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My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

allthatjazz.me

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Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#161

Post by morning-coffee »

I went through similar time sinks of micro-optimizing my devices to try to game myself into not getting distracted. What finally worked for me:

- realizing I traded one waste-of-time activity (doom scrolling) for another (device/app fiddling to prevent the former)

- realizing that the clock is ticking towards ultimate death and therefore time is precious

- recognizing when I'm looking for a distraction and, rather than automatically giving into it, asking myself one question:

"Do I want to be thoughtful and disciplined with how I spend my time, or not?"

And then being honest with myself, listening to my answer, and respecting the outcome of my choice.

For me, I want to be a disciplined person. When I'm not, I let myself down. Happiness for me is not letting myself down.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#162

Post by DrawTR »

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…

yup. it basically becomes a ulysses pact with myself to attempt to make it so i can't just undo the restrictions i set up. what good are the blocking attempts if you can disable them when you get bored? you have to set them up with the intention and foresight that you will try to disable them

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#163

Post by jhot »

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.

I don't have any social media and don't travel that often. When I went on a trip this past fall and saw a very high percentage of people sucked in to these short form videos at any idle moment at the airport and out at public events, I definitely felt existential doom.

Couldn't help but look at everyone the same as all the people on the space ships in Wall-E.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#164

Post by recursive »

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's called doom scrolling.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#165

Post by richardgill88 »

9283409232 wrote: post #106
snide wrote: post #100

For Android folks, my friend built an app to limit / restrict the apps and websites your phone has access to. It's essentially like workplace fleet management, but for yourself. I have a little more personal self control, but found his technical implementation pretty neat! https://limitphone.com/

It not being able to uninstalled is a catch 22. I understand why it is uninstallable to prevent people from breaking, uninstalling it and getting around it but I also don't trust the app and it being uninstallable sounds like a risk.

Limit Phone Dev here!

Yea I get it, I have similar feelings about installing such a privileged app on my phone.

You can remove the app (with a delay, so it doesn't defeat the controls!).

I'll make this a bit clearer on the site.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#166

Post by cmckn »

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…

I was a heavy tiktok user for the last couple years, before uninstalling the app a couple months ago. It was a lot of fun, truly, but I felt the habit (and its side effects) going in a direction I didn’t like.

I still have IG and FB on my phone, and find myself impulsively reaching for those scrollable short videos whenever I have a spare minute. That format of “content” is just very addicting. I really wish I could go back 20 years to when smartphones were a thing, but there was a lot less to “do” on them. I don’t think I’ll be able to break the habit without a major reset, personally.

> when I ditch FB, which I'm going to do as soon as

As someone who has deactivated and reactivated my Facebook account several times over the years — just do it! Maybe it will motivate you to finish that other project if you have something you really want to share. But the whole “I’ll start that diet after the holidays” thing doesn’t pan out in my experience :(

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#167

Post by bramhaag »

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…

I had the same issue at one point. I'm not ready to delete some of my social media accounts as they do bring me real value, so I ended up blocking all shorts/reels/etc. on the services I use.

For YouTube there is Unhook [1], which allows you to block shorts. For all other sites I just use custom uBO rules. Both options also work on your phone if you use a browser that can install WebExtensions (Firefox on Android for example).

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#168

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

Same. When I'm home it becomes a "home phone" and stays on the charger.

I also keep it across the bedroom so I need to get out of bed to turn the alarm off.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#169

Post by AlwaysRock »

"- Delete content apps" This is key.

"- Delete the browser from the phone." This is hard because the browser has other uses. I've found similar results by just signing out of any social media accounts on my phone.

Reddit is useable without being signed in, but just barely. It's certainly not as addicting as it is with an account. Twitter doesnt let me see anything without an account. Same with TikTok. I went ahead and deleted my accounts entirely but you can also just make the password hard to type and remove it from any password managers so its difficult to sign in.

This has pretty much cut my Reddit time from an hour+ a day into 5-10 minutes a day.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#170

Post by nobodywasishere »

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…

I finally broke wasting hours on YouTube shorts (and youtube in general) by turning off the watch history on my account [1]. It completely removes all videos from the "homepage" (including shorts from the sidebar). There are still shorts in the subscriptions page, but I think this is an acceptable tradeoff. YouTube for me now has just become who I'm subscribed to, which is a much more pleasant experience - there's an "end" where I'm finally caught up and can move on to doing something else. This is also for my entire account, so it's not something I can just disable from my browser bar or that won't work on mobile. I don't need to remember to set it up on a new device either.

[1]: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/95725?hl=en&co=GEN...

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