the junk. I stopped using any "Meta" products, turned off notifications on my phone for anything else, and have screen time limits (though Apple's screen time is much less effective than Android, for some reason). I keep my phone in another room at night. I find now that once I s…

Same here. It’s not to say that I don’t find other stuff (like gaming, reading, programming, etc) that will take large chunks out of time, but at least I feel like it was worth it. My experience with social media is that I almost always feel like shit for wasting my time afterwards.

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

#92

Post by b3morales »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #80
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…

> Blocked reddit Seems a rather bad idea to me because the most practically valuable search results you can get from Google usually are yielded when you add site:reddit.com to the search query.

I've used rule-based blockers in the past that would let me block the home/feed pages of sites but not individual article pages. That way search links still work but I can't go zombie out. Might be worth a try.

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

#93

Post by b3morales »

antisthenes wrote: post #77
ppg677 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""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.

Here's a simple trick - stop shifting the blame on other people. I really don't get your defeatist attitude: 1. You don't have the willpower to stop eating sugary stuff 2. You don't have the willpower to have a conversation with your spouse to stop buying sugary crap 3. Barring 1 or 2, you aren't talking to your kids to convince them to stop demanding less sugary stuff or aren't presenting them with tasty alternative…

I agree that will is required; the trick though is recognizing where to apply it. I think 1 is a losing strategy. 2 is an excellent starting point, but it might be blocked by another bad practice of some kind...so maybe that needs to be identified and fixed first. I guess the point is that, like that old joke[0], having the hammer is not enough -- knowing what bit to bang on is also critical.

[0]:https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/06/tap/

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

#94

Post by foogazi »

Every time I check my HN karma count it reminds me of this passage from Awareness by Anthony de Mello:

> Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.

> Do you want to see how mechanical you really are? "My, that's a lovely shirt you're wearing". You feel good hearing that. For a shirt, for heaven's sake! You feel proud of yourself when you hear that.

> Normally the way it goes, I press a button and you're up; I press another button and you're down.

On social media we let others push the up/down buttons - and we feel happy, sad, proud, ashamed from that

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

#95

Post by foogazi »

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.

> Which I can't.

C’mon, just say no

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

#96

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

I've been training myself to log out when I decide that it's not best for me and to have a mini meditation session before logging back in, that way I know I'm in a calm state of mind when I make the decision.

Also, kindle is my go-to Twitter replacement.

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

#97

Post by kgwxd »

b3morales wrote: post #73
kgwxd wrote: post #12

That reminds me, it's time for my ~monthly Reddit account deletion to avoid karma cravings. I wish HN would do account deletion the same way Reddit does. They argue it would harm the flow of conversations, but I'd argue the conversations here aren't a sacred as they make them out to be. Just denying myself access to the account isn't the same, I tried it and had to ask support to give it back. I don't like to have 11…

Could you do something like, change the password to a random string, put that in a file, and encrypt the file but have that password only known by someone else? Then it is accessible only if absolutely necessary.

I guess, but I'm not really looking to get rid of it because I'm addicted or anything like that, I just want it gone. It's my account, it should be my option.

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

#98

Post by velcrovan »

piaste wrote: post #75
velcrovan wrote: post #61

Giving up or blocking social media is much less interesting than being self-aware and looking for ways to get your social media dopamine from things that feel genuinely constructive or interesting. I found “Against Waldenponding” ( https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/against-waldenponding ) to be, if not 100% correct and credible, at least a very novel and persuasive argument that you probably owe it to yourself to be on…

> https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/against-waldenponding > Premise: FOMO is good. Being plugged in is good. There is valuable info at all levels from twitter gossip to philosophy books. You should stay plugged in. You can manage anxiety and beat the House without resorting to shaming social platforms into managing attention for you. That's a terrible yielding of agency. > What the "unplug for self-care" crowd doesn't…

> They are most definetely not "plugged in". I cannot think of a single way in which their lives are worse as a result.

It doesn’t sound from your description like these people are in any way part of the “unplugged for self-care” demographic. They sound plugged in, and they sound normal. By your own account they’re on Instagram at least enough to find and share cool things from time to time, they post online about their experiences and they connect with people online who share their interests. The “unplug for self care” people — the Waldenponders — would tell them that they are in danger of a dopamine addiction and need to give these things up. The article is against such advice. Your friends’ lives would be measurably worse if they took it.

But supposing they were actually off social media completely, you could see the flaw in this reasoning by extending it just a little further. If you still know anyone, as I do, who never even touches a computer, you probably find that they are perfectly content without one. Does it follow that it would be a good move for you, too, to get all computers and Internet usage out of your life? If not, why not?

Another way to put it: I know people who are extremely plugged in. I cannot think of a single way in which their lives would be better if they were not. Where does that leave us?

> If you find the article persuasive, I presume you do agree with the premise. Can you help me understand why?

In addition to the above, I would say this: it sounds like you might be equating “plugged in” with specifically shallow things like “Twitter gossip”. I am quite sure the author does not see it that way (I know I don’t).

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

#99

Post by velcrovan »

low_tech_love wrote: post #89
velcrovan wrote: post #61

Giving up or blocking social media is much less interesting than being self-aware and looking for ways to get your social media dopamine from things that feel genuinely constructive or interesting. I found “Against Waldenponding” ( https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/against-waldenponding ) to be, if not 100% correct and credible, at least a very novel and persuasive argument that you probably owe it to yourself to be on…

Quitting social media is actually really interesting. My experience without facebook (I never had Twitter) for two years has been almost all positive. All you said is also reasonable but it’s a bit like saying that drug addicts should use drugs for fun. Some people need to quit, and they’ll be better that way. That doesn’t mean those who can manage should too; I envy you very much and wish all the best.

I quit Facebook too. But I was also able to rebalance my Twitter experience to contain more signal and less noise. Github is a great form of social media. And here we both are posting comments on Hacker News. Despite us both being very happy to leave Facebook, we’re also probably both familiar with the frisson of exchanging ideas online and are unwilling to give it up. Giving that up completely is really not as interesting as learning to manage it well.

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

#100

Post by tinco »

I feel everyone here is fighting symptoms instead of the underlying cause. When I find myself refreshing the replies on some HN comment, I'm usually tired and exhausted, perhaps tasked with some job I lack the energy or the discipline for. Unless of course it's a particularly insightful comment that I'm just dying to hear your opinion on ;).

Anyway, my response to your question would be to forget all the tech. Just figure out how to manage your energy. Maybe plan mental breaks from your work, maybe check your sleep hygiene. And finally, and maybe this is just me trying to justify my own behavior, it could be that the refreshing is just the kind of dumb activity your brain needs to catch a break and regain some energy.

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