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My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

allthatjazz.me

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Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#151

Post by bloopernova »

Reading on an e-ink device has kept me somewhat sane over the past 12 months.

It's still very tempting to just "hop on reddit and see what's there" or "I'll just check bluesky for..." Then it's 2 hours later and you're angry and despondent.

I've found that having no social media apps on my phone has helped. It also helps to stick to just Firefox+ublock on Android and resist every time a site tries to install an app.

Try to steer clear of any sites with infinite scrolling and recognize the dark patterns that try to suck you in. One thing that was eye-opening was to visit reddit and see which of the stories in /r/all were "amygdala-bait"; rage, indignation, hate, fear, superiority, they're all bait on the hook to reel you in.

People on reddit write fake stories that push as many buttons as possible; an obviously wrong/evil antagonist, the ridiculous situations that only get more and more extreme to try to attract notice, the righteous moral superiority over the antagonist and their minions, etc etc.

Realizing that the result is the same, whether it's a fake story or "news", it's all amgydala-bait.

I recommend getting a Library card and reading. Read anything you like, but read!

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#152

Post by reverendsteveii »

brushfoot wrote: post #123

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 la…

>Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions.

You see, I've actually had some success with using Blocksite on my phone and blackholing things on my laptop by editing /etc/hosts. Of course if you have the access to put these filters in-place then you'll have the access to remove them, but the time it takes to fire up the blocker on my phone and disable it or to pop open a shell and type "mv /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak" is time enough for me to go "Am I actually accessing this because I care about some particular piece of content or am I just trying to plop myself into the dopameme stream?" It's not about 100% physically preventing myself from accessing these sites. It's about interrupting the flow. I used to have a problem where I'd be doomscrolling FB or TikTok in particular, realize that I haven't had any actual fun in about half an hour, close the app and exit the loop for a second, start looking for something else to do and then compulsively open the app again and start doomscrolling. Getting rid of the apps and having the web version default to being unavailable has made it so that I can still do the social part of social media with real people who send me content that I actually like and want, but I can't do the completely antisocial part of social media where robots send me content designed to piss me off and frighten me so that I interact with them and their masters get money.

I think there's one common element between our two approaches though: intentionality. Whether it's opening up a second app and disabling it, or walking into the other room to physically pick your phone up, there's an intervening step that allows us the space in which to go "Do I actually want this?"

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#153

Post by pixelmonkey »

shubhamjain wrote: post #43

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…

I love the onesec extension and I've often thought society would be better off if this were the way Apple and Google implemented their app timer functionality on iOS and Android. If you could just mark certain apps as addictive and be given a simple few-second prompt before displaying each of them, it'd stop or soften a lot of the addictive loops, I think. I use onesec app on Android solely to do this to YouTube, but the fact that it isn't native introduces some weird bugs, especially when opening YouTube links from other apps (which I live with anyway, but alas).

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#154

Post by mindcrime »

Ugh. I don't necessarily do "doom" scrolling, but lately I have gotten drawn into wasting time on these various stupid "shorts" or "reels" or whatever, mostly on FB. It's weird too... for ages I was vehement about never, ever clicking on any of that crap on FB or Youtube (and I barely use Instagram at all and don't even have TikTok). But one day, somehow, I got suckered in by a thumbnail of a cute dog or something, and lately I've been finding myself wasting an hour or more at a time, idly watching stupid videos of low value crapola. :-(

This is a habit I feel like I absolutely have to shed. Luckily, a lot of the impetus to do that will go away when I ditch FB, which I'm going to do as soon as I get my new personal website/blog set up.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#155

Post by forgotmypw17 »

My strategy is to do a lot of "Not interested" curation about any negative content, like ragebait, thirstbait, politics, etc.

This leaves mostly meditation and health advice, spiritual and religious uplifting content, cute animals videos, sweet things to share with friends, etc.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#156

Post by mindcrime »

jy14898 wrote: post #30

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.

Yeah, to me the issue isn't "doom" scrolling, it's just scrolling in general. By which mean mind-numbing consumption of low value content - auto mechanics showing off "you won't believe what my customer brought to my shop", car chases/crashes, dogs playing around doing silly stuff, trains crashing into things, all those fake "interview" segments where some guy is asking hot girls "what's your body count" or "what's your favorite position", blah, blah, etc.

Some of the stuff is genuinely funny and entertaining, and it would probably be OK in very limited doses. But I have fallen into a habit of (occasionally) starting out watching on ofe those things, and then continually swiping to the next one and watching that crap like a zombie until a hour has gone by. No bueno.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#158

Post by 65 »

Things that worked for me:

1. Disabling all YouTube thumbnails, making the YouTube home page layout as a vertical list instead of a grid, only allowing YouTube in Incognito mode, requiring a log in each time I want to use it

2. Unfollowing/muting most people on social media such as Instagram and Twitter. Only allowed in Incognito mode so I have to log in to use.

3. Blocked all subreddits except for one, which is AskNYC for me, via custom CSS.

4. Built an RSS reader to serve a web page rendering of the content.

5. I'm working on my own content recommendation algorithm. I'm trying out things like get a random Wikipedia article -> search the YouTube API for the article title -> return videos. Which makes YouTube content feel less brain dead and more educational.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#159

Post by PhunkyPhil »

mindcrime wrote: post #154

Ugh. I don't necessarily do "doom" scrolling, but lately I have gotten drawn into wasting time on these various stupid "shorts" or "reels" or whatever, mostly on FB. It's weird too... for ages I was vehement about never, ever clicking on any of that crap on FB or Youtube (and I barely use Instagram at all and don't even have TikTok). But one day, somehow, I got suckered in by a thumbnail of a cute dog or something, a…

That counts as doom scrolling to me.

If while I'm watching short form content like Reels or YT shorts etc, I realize that if you asked me what I watched 2 scrolls ago and I couldn't tell you- I'm doom scrolling.

This is the case almost every time I open instagram.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#160

Post by mindcrime »

PhunkyPhil wrote: post #159
mindcrime wrote: post #154

Ugh. I don't necessarily do "doom" scrolling, but lately I have gotten drawn into wasting time on these various stupid "shorts" or "reels" or whatever, mostly on FB. It's weird too... for ages I was vehement about never, ever clicking on any of that crap on FB or Youtube (and I barely use Instagram at all and don't even have TikTok). But one day, somehow, I got suckered in by a thumbnail of a cute dog or something, a…

That counts as doom scrolling to me. If while I'm watching short form content like Reels or YT shorts etc, I realize that if you asked me what I watched 2 scrolls ago and I couldn't tell you- I'm doom scrolling. This is the case almost every time I open instagram.

Fair enough. I guess I was still thinking of "doom scrolling" as being specifically about scrolling for negative news. But from reading some of the other comments it seems that a lot of people feel like the definition has shifted. I can buy that.
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