My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll • Hacker News Board

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#171

Post by farmerstan » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:55 AM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #164

sodality2 wrote: post #24

I'm still young so maybe my mind hasn't matured enough to where I can combat this well. So I went heavy-handed - I have a button on my desk that when I press it, my server's DNS server (through which all my devices and router resolve) begins rejecting requests to reddit, instagram, twitter, hackernews, news.google.com, etc. For the next two hours, there is nothing I can do outside of SSH'ing through my mobile device…

I just ditched my smartphone entirely. Humanity survived until the 00s without them. You can too.

Humanity survived without winter jackets until the Ice Age. Then all of humanity would have gone extinct without them.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#172

Post by imron » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:57 AM UTC

Twitter recently made a change on mobile where if you are not logged in, you can only scroll through a handful of tweets before being prompted to login.

This has dramatically cut back the amount of time I’d spend browsing twitter (don’t have an account, and not interested in creating one).

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#173

Post by ZYinMD » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 2:58 AM UTC

eointierney wrote: post #30

vedtopkar wrote: post #3

It’s honestly so bad. No matter how hard I try, I find myself re-downloading TikTok or Reddit (Apollo) every month and then wasting away all my free time for a week or two before re-deleting them out of disgust. I truly don’t know what the solution is. I would just get rid of my smartphone if life wasn’t quite inconvenient without it.

Read books I'm not joking, it's the best antidote to the thought-theft of "social media". Pick a subject in which you're interested, find a representively excellent text, and read. And then re-read, because unless you're a genius you won't absorb everything first time. Also it's wonderful to just curl up with a book and a cup of tea and let time pass you by as you ... learn the considered thought of others! This is c…

I'm a huge book reader and I usually read very gripping novels. For me, TikTok is much healthier, because 1. it's easy to put down when I need to do other things 2. it's easy to refrain from opening it. Books however are very hard to put down, and very hard to refrain from picking up again. For me, starting a book = no life for a week.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#174

Post by superkuh » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

pfundstein wrote: post #114

resonious wrote: post #76

Lately I've become convinced that video games and social media are in the same class as drugs and alcohol. They're a pretty fun way to kill time, but some people are predisposed to doing too much, and too much is dangerous. Also similar to drugs/alcohol: it seems to affect some people more than others. I know people who can check FB/TikTok for a couple minutes and then they're done, and I also know people who continu…

The common denominator is of course dopamine, and drugs, social media, video games, etc, all offer an easy and reliable hit.

Every single thing you do involves dopamine. The difference with drugs (of which alcohol is one) is that they directly manipulate your brains neurochemistry. Nothing you perceive with your normal senses does that. Even sex doesn't have the same addictive effects as direct chemical manipulation of the dopaminergic neuronal populations. The idea that they are the same is very dangerous for society and will lead to the use of violence to control people where it is definitely not warranted.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#175

Post by stjohnswarts » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:00 AM UTC

I just set a limit (only access them on my iphone) of 1 hour per day (total) on my social media apps. I know that is still a lot but it is what it is, I use it to catch up on news and family "what's going on" so please don't hate on me, there are worse things that I could be doing. I was spending more than that for sure before.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#176

Post by stjohnswarts » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:01 AM UTC

farmerstan wrote: post #171

lrvick wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just ditched my smartphone entirely. Humanity survived until the 00s without them. You can too.

Humanity survived without winter jackets until the Ice Age. Then all of humanity would have gone extinct without them.

Yeah but there is nothing on social media that you actually need to survive.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#177

Post by hesdeadjim » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:02 AM UTC

stank345 wrote: post #15

vedtopkar wrote: post #3

It’s honestly so bad. No matter how hard I try, I find myself re-downloading TikTok or Reddit (Apollo) every month and then wasting away all my free time for a week or two before re-deleting them out of disgust. I truly don’t know what the solution is. I would just get rid of my smartphone if life wasn’t quite inconvenient without it.

I had the same issue with the Reddit app so now I just use the neutered web app and consider the frustration stemming from its brokenness to be feature that keeps me from spending too much time on it.

This worked wonderfully for me too.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#178

Post by mdonahoe » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:04 AM UTC

throwawayboise wrote: post #104

awr wrote: post #101

The reason why I don't have TikTok installed. Facebook is manageable, TikTok is a 2 hour rabbit hole of "oh crap, it's 2am and I've got work in the morning". FB has recently added Instagram reels to the app. Not quite TikTok but it's getting to a point where I work out how to disable them or I uninstall FB for the first time in a decade.

Like Twitter, the concept of TikTok doesn't make any sense to me so I've never tried it. But YouTube suggestions I do not find very compelling. I'll sometimes scroll for a few minutes but it's mostly stuff I've either already watched or exactly like stuff I've already watched. It doesn't do very well at surfacing stuff that might catch a related interest but isn't really the same thing.

Have you tried YouTube shorts? The auto-playing-as-you-swipe format is very addictive in a way that the regular YouTube feed is not.

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#179

Post by rg111 » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:07 AM UTC

I have actually won against doomscroll. I used to spend 5-6 hours per day, and it peaked at 10 hours per day for some days of the year.

I realized that doomscrolling is not only clever algorithms trying to get me hooked, but also a symptom of deeper problems that I had.

And I realized that I was unhappy because I spent most of my doing things that I didn't like. I was deep frustrated. I did not want to spend my brain's precious energy on doing things that I didn't want to do.

I changed my path. Stopped caring about outside forces. Became happier. This was the hard part.

The easy part is what I learned from Cal Newport's book "Deep Work". It asks you to implement timeblocks. I implemented a 20 minute timeblock for browsing social media. I would not touch social media outside that timeblock. It really worked. I implemented timeblocks for studying, coding, personal time, and the resistance towards doing these things weathered away once I started. So, the urge to doomscroll went down, too.

I read some books, and consumed other resources that talk about our mind and our brain. Also some books on Theraveda Buddhist teachings. When you see your "self" as a bunch of neurons contextualised by your environment, outer stimuli, and as these are bound by biological laws, you stop being hard on yourself. You forgive yourself, gently. Then managing emotions, urges, etc. become easier.

Reducing the number of apps that you use also reduces time spend in doomscroll. I gave up Facebook 4 years ago because the content was too low quality, and gave up Quora some months ago for the same reason. Now all I have is Reddit. I keep Facebook as a non-professional networking too. I open it if I have something to say to particular someone, and spend maybe 10 minutes per month on it.

I also started meditating. That also helped big time. I will highly recommend it. Books that helped-

- What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula

- Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

- Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright

- Mastery by Gordon Leonard

- Learning How to Learn (Coursera)

- Mind Illuminated by Culadasa

- Atomic Habits by James Clear

- Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt

Re: My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll

#180

Post by ZYinMD » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 3:09 AM UTC

I find these apps much healthier than games, because they're easy to put down, because there's no continuity between two items when you scroll. Some games are impossible to put down once you get hooked, and even when you're not playing them you still constantly think about "I'll do this and this next time".