Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 111 posts

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

#71

Post by b3morales »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #51

Isn't "dopamine addiction" (as well as "dopamine fasting") a scientifically-debunked myth? Also why would I block a website if reading it is what I enjoy? Won't this just make me less happy? I personally am blessed to have zero interest in Facebook and Instagram but I procrastinate a huge lot (seemingly way more than I should) by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge (mo…

> I procrastinate a huge lot ... by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge

Speaking as someone in the same boat, yes, this is pretty much what the pop concept "dopamine addiction" is meant to convey. I've also heard it called "intermittent variable reward" (which also may not be the correct technical term). You and I come here, and most of the time we get nothing interesting, but every so often -- just often enough -- there's something stimulating. And the brain remembers that stimulation, and "decides" that the wasted time does not outweigh the reward, and keeps wanting to go try again, hoping to get a juicy tidbit.

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

#72

Post by james-bcn »

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.

Well it sounds like you need to discuss things with your spouse. If she doesn't want to stop buying sugary crap, then ask them to put it in a locked cupboard, and them to keep the key.

If your spouse doesn't want to collaborate with you on your goals and things related to your health, then you have some serious discussions to have.

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

#73

Post by b3morales »

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.

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

#74

Post by logosmonkey »

aronowb14 wrote: post #30
notreallyserio wrote: post #28

If I find that I'm doing too much A and I don't want to give up on it entirely I look for ways to make A less convenient. That may mean deleting an app (instead using a possibly clunkier website), not having candy in the house (I have to go to the store to get my fix), etc. It's an extension of some typical advice to create healthy habits: make doing the right thing easier and the wrong thing harder .

> make doing the right thing easier and the wrong thing harder. I’ve never heard it put so succinctly! In the realm of breaking social media addiction I’ve tried to block all feeds on my laptop using chrome extensions, logout on mobile. To be honest: it’s the “make the right thing easier” that has been tricky for me. I’m trying to read more, but frankly post work tiredness does make diving into good books kind of tri…

Personally, I've started using Busuu and Duolingo more. When I get the urge to go to reddit I try to divert and go to one of those two apps and do a couple of sections. It doesn't always work but it's something.

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

#75

Post by piaste »

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 get is that you are part of a Giant Social Computer in the Cloud (GSCITC) computing the future. The level and latency at which you consume information and act on it determines your "job" in the social computer. Your shitposting and FOMO are functional.

> The reason the unplugging doesn't work for most people is not that the Evil Platform Companies are trying to hack your attention and turn you into a helpless addict (though they are) but because you rationally realize you need a job in the GSCITC.

I stopped reading shortly after as the article did indeed rely on the above premises, and I find those premises absurd.

I work in cloud software, I live in Western Europe, a large chunk of my friends are an international/academic crowd. Nevertheless, of the happiest and/or successful and/or admirable people I've met, barely any of them use social media to an appreciable extent. They might share a cool tattoo from Instagram or belong to a Facebook group for their hobbies or post their latest hike on Relive, but that's about it.

None of them, as far as I know, spends a single minute a day reading "Twitter gossip". They are most definetely not "plugged in". I cannot think of a single way in which their lives are worse as a result.

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

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

#76

Post by qwerty456127 »

b3morales wrote: post #71
qwerty456127 wrote: post #51

Isn't "dopamine addiction" (as well as "dopamine fasting") a scientifically-debunked myth? Also why would I block a website if reading it is what I enjoy? Won't this just make me less happy? I personally am blessed to have zero interest in Facebook and Instagram but I procrastinate a huge lot (seemingly way more than I should) by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge (mo…

> I procrastinate a huge lot ... by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge Speaking as someone in the same boat, yes, this is pretty much what the pop concept "dopamine addiction" is meant to convey. I've also heard it called "intermittent variable reward" (which also may not be the correct technical term). You and I come here, and most of the time we get nothing interest…

Seems a perfect answer to me. Reading people dissecting and communicating things the way you just did is what I find among the best pleasures in the world, only available on this website.

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

#77

Post by antisthenes »

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.

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 alternatives.

I'm sure in response to this I'll get a lot of angry replies to the tune of "it's not so simple" or "I don't have enough time for that" or "willpower theory is a myth".

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

#78

Post by logosmonkey »

Speaking specifically about android mobile I've found minimalist phone to be a really nice tool to cut down on jumping from app to app for hours. First, I just like the aesthetics of it as a launcher and second the built in nag warnings for timing specific app usage make you conscious of your consumption which I think is critical. Having that metric works a lot like tracking calories, it's hard to realize just how much you are consuming without some sort of tracking - at least it is for me.

The fact that it has no icons also helps, it makes it far more arduous to open apps that you might not use a ton or that you don't have a shortcut for in your home screen menu so you tend to start ignoring a lot of little time sinks.

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

#79

Post by mehanik »

Books, always having several books available on my Kindle so I can grab it and continue reading instead of consuming social media on my phone. I read 3-4 books at once and don't put pressure on myself to continue reading or finish any book. If I get bored with one just switch to another one.

There is no shortage of book recommendations. I usually get them from people interviewed on podcasts.

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

#80

Post by qwerty456127 »

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.

Post reply on HN