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My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

allthatjazz.me

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Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#221

Post by SpaceManNabs »

bloopernova wrote: post #151

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.…

> 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.

I essentially blocked every subreddit and specifically only open accounts now. I completely agree with you.

One of the best advices I heard is: don't let the algorithm recommend stuff for you.

Never click on the recommend for you page. Or doom scroll.

Any time on these sites, you should know what you are looking for. Never get on there just to browse.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#222

Post by [deleted] »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #203
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…

> It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons. If you're using an iPhone, you can use Assistive Access to disable a lot of stuff, making it functionally simiilar to a flip phone: https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-... There's probably an Android equivalent, but I can't speak to that.

[deleted]

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#223

Post by lamp_book »

thesuitonym wrote: post #183
jhot wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know exactly how you feel, 20 years ago I went on a trip and saw almost everybody utterly absorbed in a newspaper, or magazine. Some even had books. I couldn't believe all these people were wasting their precious time entertaining themselves instead of staring blankly at the wall!

I hear you but the magazine and newspaper can’t adapt to your engagement levels in real time to maximize their addictive potential. Many people don’t struggle with their screen time but it’s clearly a common problem.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#224

Post by dleink »

Almondsetat wrote: post #174
mindcrime wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, the definition was always about the state of the person doing the scrolling, not of the content. For some reason it them changed, and now it appears to be coming back to the original meaning

I'm not sure we can use such definitive language about the definitions of new words.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#225

Post by karaterobot »

Does Doom Scrolling apply to resources like GoodReads or IMDB? I think of it as endemic to feed-based social media, where you have an endless stream of algorithmically selected content. Maybe there's a way to engage with those sites like that, and I just haven't discovered it myself. Anyway, it's his project, I'm not saying he can't do whatever he wants, but for me, that'd be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#226

Post by gosub100 »

weast wrote: post #207
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…

I am currently working on a phone designed to reclaim the digital toolbox nature of the smartphone- access to maps, messages email etc, but with an e-paper display. There are some (albeit not so interface friendly) e readers with SIM cards, but I think there is great power in just having a screen that doesn't vibe with the oversaturated video and image based distractions we are so used to lugging around with us all t…

Another option: a touchscreen, but with a mechanical backlight. What I mean by that is a little string you pull that spins a magneto that momentarily powers the backlight, maybe for 5-10 seconds at a time. This frees the battery from a major source of drain (hopefully comparable to e-ink) and also has a built-in limit to how much screen time you get. Eventually anyone would get tired of pulling the string. But it would be plenty for a map or sending a text or email.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#227

Post by paulryanrogers »

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…

What about on call? Can it somehow wake you in case of an emergency?

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#228

Post by PhunkyPhil »

thesuitonym wrote: post #217
gnatman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You used to see this argument come up frequently in defense of smartphones, but it's fallen off recently. In my personal experience, scrolling through short-form videos is 100x more soul sucking than reading a book, magazine, or newspaper ever is. They're just not the same.

In general, you're right, but this comment was about an airport. People are stuck there, sometimes for hours, with not much to do, and they can't really go far. And for all anyone knows, they could have been working, or reading, or who knows what. Anecdotal, I know, but my wife has crazy high screen time--like several hours a day, but it's because she reads a lot of ebooks, but doesn't want to carry a separate device…

They said

"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..."

Assuming it was all short-form videos (I'd bet it was), then it's definitely more psychologically destructive than them reading a book on their phone.

Also your mentioning of several hours a day being "crazy high" is slightly telling of your understanding of the relationship, especially young people have, with their devices.

For younger people raised in this environment, myself included, putting in 6-8+ hours a day into doomscrolling youtube/instagram/tiktok is really not that out of the ordinary;

"13- to 18-year-olds use about eight and a half hours of screen media [per day]"[0]

[0]: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/researc... page 3

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#229

Post by coffeecantcode »

Fascinated by everyone’s take on what the “doom” in doomscrolling means to them. One of those weird phenomena where someone is saying this word and someone else knows exactly what they’re talking about when they say it, but the two parties have different definitions of the word that just happen to exist peacefully with one another.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#230

Post by bbzylstra »

nobodywasishere wrote: post #170
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…

There is a great browser extension for Chrome/Firefox called "Unhook" which allows you to selectively remove parts of the YouTube UI you find distracting. Personally I have shorts and recommended videos turned off.

https://unhook.app/

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