[HN Gopher] My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll
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My lizard brain is no match for infinite scroll
Author : otras
Score : 833 points
Date : 2022-03-06 23:09 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (alexanderell.is)
(TXT) w3m dump (alexanderell.is)
| bikamonki wrote:
| A few decades back nobody new, or cared, that smoking cigarettes
| was so bad for your health and everyone else around you.
|
| You can wait a couple of decades to realize, or accept, that
| social media is bad for your health and everyone else around you.
|
| Or you can quit now.
| windhamdavid wrote:
| Slow Thinking - How I try to organize my attention -
| https://davidawindham.com/slow-thinking/
| olsgaarddk wrote:
| Since we are sharing our getting out of doom scrolling stories,
| I'll share how I got off Reddit.
|
| I realized that most of what I was reading on Reddit was
| fabricated outrage (since then they've added subs like "makes
| your blood boil" and "idiots in cars" - check them out if you
| feel like you are not outraged regularly enough)
|
| I was the type of person who would sit on Reddit, be bored and
| type Reddit in the url bar.
|
| So I decided to quit Reddit and used habitica for the task. It's
| a gamification for to-do lists and forming habits. I added
| "visiting Reddit" as a minus 1, and every time I realized I was
| on Reddit I opened habitica and gave myself a minus 1.
|
| Fictive internet points are quite powerful. I also started
| flossing this way (flossing at night, +1)
| mbar84 wrote:
| This is one of the nice things about https://hckrnews.com/ Visit
| once per day and maybe read 5 articles of the top 20 from the
| previous day. Done.
| personjerry wrote:
| Use a trick they teach you to manage anger: Count to 10. 10
| posts, 10 seconds, whatever. And if the first 10 didn't stop you,
| restart and count to 10 again. These artificial "pages" are low-
| effort but always do the trick for me.
| cmckn wrote:
| At various times in my life, I've spent way too much time on
| Twitter. I've been using Twitterrific for a couple months, which
| does not have the Explore tab and does not include things in your
| TL that you don't explicitly follow. The UI also makes it a bit
| less easy to read replies than the official Twitter app does. I
| find myself spending almost no time on Twitter now, and it's
| great.
| nighthawk454 wrote:
| the Apollo app for reddit on iOS recently added the ability to
| disable infinite scrolling and go back to pages. having to
| specifically click 'Load Page 4' helps a lot
| ajuc wrote:
| Last decade in web design was mostly spent on inventing ways to
| make reading text on the internet less convenient.
| gernb wrote:
| I feel like I could say the same about infinite news which I'd
| define as a site I can check several times a day and see new "top
| stories". This would include Reddit and HN. I find it super
| addicting to check too many times and then get sucked into
| spending too much time reading comments and sometimes articles.
| Rarely am I actually better off for it .
|
| Contrast to 20-30yrs ago where at best you got a newspaper once a
| day or if you were like me you got a few magazine subscriptions
| and once you browsed each one, that was it for your monthly
| article consumption.
| ILMostro7 wrote:
| Maybe sticking to a newspaper, print or digital version, or a
| single news program on tv is what everyone should be doing. It
| might even cut down on consuming fake news.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| That's what many elder people are actually doing for years
| and decades. It definitely doesn't help to cut down fake
| news.
| MandieD wrote:
| There's a big difference between watching the national news
| on ABC/NBC/CBS before dinner and then the local 10/11pm
| news, and keeping Fox News (or MSNBC or even CNN) on all
| day long, even as "background noise".
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Browse HN on "Past": https://news.ycombinator.com/front
|
| 1. It's yesterday's news. You've probably got some
| contextualisation for the story as you've likely already caught
| wind of it from some other channel. Much of the compulsion of
| HN comes from the too-brief and decontextualised subject lines.
| They are, ultimately, a Dark Pattern.
|
| 2. The Machine Stops^W^WScroll Ends. Typically there are ~60--
| 100 or so items. That's ... more than you can comfortably read,
| but it is _finite_.
|
| 3. Skip the comments. I'm increasingly finding they're less
| worthwhile than the post(s) themselves, _usually_. With some
| exceptions.
|
| 3.0 Those exceptions are rarely in more-active discussions. Or
| political ones. Or business-oriented ones.
|
| 3.1 Definitely skip comments dominated by drama or cheap shots.
| Utterly not worth it.
|
| 3.2 If you must read comments, do so logged out, and collapse
| as you go.
|
| 4. The front page has had a day to sort out its rankings.
| Typically, the top few items are reasonably significant or
| interesting, and that likelihood falls as you go down the list.
| HN ranking is arbitrary enough that there can be quite good
| content far down the queue, but be discerning.
|
| 5. Browsing day-olds seems to help ease the urge to scroll and
| check often.
|
| 6. If you're feeling adventurous, go back a year or five or ten
| and see what's being discussed. You may discover a ...
| sameness. Which might make you question the value of
| aggressively pursuing the latest all that much more.
|
| 7. Close the tab and go on a dandilion break.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > Browse HN on "Past": https://news.ycombinator.com/front
|
| Thank you, that's a good hidden feature.
|
| I like this also for a similar purpose: https://hckrnews.com/
| gigaflop wrote:
| As soon as I registered my account, the comment sections
| seemed to hold less importance/meaningful content. Perhaps
| because I started paying more attention to them?
|
| It's a small thing, but I'm working on making myself read
| less of them now. The further past the left 1/3rd of my 21:9
| monitor a comment starts, the less value I'm going to get
| from reading it, generally.
|
| If I find my screen filled with comments at that depth, and
| can't quickly scroll past them, ctrl-W is usually the best
| remedy.
| contradistinct wrote:
| I receive some hacker news posts along with my other RSS feeds
| once per day, in the morning. You can still get the best of HN
| without "browsing".
| elxr wrote:
| I recently decided to take a month of reddit for the sake of my
| crippled attention span. Over the past year, I've already
| narrowed down my subreddits to what I'd consider useful
| information, but that only helped a little. There's just too
| much stuff on there.
|
| From now on, it'll be mainly HN and books for me.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Reddit rewards people who know how to repost or start flame
| wars, with their karma points. This can also optimize for
| low-effort content.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if certain subreddits could be
| entirely replaced with bots, automatically generating memes
| and image macros in response to things happening on the web.
| The biggest subreddits already look like this, imo.
| brummm wrote:
| For a long time I loved reading comments to news stories or
| other discussions on reddit, for example.
|
| But I have found that most comments are actually at the very
| least misinformed, often wrong and clearly not very educated
| and I have started asking myself why I am exposing myself to
| this low quality messages. (There are of course notable
| exceptions found aplenty)
|
| Realizing this, I have stopped reading most comments and
| generally just stick to a few main newspaper sites that still
| have decent journalism.
| zelos wrote:
| 20 years ago I was doing the same thing, except on Slashdot
| instead of HN.
| Razengan wrote:
| Maybe addictive platforms could do some good _and_ make more
| money if they limited the amount of content a user can see in one
| day, like some F2P mobile games:
|
| * Say you can only view 50 videos or 2 hours on TikTok per day.
|
| * If you need more, pay 50 cents.
|
| * The free limit resets every day.
|
| This could also lead to better payout systems for content
| creators.
|
| (the exact numbers would be tweaked as appropriate of course)
| ehnto wrote:
| You've described an existing approach actually, and
| unfortunately there is a big caveat. Duolingo and many other
| applications use gated or timed content windows in order to
| increase retention and form stronger long term habits.
|
| The TL;DR of that loop, is that in order to achieve your goals
| within the app you'll have to come back later to do so, which
| sets up a daily usage habit.
|
| The Sims mobile for example, you can't just keep playing the
| game, you have to constantly check back in to see how your
| timed tasks are going. For DuoLingo, you run out of hearts as
| you get questions wrong, so you have to keep checking back to
| see if your hearts have replenished in order to finish the
| lesson you were on.
|
| It might genuinely be healthier, I think that would need to be
| studied, but it's not out of the kindest of their hearts that
| they do it, it's just another way to keep you on the app,
| albeit over a longer period of time.
| kimown wrote:
| I dislike twitter's infinite scrooll,Paginated is more usefull
| than infinite scrooll.
| kosasbest wrote:
| I've turned the socials into a pull medium, not a push one. This
| is why Twitter lists are so good. I open a list and browse topics
| I'm interested in, not what Twitter 'thinks' I like.
| QuadrupleA wrote:
| A great overview / guide for breaking free of this kind of stuff:
|
| https://defetter.com/
|
| No affiliation with the project, just something I've found really
| helpful.
| _def wrote:
| Your attention is very valuable. Treat it like that.
| jdrc wrote:
| people used to say the same things about cigarettes. then at some
| point other people stopped taking them seriously
| Havoc wrote:
| None of the scrolling apps really do it for me.
|
| Reddit in the other hand has enough content and subs that there
| is always one more thing to check out. And by the time you've
| looked at all your subs you can basically start at the front
| again since so much time has passed
| Softcadbury wrote:
| A technique I use to realize how bad it is for my brain, is to
| try to remember everything I saw after a session of browsing.
| It's often hard to remember at least half of the stuff.
| r_singh wrote:
| This may not be a contribution to the discussion, but I've
| recently read a few books that made me aware of how most of my
| preferences are just arbitrary and a product of feedback loops
| and after finding this post on HN this morning I just have to
| say:
|
| Thank you hacker news for being an anomaly on the web.
|
| Even if opening HN maybe a habit that I'm not in control of, I
| don't regret wasting my time on this website as much.
| sovok_x wrote:
| I actually browse Hacker News with infinite scroll through
| AutoPagerize userscript. ;D
| pgt wrote:
| Same with food. If I have unhealthy food in the house, I will
| eventually eat it in a moment of weakness when I experience a dip
| in fortitude. So the solution has been to not allow bad food in
| the house, by never shopping on an empty stomach. And ensure I
| always have a whole lamb in the freezer.
|
| Another trick is to go shopping on my bicycle, so I can only buy
| what fits in a backpack - and usually that's high-nutrition
| items.
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| Sometimes infinite scroll wins. But usually it's too janky to get
| me hooked.
| aasasd wrote:
| Overindulgence to the point of disgust worked relatively well for
| me. Imgur: fun for a while, then it's a handful of themes-of-the-
| day and rapid-fire stock comments. Reddit: teenagers and kidults
| either desperately trying to sound smart while peddling left or
| right wing of the same US bubble, or again just polluting the
| site with current stock responses.
|
| YouTube: a few good recommendations, and lots of clickbait junk.
| Oh my god the clickbait. I whipped up a uBlock filter to get rid
| of 'insane' and 'you won't believe'. Also 99% of videos are 10:01
| in length. However I kinda managed to do the 'deliberate' thing
| by collecting promising videos into 'watch later' playlists--
| hundreds of vids are in there now.
|
| I may be hitting this point with HN, as the low-effort sentiment
| on many topics is easily predicted. Thankfully there are still
| plenty of articles too involved, technical and boring to just
| spit out a readymade opinion.
|
| I heard that WoW players kick the habit by moving to a new
| server: when you have to grind again (afaiu), the game becomes
| tedious.
| mnort9 wrote:
| I've been using Screen Time this year so far and it's been
| working pretty well. For me Twitter, FB, and Reddit were the go
| to dopamine hits.
|
| I have separate 5 min daily limits for Twitter and Facebook. And
| a 15 min daily limit for Reddit. Reddit is much easier to curate
| topics that I'm actually interested in, so I give myself a little
| more time there since the comments add to the conversation more
| commonly than the other platforms.
|
| This helps make it feel like I'm "checking-in" and leaving it
| behind, rather than letting it consume my time. It also makes me
| think twice about logging in as a habit since my limit will be up
| without recollecting at all what I just scrolled through. I find
| myself more often thinking, "Am I going to pay attention to what
| I'm looking at now?". If not, I'll save the session for later
| when I have the attention to give.
| vedtopkar wrote:
| 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.
| eointierney wrote:
| 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 civilised!
|
| Normally I'd recommend history but around these parts Category
| Theory in Context by Emily Riehl is probably acceptable :)
|
| About re-reading, especially textbooks: it takes time and
| trouble to appreciate the difficult and often esoteric ideas
| represented in a text and understand the underlying deep
| thought. The author(s) wrote and re-wrote every damn phrase in
| terms of their imagined audience. The first pass yields a basic
| familiarity, but try every chapter again in light of the later
| insights.
|
| I remember the first time I read Introduction to
| Metamathematics by Kleene, and I remember the fourth time so
| much better. I can feel the cloth binding, I can hear his voice
| clearly.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| If you're looking for a book I wrote one specifically about
| this problem. Some of you may like it. It's short and has
| short chapters you can read in one "boredom chunk" of about
| 10 mins.
|
| It's https://digitalvegan.net
|
| One reason for making it an old fashioned paper book is that
| some of the ideas it presents would simply be censored on
| what the internet is becoming.
|
| It's not really written as "self-help", more as philosophical
| musings for intellectual self-defence. Many people who have
| read it tell me they successfully quit their smartphone.
|
| As ongoing research in modern critical technology studies I'm
| trying to keep a list of ones I read and at least found
| interesting (below). Good luck finding the courage to take
| back control of your technology.
|
| Jenny Oddell How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention
| Economy
|
| Paul Kingsnorth Life versus the machine
|
| Roger McNamee Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
|
| Siva Vaidhyanathan Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects
| Us
|
| Virginia Eubanks Automating Inequality
|
| Sophie Brickman Baby Unplugged
|
| Mike Monteiro Ruined by Design
|
| Thomas Kersting Disconnected: Protect Your Kids Against
| Device Dependency
|
| Nicholas Kardaras Glow Kids
|
| Jaron Lanier Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media
|
| Douglas Rushkoff Team Human
|
| Carissa Veliz Privacy is Power: Why You Should Take Back
| Control
|
| David Shenk Data Smog
|
| Paulina Borsook Cyberselfish
| sh4rks wrote:
| I would love to do this, but years of mindlessly browsing
| social media has seriously shortened my attention span. I
| used to read books all the time. I remember staying up late
| as a kid just to read the new Harry Potter book.
|
| Nowadays I pick up a book, read a few pages, then immediately
| lose interest and go do something else. Anybody know how to
| get back into reading?
| woliveirajr wrote:
| Force of will. Really try, commit, get involved in this
| goal.
|
| It won't be easy because you'll be changing some habit. But
| with time you'll learn how to appreciate books again.
| polio wrote:
| To me, nothing on the popular subreddits or in TikTok has
| satisfied my desire for depth and nuance. There are smaller
| subreddits that I like, but there's no way to specify what
| you want on TikTok, so I no longer use it. By shaping your
| philosophy of pleasure explicitly around stuff that only
| longform content can satisfy, I've been able to easily
| discard parts of social media that don't align with my
| personal actualization. I think it does take some
| deliberate and repeated introspection to harden this
| impulse.
| andyzweb wrote:
| For me it was moving in with my fiance. I read out loud to
| her every night till she falls asleep.
| froh wrote:
| By practice. The attention span grows back. And pick a book
| that you really want to read.
| eointierney wrote:
| Just f*cking read :)
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| As much as I want to say this advice is terrible and
| useless... yeah. Move the things that aren't books far
| away, and read a book. When it's boring, put it down, but
| don't let go of it. Wait a few minutes, then move it back
| in front of your face and keep reading.
|
| It's possible you picked a bad book, but it's more likely
| that it isn't engaging enough. It normally takes me a few
| days (after half a year book-free) to get back into
| reading, but it's worth it.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I also like to have a book going in each of several
| genres, so I can usually find something to match my mood.
|
| Right now I've got one going in science fiction,
| autobiography, technical and... oh, another autobiography
| (I've been really into those lately).
| executesorder66 wrote:
| I'm sorry but I have to ask this every time I see it. I
| have yet to receive an answer.
|
| What is the point of censoring 1 letter in an otherwise
| extremely obvious word?
|
| You are not redacting the word. People reading the word
| don't bleep it out in their head. You know you are saying
| 'fucking', we know you are saying 'fucking'. HN doesn't
| block posts with "naughty" words in them.
|
| So what are you trying to achieve? Please tell me.
| bcbrown wrote:
| Try reading the same sort of books you'd stay up late as a
| kid to read.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| I've had some luck by going back to "simpler" books for a
| while - page-turner scifi, bestsellers, YA literature. For
| a while I only read things that really grabbed my
| attention, and I think that is gradually re-training my
| brain.
|
| I'm not back to being as avid of a reader yet, but I'm
| optimistic I'll get there. I'm reading more now than I have
| in a few years.
| gigaflop wrote:
| I've started working on this, too.
|
| I first kicked myself into it by starting the Discworld
| series of books. Pratchett is a great author (imo), the
| text has a certain kind of easy charm, I don't need to go
| in sequential order, the books are cheap to buy, and none
| are terribly long or dense.
|
| I've also added some longer, more serious stuff to my
| reading list and bookshelf, but those are things I'll get
| to in time. I try to make myself read 100 pages per week,
| and if I don't like doing that with a certain book, I'll
| pick up another one. I can manage that at a leisurely
| pace in 2 to 3 hours on a weekend, or grab 20 pages a few
| times per week.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Read about the sentient beercan, it's an amusing page
| turner.
| magneticnorth wrote:
| This was a bit harder to google than I anticipated - lots
| of fan references on the internet, it looks like.
|
| "Expeditionary Force" by Craig Alanson if anyone else is
| curious. I'll check it out, thanks!
| egypturnash wrote:
| Go somewhere with shitty reception. Or just leave your
| phone behind.
| cookingrobot wrote:
| Try bringing a book or kindle somewhere inconveniently far
| from your phone. A park, or bathtub or something.
| vmurthy wrote:
| I can empathise with you. Warning : some armchair
| psychology ahead : I think it's the age old "less dopamine
| kick" syndrome. Your brain is used to getting a steady
| stream of dopamine when you watch/react/post on social
| media. A book simply doesn't give it (yet). From personal
| experience, I experience "Aha!" moments when I read once in
| about 15 days. What I'd recommend is to re-read some of
| your old favourites and pick up adjacent ones (example :
| re-read Harry Potter - Prisoner of Azkaban (my favorite ;)
| and pick up some Greek mythology . ) Finding unexpected
| connections is one source of joy I experience. Good luck!
| stevage wrote:
| I found it helpful to put myself in situations where the
| book is the best alternative. Leave your phone, get the
| book, walk to a park, sit down with a beer. Every time you
| get bored and restless, you'll put the book down, remember
| you have no phone and pick it up again.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Also, write. I find it easier to remember things if I've
| written them down, so when I mix writing in with reading, I
| feel like I better retain the things I read.
|
| Start with a quote you liked when you were reading and just
| let your thoughts flow into the paper, you might go for many
| pages and an hour or more before coming up for air.
|
| I like to call the activity of reading and writing
| "conversing with the universe."
|
| Conversely, I find that I can dump hours into social media
| and not remember anything when I finally snap out of it. It's
| junk food for the mind.
| MandieD wrote:
| Nicholas Carr's "The Shallows" is easier going than I thought
| it would be, and I'm doing even better than a chapter at a
| sitting, and sometimes have to make myself put it down. I
| think he wrote it for people with diminished attention spans
| - and that's a compliment.
| quinnjh wrote:
| Ooh yes anecdotally im with both of u on this. Found it very
| hard to quit but category theory by emily riehl was a great
| offramp to begin "thinking more seriously"
| ZYinMD wrote:
| 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.
| hi41 wrote:
| I too do the same. I have deleted Reddit app about 5 times over
| the last year and deleted it 5 times.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| It doesn't help that they now won't even let you read many
| subreddits without the app on mobile.
|
| Once you're logged in, just to read that one thing, it can't
| hurt to engage on that one issue, can it?
|
| Before you know it, you're 23 increasingly angry comments
| into a thread about sand, people are still wrong on the
| internet, it's 3am and you hate everyone, everything and
| yourself.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Life isn't that inconvenient without a smartphone, it's only
| been something people have had for a couple of generations at
| the most.
|
| You just have to plan things in advance a bit more. It's
| liberating in a way. You plan dinner with someone on Thursday
| at 6:00 and it's set. You don't have to think about it, tweet
| about it, post it on Facebook, or anything else. Just show up.
| iapsngh wrote:
| Thought I'm not much on social media but I figured out that if
| I can restrict myself to browse between 11am and 4pm, work will
| certainly automatically force me off the 'scroll treadmill'. I
| wrote about that in this post[1] recently.
|
| [1] https://qwertyloop.com/posts/doomscrolling
| underwater wrote:
| I use the Reddit website. It's slow and horrible enough that
| even though I visit every day, but don't get sucked into
| spending hours on it.
|
| I also watch YouTube instead of TikTok. YouTube is slower paced
| and hasn't (yet) fallen into the trap of continual submersion
| in content without a break. You have to consciously choose to
| watch another video. I can also tell myself that I'm watching
| content that is pseudo-educational in nature (like Jay Foreman,
| Stuff Built Here, Jazza or Mark Rober).
|
| I've started using TikTok a couple of times and it just seems
| like the perfect engagement machine. It's like a machine that
| drip-feeds dopamine. Pure evil, in my opinion.
| swalsh wrote:
| My ability to read a long article notably dropped after Tik
| Tok. That app in particular is one of the worst.
| pojzon wrote:
| Replace tiktok with "X game" and have exactly the same issue.
| We are just addicted and need professional help.
|
| Im just happy its not smoking or drinking. Would make life a
| lot harder.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you must use Reddit, set up an account that's unsubscribed
| from all subreddits. Then only add small, niche subreddits and
| never any of the default or popular subreddits. At worst,
| you'll get a homepage that updates with new content maybe once
| or twice a day, drastically reducing the chance of scrolling
| your free time away. It's preferable to just not use it at all
| if you can, though.
| 45ure wrote:
| I initially started using the multireddit feature, to section
| off specific but related interests. It can also be used to
| build a focused feed.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Are you able to set a multireddit as the homepage, or do
| you have to visit specific URLs to see the mutlireddits?
| 45ure wrote:
| You can do that in Apollo (iOS) paid version, the client
| I use the most. Although, I will have to check again, but
| I am sure you can set the same on Sync and/or Boost
| (Android) on the free version, as I have a multireddit
| set as default on launch. On the browser, you can use RES
| + old reddit and change default behaviour. I find it
| easier to keep a very small number of frequently used
| subs for the home feed, and stick the rest in multi, as
| it helps to make them portable and easily shared. You can
| also find lists in r/multihub -- compiled and shared by
| others e.g. _cars_.
| runnerup wrote:
| Yeah this method really turns it into a slot machine for me.
| Reload 120 times, get a "jackpot" (new post) 1 time.
| obligate_self wrote:
| Another good technique is to use an RSS reader. Every
| subreddit has a corresponding feed (simply append .rss to the
| url).
| stank345 wrote:
| 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.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| This worked wonderfully for me too.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Whenever I am addicted to a service, I just block it on DNS
| level. This is enough for me to stop opening a website in the
| browser automatically.
|
| Whenever I am thinking of redownloading it, I think about why I
| deleted it in the first place.
| lonely_wanderer wrote:
| I think the first step is admitting that, even with any
| incidental value you get out of these services, it is an
| addiction and you are addicted. I don't say this with negative
| connotation to your character. Digital media has made me
| realize how powerless addiction makes one feel, even if one is
| well adjusted otherwise. The reality is you binge, much like a
| binge drinker, and wake up a week later with the app hangover.
|
| The same thing happens to me and I think the OP provides one
| good solution: stick to mobile UI in a browser. Generally,
| increase friction wherever you can. This only really works if
| you can stick to the worsened experience and not
| crack/redownload the app. One way to tackle that is to perhaps
| set a daily or weekly reminder to purge the apps you have a
| problem with (or all apps you don't need) from your phone.
| Maybe you will redownload them again, but giving yourself that
| extra moment where you can go to the App Store will surely make
| you quit halfway once or twice, then consistently, before you
| fall for the trap.
|
| I have an inadvertent example. I frequented a website on my
| phone for a while that relied heavily on a certain file format
| for videos. I switched phones and (by accident) got a new phone
| that doesn't support the format and would require me to
| download external apps to watch it. That friction of needing a
| third party app, paired with a decision to only use mobile
| websites when possible, meant by browsing time on that site
| dropped precipitously and I've now almost entirely cut the bad
| habit.
|
| Another habit is screen time. It is easy to go overboard and
| delete limits but you're setting friction points where you need
| to think about what you're doing.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > it is an addiction and you are addicted
|
| This is legal dopamine, and cocaine although a Selective
| Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor (SDRI) is illegal. You choose.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| > cocaine although a Selective Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitor
| (SDRI) is illegal
|
| I know you were discussing recreational cocaine, but fun
| fact: cocaine can be prescribed legally in most countries
| including the US. For relatively obvious reasons it's an
| uncommon prescriber choice, and it's generally applied
| topically (including to the nose) rather than snorted.
|
| Legal methamphetamine pills are also available by
| prescription, and of course also an uncommon prescriber
| choice when alternatives work well, although its chemical
| relatives in the amphetamine family are very much among the
| commonly prescribed ADHD drugs.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| Nothing would surprise me, but clues are given out like
| the cocaine & morphine mix given to one the British
| Royals on the throne at the time.
|
| This is where education, schools are used to monitor
| behaviours because if someone later expresses an interest
| to become a GP or Dentist, their behaviour will be used
| as part of an evaluation to see if they can be trusted.
| The educational system is just part of the state's
| intelligence estate.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| > Reddit (Apollo)
|
| Apollo for Reddit has a feature to disable infinite scroll.
| ericdykstra wrote:
| There's a kind of vicious cycle here where people feel
| disconnected from their surroundings and communities, and
| attention-stealing apps make a business of providing a surrogate
| through parasocial relationships and infinite access to the
| spectacle and new ways to interact with it.
|
| Parasocial relationships aren't real relationships, and the
| spectacle replaces doing anything directly, there is no
| fulfilment and the cycle continues. There's an epidemic of people
| who can't have hold a conversation or relate to anyone without
| mediating the conversation through a common topic that they've
| experienced on mass or social media. They're addicted to watching
| a simulation of having a life, and not actually living the one
| life they have.
| klabb3 wrote:
| This is the big one for me, even though I do 0 social broadcast
| apps (only 1:1 chats, news, reddit and hacker news). Huge
| improvement, yet still I use it in the same parasocial way,
| using your terms. It sucks!
| sytelus wrote:
| There are people who can resist this naturally. It's like people
| who won't eat the sugary stuff without having to put any effort.
| My theory is that this habit relates to available mental energy.
| When you are in low energy state, you can't read dense article or
| do intellectually taxing work and you gravitate towards infinite
| scroll because it's the best reward you can get for your
| available energy. People with high energy seem to be
| automatically resistant at infinite scroll because reward from
| other taxing activities is much higher, although delayed. If this
| view is correct then perhaps the solution is to engage in forced
| mental excercise just like body excercise to increase strength
| and endurance at more taxing activities.
| throwawayHN378 wrote:
| 45 minutes? I'm a VP of Product and work 12 hour days, yet
| someone I spent 9 hours a day ( as per my iPhone ) on my
| iPhone... most of it in an endless scroll k-hole
| icedchai wrote:
| So if you stopped being distracted by your phone, you could do
| 3 hour days? Sounds about right.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| I'm using a shock bracelet when accessing time wasters like
| Reddit and HN during "thinking. hours." I can access them anytime
| but it comes with pain.
| beagle3 wrote:
| > I'm using a shock bracelet when accessing time w
|
| Serious? If so, did you build it yourself, or is it a
| commercial thing?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I don't use any product with infinite scroll. If it's not
| paginated or single-paged, it's a clear sign they regard their
| users' time as worthless.
|
| Why would you interact with a company that believes that?
| jraph wrote:
| An exception: I find Duck Duck Go's infinite scroll quite
| pleasant, and find paginated results quite cumbersome.
|
| Elsewhere it's just annoying. Especially when a misclick makes
| you lose the position. Dilbert's website is a good example of
| this. For Reddit or Twitter I don't know, I read them using
| libreddit and nitter when I occasionally land on them from a
| link or a search result. TikTok and Facebook I have never
| tried.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Who looks past the first half-dozen search results. I almost
| never do.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Point. I should qualify that to "non-terminating infinite
| scroll." E.g. DDG is likely neither hoping nor expecting
| their users to infinitely scroll through search results all
| day, without clicking anything.
|
| Also, where does DDG have infinite scroll? I just checked
| (it's my default) and Firefox on Android shows a "More
| Results" footer button.
| jraph wrote:
| Oh, you are right, it's not actually infinite scroll, you
| have to click on "More Results" so Duck Duck Go loads more
| results in the page! My mistake.
|
| But yes, even if they did so, this is the important bit:
|
| > DDG is likely neither hoping nor expecting their users to
| infinitely scroll through search results all day, without
| clicking anything.
| LiquidPolymer wrote:
| I'm curious what the generational divide is for this. I'm 57,
| love tech and enjoy the positive side of the internet in limited
| doses. But I find most social media boring.
|
| There is incredible and AMAZING art, accidental moments, serious
| discussion and fascinating analysis of the world to be found
| online. But without grounding myself in genuine experience in the
| stinky, cruel real world of human interaction, nature, and
| emotions it's hollow. It only has meaning with this grounding
| reality.
|
| Infinite scroll has never captured my attention beyond a few
| seconds. I can't determine if I'm an anomaly? Normal for my age
| group?
|
| I'm distressed about how much time my 24 year-old daughter spends
| on instagram. She lives at home, works as a dance instructor, and
| spends most of her time staring at her phone screen.
|
| As a child I loved television. The six million dollar man was a
| highlight of the week (unless a spaghetti western was on). But it
| quickly became stultifying garbage when I spent more than a
| couple hours on the screen.
|
| Am I just not normal? I love the grittiness and dangerous
| unpredictability of the real world. Yet love movies. I'm not sure
| what to think
| ksec wrote:
| That is me as well in 40s. Infinite scroll doesn't capture me.
| So I dont understand how people could mindlessly scroll through
| instagram. My brain is constantly looking for new signals, not
| noise. And signals are very very rare. Especially once you know
| enough about a subject, it seems the only thing left are
| discussions in professional settings or you dig yourself into
| books.
|
| I think most people dont scroll through social media to seek
| knowledge at all. They do it for leisure. Which is really
| switching much of their brain off, and that is normal.
| Unfortunately my brain is constantly thinking about many
| things. How? Why?
|
| And as far as my life has gone, I am really abnormal.
| dbrueck wrote:
| A scary possibility is that it has to do with how much of the
| alternative you've experienced in your life, i.e. infinite
| scroll grabs you less if you've experienced the joy of a hobby,
| a good book, being outside a lot, etc. - things that take more
| effort but that can give deeper satisfaction. If this is true,
| then the more damaging it is to encounter infinite scroll at a
| younger age.
| tayo42 wrote:
| i don't scroll but i do find my self refreshing to see if
| anything is new a lot. like being bored and checking the fridge
| over and over. i seem to have lots of 30min breaks here or
| there that i fill up with bs time wasters
| krat0sprakhar wrote:
| I found myself doing that a lot (especially with being at
| home now), but recently, I've started using that "dead" time
| to play the guitar like practice a scale or something
| straightforward. That allows me to feel less guilty for
| getting bored while still getting a bit better at a skill
| that I value.
| [deleted]
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Yep, that's the symptom. It's easy to quit doing it, I've
| done it a hundreds of times already to only succumb to it at
| a later point.
|
| The truth is that if I'm busy with something that I have
| interest in I can easily avoid any of these types of
| procrastinations.
| [deleted]
| pcurve wrote:
| Would you mind sharing these sites? I would love to be engaged
| in the space the way you are.
| hackernewds wrote:
| I think the distinction is that you're 24-year-old daughter has
| a lot of friends online, and you don't
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| And they are constantly sending each other content like funny
| TikTok videos.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I'm mid thirties and have no social media, but I'm still
| hooked on the internet (HN and reddit, mostly), so friends
| online isn't necessarily the difference.
| rdiddly wrote:
| If you were looking for a generational segmentation you would
| have to compare different generational cohorts at similar ages
| (meaning a long-term study) to have any hope of controlling for
| people's having different levels of maturity, discipline,
| social needs, and for lack of a better term, being-fed-up-with-
| things-that-are-bullshit. I suspect it's not generational per
| se, but heavily age-dependent. If you no longer crave the
| Twinkies or McDonald's meals you did as a kid, you kind of know
| what I'm talking about.
| sparrc wrote:
| I'm 33 (so a millenial) and feel the same way. I find infinite
| scroll in social media pretty boring after less than a minute.
| inopinatus wrote:
| I think it's a fallacy to presume this is generational. Thirty
| years ago, the previous generation of grumpy old farts had
| basically the same class of remarks to make about us, and our
| preferences, since a great many of one's peers were practically
| glued to that TV screen. Social media is designed to weaponise
| our dopamine/reward pathways; if you're a holdout against that,
| fine, but so are a ton of twentysomethings. My assessment is
| that responses to attention capture stimuli are individual, not
| generational, and the observable variations have more to do
| with technological change, than cultural or anthropological
| change.
|
| More generally, making value judgements on the basis of media
| consumption is something to let go of, in my experience.
| randomsearch wrote:
| That's odd, because your own reply explains why this is
| different (the weaponisation / manipulation). The
| _technology_ is qualitatively different or "generational."
| Growing up with it has given this generation a different
| experience and different behaviours.
| inopinatus wrote:
| I never said it was different. Quite the opposite. I said
| that the behaviour is the same. The technology it attaches
| to is different, that's all. Making a dispositional
| inference at all is the error.
|
| Or more bluntly, every generation complains about the next
| one, but most old farts don't realise they've sleepwalked
| into the cliche.
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| I can recall pretty much every episode of the first 10
| seasons of the Simpsons in ridiculous detail because I
| watched hours of TV after school in the 90s, and my
| parents lamented that I didn't go outside enough. This
| isn't new.
| yupper32 wrote:
| > But without grounding myself in genuine experience in the
| stinky, cruel real world of human interaction, nature, and
| emotions it's hollow.
|
| The ability for younger people to actually experience life is
| fading. Having to work multiple jobs to keep a roof over your
| head, massive inflation, burnout from everything, covid spikes
| recently, etc, etc, etc, etc.
|
| Instagram/other social media is free and doesn't require any
| commitment or planning that real life experiences often
| require.
| trutannus wrote:
| >Having to work multiple jobs to keep a roof over your head,
| massive inflation, burnout from everything, covid spikes
| recently
|
| So the consequences of inept, corrupt, and broken
| governmental systems basically.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| In many cases, people voted for it.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| And in many cases, there wasn't a choice but to vote for
| it.
|
| If you are struggling because your 40 hour workweek won't
| let you rent apartment and you live in the US, who are
| you going to vote for to fix it? Probably no one, since
| you realistically only have a bianary choice and neither
| side seems to have the will to fix this. (Both major
| parties in the US have had majorities, yet haven't helped
| folks. This has been a growing issue for years). Sure,
| you can run for office, but it'll take years before you
| are in a position to hopefully help - and even that is
| going to depend on you having other progressive folks in
| office to vote with you. Otherwise, you are simply
| "raising awareness", which does little to help folks pay
| for their food.
| thebradbain wrote:
| And in many cases, those votes don't have a direct impact
| one way or the other on those broken systems.
|
| In the US, it's pretty clear now that both parties will
| keep the private health insurance racket intact (and tied
| to an employer), education costs will increase and
| student debt won't be forgiven, retirement age will
| increase and social security will remain underfunded,
| climate change will at most be paid only lip service,
| military+police funding will increase over any meaningful
| social programs, the minimum wage will not keep up with
| cost of living, we will continue to incarcerate rather
| than rehabilitate, national debt will continue to
| increase even though none of the above is being
| meaningfully addressed...
|
| Yes, I'm painting with a very broad brush, but you can
| probably see why a very large contingent of younger
| people would be discontent with the state of the world --
| even if you personally believe these aren't the
| government's issues to fix (or even if you think they're
| not issues at all).
|
| Sure, we have two different parties to choose from (once
| in a blue moon, sometimes a viable third). There's still
| a large contingent of 18+ millennials today, even among
| those who do vote, who are asking: what are we even
| voting for?
| froh wrote:
| An economic system with no reasonable checks and balances?
| Is that what you mean by broken governmental system? Any
| suggestions how to unbreak it?
| trutannus wrote:
| > Any suggestions how to unbreak it?
|
| I wish, but no. My biggest take away from watching
| economies and governments get borked by people who don't
| know what they're doing is that anything I could suggest
| will probably make matters worse. I'm a software
| developer, not a specialist in societies.
| annie_muss wrote:
| I wonder if growing up with it changes things? I've been more
| or less addicted to the screen since I was in elementary
| school. It started with web forums, then other social media. I
| was concerned about it then and now. I distinctly remember
| abstaining from screens for a week when I was 11 to see what it
| was like.
|
| In many ways social media is a reality these days. It's the
| main way you interact with your peers, form romantic
| relationships and so on.
| manachar wrote:
| I think it's one of those nature/nurture things.
|
| Lizards brain conditioned to infinite scroll crave it more. If
| you grew up without it and have avoided training that part of
| the mind, then it's easier to avoid getting hooked.
|
| Humans seem to forget that we are always in the process of
| making ourselves. By choosing how we spend our time and effort
| today we are choosing the kinds of things we find more
| rewarding tomorrow.
|
| I very much worry about people who spend all their time tuned
| to social media, which seems to have become an arms race to
| figure out how to become the most addictive form. TikTok is
| currently winning - somehow sucking hours and hours of people's
| lives away, be constantly fed a steady stream of just the right
| kinds of videos to make the lizard brain happy.
|
| It's cruel really. To take our human desire to connect and
| socialize and monetize it in such a shallow and empty way.
| MandieD wrote:
| TikTok was so instantly compelling that I was scared away
| from further interaction with it, but Twitter is my weakness
| that I sometimes feel like I've conquered, but as soon as I
| allow myself back in to check my DMs...
| skydhash wrote:
| Similar to me. I'm 26, but only got on the social train in 2015
| or so. I scroll for a few minutes, but I'm just seeking for
| something interesting to learn about. To distract me, a video
| or article need to trigger that thirst of knowledge. And it's
| not something you find on most social platforms - which is why
| I check HN more than anything else these days.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I'm only 36, but it's the same for me with infinite scrolling
| (not for TV, I love TV shows and hate movies). I rarely even
| scroll far enough for a load to trigger.
|
| But then I also am still using Facebook as a place to connect
| with people I know, which the vast majority, with prodding by
| FB, has abandoned, it seems.
|
| edit: I should also mention that I rarely use my phone for
| anything.
| mcv wrote:
| I have noticed that infinite scroll is becoming bad for my
| health. I dealt with RSI issues 20 years ago and got that under
| control, but now it seems like scrolling on my phone is giving me
| different RSI pain in my thumb and shoulder.
|
| I really should stop reading stuff on my phone that requires
| scrolling.
| otikik wrote:
| I didn't reinstall twitter on my phone after I bought a new one.
| FOMO first week, then I have one less source of distraction and
| rage in my life.
| winternett wrote:
| I still mostly use the web browser on my mobile phone.
|
| Many apps are just too damn invasive now as well, they cross the
| line way too far for metrics they don't even really pay attention
| to; this is why I only install apps that don't use dark patterns
| and I've deleted many that go that route. I also schedule my
| important daily tasks on my calendar with silent (vibration
| alerts) so that I know when things need to get done. Ringers and
| notifications are always off on my phone...
|
| I do get pulled in to TikTok at times, but I frequently recognize
| when the content gets "preachy" and/or boring, and I quickly quit
| the app and take a break when that happens. Sometimes, it's just
| simple fun to take a mental break from being serious too, so we
| shouldn't always ruin all the good aspects of social platforms.
|
| Product owners and companies now often think their role is to
| manipulate people into staying on apps, and that's a very toxic
| attitude that discourages trust in corporations behind the apps.
|
| In truth, these platforms are accountable for the suicides,
| societal depression, crimes, and negative effects their platforms
| encourage in real life, and eventually they will be held
| accountable for it.
|
| For us, there are careful choices to make; we need to identify
| dark patterns and encourage public awareness about them. We need
| to refuse to do development work that supports negative outcomes
| and dark profit.
|
| If any of us collect a check for creating bad algos and just
| think it's just "doing our job" we're just as accountable as the
| greedy and morally corrupt execs that push for profit goals
| without any sense of societal responsibility and moral
| accountability.
| omitmyname wrote:
| Is there any list of dark patterns?
| smhg wrote:
| There has been some effort around this in the past if I
| remember correctly. A quick search leads to this list [0].
|
| [0] https://www.darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern
| sizzle wrote:
| Thankfully iOS has implemented Screen Time limiting and I
| someone I trust set the pin to add more time. Works like a
| charm across the apple ecosystem
| xgdgsc wrote:
| My solution is using a e-ink phone for those apps. So you cannot
| "scroll" smoothly. But you use the paging button. The visual
| stimulus is much lower.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Is there an extension out there that will paginate infinite
| scrolls?
| fleddr wrote:
| A less popular opinion: when you're in the danger zone regarding
| mindless scrolling, say several hours per day, another way to
| look at it is that you simply have too much time on your hands.
|
| When you add friction to using these apps as some type of self-
| control, the problem is that the time surplus is still there.
| Which leaves infinite excuses to get back into the habit.
|
| You need to replace that time with something better. Preferably
| fun social obligations, because those you won't easily opt-out
| of. Agree with a friend to go walk to the park every Wednesday.
| Do volunteer work. Group sports. Cook an extra nice meal for your
| partner on a particular day. Stuff like that. Fill up your
| surplus of time with things that are fun and have meaning.
|
| I know, for some the above is too steep. For the ultra lazy,
| there's still options. Pick a movie/documentary that you expect
| to enjoy. Now put your smartphone in another room and fully
| engage with the movie. Use your own laziness as a tool as you
| can't bother to get it.
|
| Further, uninstall Facebook, Twitter, the like from your phone.
| Only check them on desktop.
|
| Finally, minimize chat on your phone. I limit chat to practical
| matters only. Needing to pick up something from the store, input
| on a party that is being organized, things like that.
|
| Anything else...I don't engage. I'm not going to have a long
| winded social conversation on chat just for the sake of it. To
| signal this, just respond a day later, and only with "yes", "no"
| or "OK".
| civilized wrote:
| I've reached the stage where I no longer even enjoy social media
| consumption, I'm just doing it out of habit. I feel like a heroin
| user who no longer gets high and just uses it to feel normal.
|
| And I'm not even talking about the usual social media ratholes. I
| pretty much bounce between HN and NYT at this point. And I feel
| close to dropping even those two entirely, out of sheer boredom.
| Because on the bright side, it's probably a lot easier to quit
| than heroin.
| boxfoxdox1 wrote:
| I tend to call this idling and it has been something that has
| been known to consume hours and hours of the day, to an extreme
| example where it just goes ahead and consume the day.
|
| At first I tried many methods to fight, including and alarm set
| when I start idling, or having a dedicated time to idle usually
| 15mins.
|
| But then I noticed that I just kind of slip into idling so the
| next idea was to keep a sort of a log that I fil up before i tend
| to do something or a series of actions and the approx time it
| took.
|
| This had worked much better than the previos ideas so I kept at
| it trying to form a habit out of it in the same light of whats is
| my next action step from GTD.
|
| But it would still occur from time to time and sometimes it would
| be an outbreak of idleness.
|
| So instead of trying to fix it I start to do two things, one is
| to try and be as conscious as I can while idling and the other is
| to just observr my self and my patterns of idling to try and see
| the why I wanted to do it over something like play a video game
| or you know, have some fun.
|
| What I found out ( and this is still a work in progres) is that
| my idlenes is a mix of an eacape, being overwhelmed, a habit
| comforting reflex, dopamine fix need and being tired.
|
| It is rarely one reason for it so I understood that I am unable
| to fix it just by doing one thing.
|
| So I started to adress the problems one by one depending on the
| current strongerst reason for. If tired go nap for 9m30s, if
| overwhelmed clean up gtd and add new stuff to inbox etc.
|
| I still idle but it is not as long as it was. Also not having the
| apps helps allot. Strangely enough this place is not what I use
| for idle, but that is because I've been treating it differently
| from the get go, as most of the time each topic here that
| interests me is packed with information and has a buch of really
| high quality comments so much so that I usuallly just add a topic
| in my gtd for further processing.
|
| One observation for idling is that you should not combine idling
| with something you enjoy as idling is a habit loop and everything
| you add to it feeds it, now this can be used for good as well but
| idling while you drink coffe or are having fun will chain that
| strongly.
|
| If you are able to be counscious enough to catch yourself as you
| begin to idle that is the most difficult but most useful step as
| for me most of the time idling is an semi-conscious act.
|
| Guided meditation helps here, also having coinscious triggers
| either formed ( everytime you sit a moment of consciousness) or
| randomly activated ( set a random gentle alarm trough out the
| day) the more you have those the bigger the chance that it will
| trigger when you start to idle.
|
| Also as said before, observe your idle patterns, your body
| position when you start doing it, your place in the room or
| wherever while it is hard to build consciousness triggers on
| idling itself you may be able to build it around the movement or
| positional patterns that you take when idling.
|
| The reason I am motivated to write this is that I noticed just
| how much of the time that I will never going to get back is taken
| by it with no visible when done in the quantity that I have been
| doing it.
|
| There is obviously some benefit though, but same can be said for
| many other addicting substances.
|
| Also calling it idling is kind of not fair because true idling (
| just doing nothing) is actually very useful as it help you rest
| and kind of process things and resting or true idling before I go
| to bed has improved my sleep quality.
|
| And that is all on that from me, maybe it might be useful to
| someone.
| askura wrote:
| Absolutely. I know this is unrelated to the psychological side of
| things but for the company I'm with I often have to reach out to
| charities or NGOs. I absolutely hate badly designed sites with
| infinite scroll when I'm simply trying to get to the contact in
| the footer.
|
| It's infuriating!
| bredren wrote:
| Or fast food. Or video games, or anything that can be optimized
| and tuned to attract at near instinctual levels.
|
| There is a lot out there carefully designed to trap, hook or
| ensnare people.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| A very hacky solution that I've found to combat TikTok's infinite
| feed is to scroll up instead. I skip to the 20-th video in the
| feed, watch each video, and then exit once I'm done with the 20.
| Hitting the top gives you an off-ramp to get out of the app.
| polio wrote:
| If you enjoy the product, this risks skewing the input to the
| recommendation algorithm. Presumably they use time spent to
| determine what content you enjoy.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Not sure I follow, it doesn't sound like any particular post
| would be on screen any longer than normal, unless you're
| suggesting that time since load is what is measured instead
| of time on screen (or time since last scroll), or that they
| use overall duration of the app session to infer things about
| all the posts that were loaded.
| ec109685 wrote:
| It might register a whole bunch of skips, and skips might
| be weighted more than re-runs (or not and it's a good
| technique!).
|
| TikTok is ridiculously captivating. I just don't use it
| because it sucks me in.
| vgel wrote:
| This is genius, definitely going to give this a try.
| tsian2 wrote:
| For other things I make use of the "work offline" mode, to see
| what's loaded in and then leave. I'd like it if browser devs
| stopped pushing that future further away and maybe gave it a
| hotkey.
| everydayDonut wrote:
| The answer is obvious - legislate pagination options for all
| social media. We can't handle it the way we can't handle added
| sugar in our diets. China is already taking the lead by banning
| AI from setting prices dynamically.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Maybe it is me but scrolling brings less revelant items. Each
| scroll being worse. If scroll more than a few I give up.
| draw_down wrote:
| yumiris wrote:
| I see it as our minds being impressioned into a) needing new
| information and b) fearing a lack of information. This fear
| manifests as a habit of continuously craving novelty, to the
| point where _we_ are used by technology.
|
| A step towards overcoming it is to realise this fear and begin
| using technology as tools, like they were originally intended.
| This is, of course, easier said than done; however, with time, we
| can overcome this habit by using our technology with _intent_.
|
| The biggest obstacle is not the technology, but ourselves. We
| often find reasons and justifications to continue this habit.
| Fundamentally, it's a case of self-victimisation and illusion of
| necessity. "It's too hard to quit", "I will learn new things", "I
| need to catch up with people", and so on.
|
| I'm still exploring this topic and there's a lot to learn! What
| I've written above is likely just a (possibly misguided!) part of
| the whole equation. I'm happy to discuss this with anyone and
| understand the nuances of this problem, and hopefully a more
| effective solution.
|
| Coincidentally, I've written about this topic in more detail a
| few days ago: https://blog.miris.design/attention-atrophy
| amelius wrote:
| Small request. If you are a developer and you are forced to
| implement infinite scroll and you can't quit your job, at least
| make sure the back button works.
| Aeolun wrote:
| What does 'back button works' mean in the context of infinite
| scroll?
| slig wrote:
| Clicking the back button after navigating away from the
| infinite scroll madness should return to the same spot in the
| infinite scroll list.
| Thorrez wrote:
| That's kind of tricky. I assume the list is
| allgorithmically generated. So simply having the back
| button go back to the list, and down to item 50, might give
| you a list that looks completely different.
|
| Even HN might have this problem a bit. If you visit the
| homepage you click an article, spend some time reading it,
| then click back, the homepage might have changed, and even
| post you were reading might not even be on the homepage
| anymore. HN is much less bad than infinite scroll sites,
| because HN's homepage is the same for everyone, and doesn't
| change nearly as often.
|
| One way to to solve this might be to store a session ID as
| a query parameter that gets automatically added when you
| visit the homepage, and store the complete state of each
| session either serverside or locally in the browser. Then
| when you navigate back to that session ID, you get the same
| page. There are a number of downsides to this though. The
| session ID in the URL is ugly, there's a lot of storage
| needed for all these session, sessions likely need to be
| pruned at some point (so the back button will stop working
| at some point), and it's very difficult to figure out what
| to do when multiple tabs open the same session ID.
| elefanten wrote:
| Where would they be "forced" to implement infinite scroll and
| also have the latitude to design/PM the product features?
|
| I doubt any product of consequence would allow this to happen.
|
| Doing your job as a rogue quasi-saboteur probably isn't a
| better option than quitting.
| sovok_x wrote:
| And a few more possibly good tweaks, it could also:
|
| - be pausable, allowing to reach the page's footer
|
| - be resumable from the latest viewing point on page reload
|
| - modify current URL periodically
|
| - preload new data slightly before reaching the end of last
| page
|
| - auto-pause at some point to prevent mental overload
|
| - be switchable, in part to "Click to continue" state, in
| options
| Aeolun wrote:
| Making all these things is too much effort, can I just use a
| good old paginated view instead?
| sovok_x wrote:
| Why not both with an options switch? Everything has its
| uses.
| nickjj wrote:
| > - modify current URL periodically
|
| This is a big one.
|
| Without this it's so frustrating to infinite scroll down to
| the equivalent of 12 pages, leave the page and want to go
| back to roughly where page 12 is another time. Instead you
| have to start from the top and scroll down.
|
| You'd likely save a good amount of server compute power just
| using push state to update the page in the URL as you go so
| folks can copy / paste it and jump right back to that page
| later.
| cja wrote:
| This comments thread is so long that it might as well be
| scrolling infinitely
| MauranKilom wrote:
| For those who don't want to completely give up on this kind of
| content but want to limit their intake, I can highly recommend
| the Intention add-on for FF/Chrome: https://www.getintention.com/
|
| For me, it worked really well for a while, until I started
| instinctively hitting the "one more minute" button. But they
| recently added the option for a 30 second timeout after each
| "unlock" period, which curbs that very effectively. It gives the
| non-lizard part of your brain the perfect opportunity to take the
| reigns again :)
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| News Feed Eradicator is a great chrome extension that lets you
| unblock websites for a set period of time. I check my twitter and
| hackernews for 5 minutes in the morning everyday. Otherwise if I
| move to those websites they are blocked.
|
| I removed social media from my phone and mobile browser social
| media use without being logged in is so painful or restrictive
| that I'm rarely temped to do much other than check the top few
| posts on the reddit homepage.
|
| Those two things helped a ton with my social media usage.
| aeciorc wrote:
| This is also my struggle. I've come up with a million ways to
| cope, but it makes me sad to think of the wasted potential: all
| the projects I never started, hobbies I never picked up, courses
| I never finished, books I never read
| LtdJorge wrote:
| It's just YouTube for me. But it sucks most of my time :(
| floor_ wrote:
| Infinite scroll is the worst and pixel hunting for hidden ui
| elements is even worse.
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| I'm on day 1 of 30 days of no social media, and I've kept all my
| apps on my phone and haven't made any restrictions to me being
| able to access it. I feel like it's helping me build up
| resiliency to saying "no" longer term with a reset period as the
| buffer for change. Wish me luck!
| oxplot wrote:
| The key to curb bad habits is to create friction, and doing so
| well in advance. When you're exhausted and you're out of will,
| you're not gonna take much action to avoid quick pleasures. As it
| pertains to websites and app, here are a bunch of techniques for
| creating friction:
|
| - iOS and Android both have screen time features to show you a
| banner when you've used an app for longer than a set time. This
| is a good soft block to start with.
|
| - Auto logout after a set time. Having to login is one extra step
| that may deter you from accessing a website. This can be done
| with browser extensions.
|
| - Auto delete apps after a set time (this is possible with MDMs).
| Again, having to install an app would be a big hurdle next time
| you want to sit back and scroll through clips.
|
| - Throttle speed of a website - this one's a little brittle as
| you can quickly switch to a faster network, usually your mobile
| connection.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This right here.
|
| I blocked reddit on my home network. I can easily use a VPN to
| bypass this but the friction broke the habit. Next up is Hacker
| News
| yakattak wrote:
| Trying to cut down on phone time/doom scrolling has been a focus
| of mine the past few weeks. I've been able to help _mitigate_ but
| not get rid of it with the following:
|
| 1. Apollo for Reddit on iOS has a toggle for infinite scrolling,
| I have infinite scrolling _off_ 2. Most of my time on my phone is
| spent either in bed, or in transit. Transit has a definite end,
| so being in bed was my main target. I now leave my phone so far
| away from my bed at night that I need to get up to get it.
| Instead of using it before bed, I read.
|
| I do #2 in moderation, for example weekends, I just run free but
| my sleep is way better the nights I read and keep the phone away!
| I hope this helps some folks.
| _carbyau_ wrote:
| For me, the important part is to actively commit your time. IE I
| am actively _deciding_ to spend X minutes doing Y. If that is
| doomscrolling /TV/games, that's fine.
|
| The problem only comes when that time limit is breached. And THEN
| you can review and figure out whether that time got you what you
| wanted. IE usually doomscrolling is to zoneout/relax/catch up
| with friends news, etc.
|
| But this requires dedication to think in this way.
| awr wrote:
| 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.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| 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.
| mdonahoe wrote:
| 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.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| No.
| ashleybravo wrote:
| I once had a nightmare about infinite scroll where I was in a
| room and the floor fell out from below me, and then right before
| I was about to hit the floor of the room below, THAT floor
| collapsed too, and so on!
| aprdm wrote:
| Yes, we have some of the smartest people in our generation, being
| paid an endless supply of money to... keep our eyeballs watching
| a device & ads.
|
| Modern times.
| dnicoli wrote:
| > I don't have any quick fixes or easy answers.
|
| Oh but there are - and if we're being honest with ourselves we
| already know it. If you can't defeat it head on (and you can't)
| you have to take extreme actions - ditch your smartphone for
| something dumber, block the sites using something like nextdns.
| Maybe you could go even further, see Popey's brilliant blog entry
| on his command line only laptop -
| https://popey.com/blog/2021/02/command-line-only-laptop/
|
| Good luck to anyone reading this! You can do it!
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I love the focus the terminal brings, besides the solid benefit
| of scriptability/automation that's not possible with most GUI
| apps.
|
| I've recently rediscovered emacs and now use it as my primary
| tool for development. I already loved working in the terminal
| for git and xcodebuild so it's felt natural.
|
| Moving editing and workflow into emacs has been great so far.
| I'm already customizing things. Even using eshell! Excited to
| look into other things like a music player or email app. Or
| even slack like the author: https://github.com/yuya373/emacs-
| slack
| nbzso wrote:
| The whole world is captured by dark UX. The pandemic situation
| forced people to stay home glued to the screens and rewired their
| brains to accept more intrusive media consumption. We don't know
| the negative effects of this process yet. I have lost
| communication with a lot of people, the information shock has
| made them completely strange to me. On a personal level, I got
| lucky. Due to my interest in photography, in early 2015 I
| developed the habit to leave my phone home and go for a walk only
| with a camera in my hand. It felt refreshing. The next step for
| me was to delete all unnecessary apps from my phone and stop the
| usage of texting apps. If I wanted to communicate with someone -
| I called. Somewhere in 2017, I realized that my brain needs a
| constant hit of fresh information and I have to combat this urge.
| Now I have offline data collection of carefully curated books,
| videos, and music. I have limited my "news" consumption to 20
| minutes a day through RSS feeds, Twitter, and Hackernews are
| limited to 15 minutes a day. Internet is used only for work.
| marajit wrote:
| We are in a state of war. Don't be lulled by a sense of ease -
| the stakes have never been higher. If you are not directing your
| attention, it is being directed for you. Infinite scroll is much
| more dangerous on phones than on computers. Your breath is den.
| Good luck.
| moltke wrote:
| I've removed everything with this from my life. Everyone knows
| how bad it is now, there's no excuse.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| You removed all of it from your life with no negative impact.
|
| On the other side there's all the people who live with it with
| no negative impact either.
|
| The existence of these two groups seem to me a reasonable
| enough argument to keep it as it is and find alternative
| solutions for the people who can't remove it from their lives
| yet are harmed by that. At least, removing it for everyone
| doesn't seem to be the right call.
| sodality2 wrote:
| > Everyone knows how bad it is now, there's no excuse.
|
| I disagree. Ask any 20-30 year old and I don't think many will
| say that TikTok, Instagram, etc is "harmful to your health".
| Maybe a "bit addictive", maybe a few people who say "I have a
| problem with it". But never "I know this is very harmful for my
| attention span, my mental health, etc".
| Shared404 wrote:
| > But never "I know this is very harmful for my attention
| span, my mental health, etc".
|
| Early 20's here, and avoid TikTok, Instagram, etc and know
| Reddit and the like are all of those things listed - though
| the worst affected for me personally is attention span.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Hacker News might not be the best sample set :p I do all of
| these too but I really doubt many of my peers do.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I imagine you're quite correct.
|
| I usually just like to chime in when people mention stuff
| like "no one young <does|knows|cares about> $THING",
| because I've noticed a trend where the fact that there
| _are_ young people who care is ignored which I think
| hurts the case more.
|
| Most of my peers don't care however, at least, not as
| much as I do though I've made some inroads.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Sounds like the same mentality which lead to "cause cancer in
| California". All of the hysterical bullcrap with no sense of
| proportion leads to being ignored completely. It seems like
| even with the rise of drug legalization support they learned
| nothing from the failures of DARE and "scare them straight".
| moltke wrote:
| By "everyone" I really meant people building things. IE: If
| someone builds something with infinite scrolling that's like
| putting caffeine/alcohol/cocaine in a drink.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Ah okay, I agree. Unfortunately it's really easy for PMs to
| hide that behind flowery language like "to increase
| retention rates", "improve user experience", etc.
| travisporter wrote:
| I have a friend early 40s who says I have to download tiktok
| its so good he spends his evenings in bed with his wife
| texting links to each other. Not doing a good job marketing
| it to me
| buba447 wrote:
| Ask any person in 1950 and I don't think any will say that
| cigarettes are harmful. Maybe a 'bit addictive'...
| Lamad123 wrote:
| When you try to close a loud annoying facebook video, it is
| minimized but is louder and more annoying. I just close the whole
| page!!!
| hendrikrassmann wrote:
| I believe that in 100 years people will look back at our
| consumption of anti-social media the same way, we're looking back
| at doctors refusing to wash their hands before delivering.
|
| Your body can deal with many things on it's own, but once there
| are cities with a million people in them, and railroads and
| steamboats zig-zagging between them, hygiene has to be a
| conscious effort.
|
| Much same way, it's not your fault, if your mind can't handle all
| the shit the internet landscape throws at it.
|
| One easy way I found is to have an older smartphone (S4 mini),
| without any cheap mobile internet access. (This works very well
| in Germany, as we have almost no free wifi). This way I only
| allow myself podcasts, which I chose to download before leaving
| the house.
| bob66 wrote:
| imron wrote:
| 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).
| rr808 wrote:
| Hey I got this too! At first I was annoyed they wouldn't let me
| check my favorite accounts then realized its actually good.
| soared wrote:
| Reddit also has the same feature on the mobile site where they
| randomly force you to download the app or stop browsing. Pretty
| nice.
| hifikuno wrote:
| I also struggle with this. As such I've tried doing little things
| to stop the infinite scroll. I don't use reddit anymore unless it
| is something I am actively looking into (e.g. a tech subreddit or
| something). I went through and unfollowed every friend and
| product on facebook. Luckily, I think that's all I use that has
| infinite scroll.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The only way I've defeated infinite scroll is with the sword of
| purpose, and the shield of time-boxing. All other load outs
| aren't that effective at this boss.
| LoveMortuus wrote:
| Sadly I don't have this problem. I say sadly because the same
| mechanism that prevents infinite scroll from working on me, also
| prevents me from enjoying video games.
|
| It's very simple, my brain keeps asking me what's the point of
| increasing in integer in some database far far away.
|
| But the answer is always that there's no point...
| trey-jones wrote:
| I noticed I was doing this with Facebook. Decided never to
| install it on a phone. I did install Instagram on a phone.
| Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Instagram. I installed
| Reddit on a phone. Noticed I was doing this. Uninstalled Reddit.
|
| My biggest problem then is that I can't uninstall the stupid
| Google news feed, so that still gets me pretty often. They've
| made the scroll longer, but at least it is currently finite.
|
| Only slightly related is the way I use my phone for other things.
| I notice that I'll compulsively unlock my phone and check certain
| apps that might have something for me (Slack message in a channel
| that doesn't notify, Chess move to make). And the problem with
| that is I know I don't need to, and that nothing has likely
| changed since I last checked. And it's still darn difficult to
| avoid.
| carlosr2 wrote:
| Make google news useless by disabling personalization in
| android settings.
|
| It worked for me, its not interesting anymore.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I ended up using ublock origin to block the "recommendation"
| sidebars on twitter and youtube. So glad for that. Is there a way
| to stop the infinite scroll?
|
| The stuff on the sidebar is related, sort-of, but you're not
| expecting it and you are not necessarily in a critical state of
| mind when you notice it and instinctively click. Meanwhile, I
| imagine, giant inscrutable algorithms are tweaking knobs in our
| heads that we don't even know about, always making incremental
| progress towards taking away all our attention without us even
| being aware of it.
| llasse wrote:
| I even have this problem when just sitting in front of my laptop
| to look something up - I end up on completely different websites
| procrastinating a lot . Another behavioral hack was told to me by
| someone els: write down on a piece of paper what you want to look
| up/do on the computer before you sit down in front of it and
| check if you have done it as much as possible.
| clircle wrote:
| Switch to using chrome without ublock origin, and you'll find
| the web experience to be so intolerable that you'll only use it
| for what's absolutely necessary.
| jbmny wrote:
| I use a sort of inverse tactic. While working, I often find
| that trivial questions pop into my head, and I get tempted to
| look up the answers and distract myself for a while. Stuff like
| "what does the word 'ducky' mean" or "what are the lyrics to
| the verse of that Blur song" or "what is the capital of
| Albania". I keep a text file open on my computer called
| "later", and when one of these questions comes up, I write it
| in the file, promising myself that I can look it up later. The
| truth is that I hardly ever do. The questions seem so burning
| when I want to be distracted. When I have the free time to look
| them up, I realize how silly they actually were.
| informalo wrote:
| For the case of using Instagram on iOS, I recently posted
| something on reddit about how to disable the explore feed on iOS
| when browsing Instagram in Safari. Maybe it's of use to someone;
| I myself feel like I have a much healthier experience like this
| without missing out on what my friends are up to.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/t780bt/remove_the_expl...
| blessingdusk wrote:
| Infinite scrolls and other features are classified as dark
| patterns, meaning it is a feature that is designed to engage the
| user as much as possible. The common denominator of all dark
| patterns are that they benefit the service provider or business
| at the detriment of the consumer. It helps being able to define
| what infinite scrolling does, because once you can recognize what
| a dark pattern entails, it will be much easier to spot and
| accordingly adjust your behaviors. Moderating your own behaviors
| when dealing with dark patterns is key.
|
| Mobile games are notorious for this; the market for mobile games
| are flooded with "Log in everyday to get your dailies!" Initially
| I was enthralled by mobile gaming as a middle schooler. I got to
| play Clash of Clans in my classroom and away from my home
| computer. I am now in sophomore year of college. The novelty of
| mobile games wear off as soon as you realize that mobile games
| back then and still today are designed to monopolize your time. I
| like to think that mobile game developers do it because they are
| passionate about it, but their passion gets bogged down at their
| first gamedev job because of company politics and the fact that
| dark patterns make money.
|
| Come to think of it, I really resonate with this author because
| dark patterns are everywhere. It is as if every single service
| provider is trying to monopolize your time. It happens with
| YouTube, computer games (notably Path of Exile), Discord, TikTok,
| Twitter, Instagram and so much more. Dark patterns are
| definitively not conducive to a healthy populace. Thinking of my
| own time as a finite resource really helps. Is this dark pattern
| worth my time? It is ridiculously easy to sink 8 hours of your
| time watching reality TV on YouTube. I would even go as far as to
| say that they are designed to keep the working and lower class
| poor. If anyone wants to inquire further about that statement,
| please reply.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I played way to much Clash Royale, a really good tower defence
| game, for two three months.
|
| But I realized the grinding element in that game was insidious.
| "This chest opens in three hours". It wasted your time for no
| fun added, rather than being a game mechanic. I just deleted
| it.
|
| I.e. the game rate limited your grind and made you pay to
| remove the grind cap.
|
| At some point it got impossible to increase your ELO ranking
| without having better card levels, so you had to pay up or
| grind, or you would lose to bad players with high level decks.
| Really boring ...
|
| It is a shame that the gaming industry got to this. Becouse
| Clash Royale is a really good game underneath the leveling of
| cards grind and pay-2-win.
| giorgioz wrote:
| On many platforms there are ways to disable the infinite
| scroll/auto play:
|
| Netflix: https://streamersworld.com/enable-disable-auto-play-
| next-epi...
|
| Disable News Feed: - Facebook - Twitter - LinkedIn - YouTube -
| Instagram - Y-Combinator News (Hacker News) - Reddit - Github
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| 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.
| m8s wrote:
| I just want to give a quick shout out to the Apollo Reddit reader
| on iOS for two specific features:
|
| 1. You can disable infinite scroll. When I've been scrolling
| Reddit for 20 or so posts, it's a sobering reminder that I've
| gained nothing of value on Page 1, and Page 2 likely won't be any
| better.
|
| 2. You can disable r/all. If it's there, odds are I will look at
| it. Without it, I don't feel tempted to wander outside of my
| curated feed of programming languages and such.
|
| Two really excellent features to combat the addictive noise I
| have trouble filtering.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| I have exactly the opposite issue. The fact that Apollo fixes
| all my reddit annoyances means that I use it way more than I
| should. If I was forced to use the official reddit app with
| it's ads and nonsense or the atrocious web page, my reddit
| usage would drop exponentially.
| duncanc4 wrote:
| Long time Apollo user, I had no idea you could disable the
| infinite scroll. Thanks for mentioning it!
| lightsurfer wrote:
| Thank You!!!
| asmr wrote:
| Thankfully my brain was programmed/imprinted during the "pull to
| refresh" era. I rarely scroll past a page length before I move on
| to something else or scroll to the top and refresh. On a more
| serious note I've had problems with TikTok.
|
| The most helpful thing I've done to manage this is to make it
| incredibly difficult/annoying to access your stuff. I don't have
| the Instagram app on my phone and all though I have several
| twitter accounts I only keep 1 signed in to my twitter app.
| unexistential wrote:
| I feel exactly as the author feels, and it's heartening to see so
| many comments here talking about this problem. What baffles me is
| outside of HN and the occasional news story or opinion piece,
| people seem to be just unbothered. People (or at least my friend
| and acquaintance circle) seem to keep using these platforms,
| posting on and what the infinite scroll feeds them as if there's
| nothing out of the ordinary about it all.
|
| I've tried sharing on my social media how I feel about it all in
| the past, but I stopped after I started feeling like most people
| don't have a problem with it. No one wants to be the person that
| demands the state of affairs should change just because it
| inconveniences them.
| prawn wrote:
| I imagine a lot of people feel helpless if they think that
| using these apps is part of the mix of being socially relevant,
| but there are limited ways they can change how those apps work.
| Or they feel it replaces their idle TV watching and so aren't
| bothered that it's endless and passive.
|
| Instagram is important in my industry and I detest the infinite
| scroll, but multiple times a day I carry past the "caught up"
| point and get partway into suggestions and ads before I
| realise. I'd love a feature to switch it back to how it used to
| work, but that's very unlikely!
| sodality2 wrote:
| 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 (purposefully don't have an app
| for it) and resetting the countdown on the DNS server and
| restarting the server, to allow these DNS requests. It denies all
| SSH connections from my home network, and doesn't even resolve
| its own subdomain (dns.my-domain.com for the DNS dashboard) for
| me to reset it.
| ninesnines wrote:
| How do you implement this? I am a relatively new programmer and
| would love to to implement this on my own phone/ workspace
| herval wrote:
| This could seriously be a good commercial product!
| sodality2 wrote:
| Hey, don't beat me to the punch! I thought about it right
| after posting too, that might have to be my next side
| project.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Yea I'd buy this
| reustle wrote:
| Let us know when we can preorder or subscribe for updates
| :)
| trizoza wrote:
| same, i want to get notified when released
| insaider wrote:
| I was gonna say drop your twitter, then the irony hit me
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| +1 on buying this, time for a Kickstarter!
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| If you're serious about this, go through Crowd Supply
| rather than Kickstarter or IGG.
|
| They take a larger cut but are much more hands on with
| the marketing, and this kind of project would be right up
| their alley.
|
| Couldn't recommend them more after my own experience with
| them as a 21 year old fresh grad.
| greggsy wrote:
| I'm all for tangible, tactical solutions to problems that are
| currently enabled by software. For example, a phone tells the
| time, but it's not always as straight forward as looking at a
| clock.
| tjr225 wrote:
| If only one could buy a clock, or watch.
| drewcon wrote:
| I would buy this.
| brigandish wrote:
| I can see parents wanting to use it.
| vavooom wrote:
| I would invest in this
| M4v3R wrote:
| While it's not exactly the same, there's an app called "Self
| Control" on macOS that blocks selected websites for chosen
| amount of time, and after it is engaged it is virtually
| impossible for you to disable the block until the timer runs
| out. I use it a lot.
|
| [0] https://selfcontrolapp.com
| arrosenberg wrote:
| This exists as a commercial product (e.g. Freedom App), but
| you can just as easily add buttons and switches to a Home
| Assistant setup that does the same thing.
| MandieD wrote:
| Nothing to do with age, I'm afraid - I'm over 40, and far more
| scattered and subject to the lure of the endless internet than
| when I was 20. In my personal situation, my best hope is that
| it is mommy brain, and that I'll outgrow it as my kid gets
| further from infancy.
| esperent wrote:
| I'm a couple of years short of 40 and feel the same. But
| these infinite feeds simply didn't exist, or at least weren't
| nearly as prevalent and well tuned to hijack human
| psychology, when we were 20.
| dageshi wrote:
| I remember downloading and picking over the content of
| newsgroups in my mid-late teens and before that endlessly
| rolling through different TV stations.
|
| My mind has always craved the distraction of the infinite
| scroll, it's just modern social media has perfected it.
| MandieD wrote:
| That's true. To really waste time on the internet, you had
| to go Googling or hit Slashdot.
| brooke2k wrote:
| Couldn't you just disconnect from wi-fi on your phone and
| access everything via cellular?
| sodality2 wrote:
| The DNS server is set in my phone as well. But even if it
| wasn't, I live in a third-world country that still has crude
| data caps (the United States) so consuming video would
| probably quickly approach it.
| morgante wrote:
| What stops you from just changing your DNS server?
| SteveNuts wrote:
| That's a separate button
| dylan604 wrote:
| Only available on the Pro++ version.
| egypturnash wrote:
| My guess is that changing the DNS server is _work_ - enough
| work that your brain can say "oh wait I kinda didn't
| actually want to go to that time-wasting site, did I?" and
| find something less soul-sucking to do. Maybe some kind of
| work you're glad to do, maybe some kind of amusement that
| leaves you feeling better than getting lost in an infinite
| scroll of Content.
| ejj28 wrote:
| I suppose one could just block port 53 outbound, forcing you
| to use the local DNS server
| hooande wrote:
| This is like saying "I cured my alcoholism by throwing all the
| liquor out of my house". The problem isn't the availability of
| the stimulus, it's the lack of control over your desire for it.
|
| You can't cure a need for distraction by blocking domains.
| There isn't a cure. You have to learn to live with it, like
| alcoholism.
|
| The good news is that major life events tend to be great for
| breaking the distraction seeking pattern. At some point you'll
| get married or have kids or change careers, etc. And then your
| life will be so different that looking back on a dns kill
| switch button will seem silly.
|
| Until then, just keep pushing the button I guess. We all have
| to make it through somehow
| OliverGilan wrote:
| This is colossally bad advice when literally a fundamental
| part of the playbook to defeating alcoholism is getting it
| out of the house... Getting it out of the house and blocking
| domains are extremely valid tactics for getting over an
| addiction.
| throwawayHN378 wrote:
| The "alcoholism is an incurable disease" trope came from a
| religious organization peddling snake oil. Not the best
| foundation to build your argument on. Studies indicate that
| many people are cured of their alcoholism and addiction.
| Generally through "aging out". Additionally, just like
| alcoholism, the problem is the result not the cause.
| Alcoholics who don't drink also don't run over kids. People
| who don't endlessly scroll don't waste 5 hours a day. It
| doesn't matter how it's achieved
| OneLeggedCat wrote:
| This is terrible advice for people with addiction. No mental
| health doctor would agree with you.
| MandieD wrote:
| Having a kid made my internet addiction 100% worse. When your
| free time only comes in brief, unpredictable snatches, and
| your smartphone is right there in your pocket and can be held
| while rocking a baby who can't quite sleep, guess what
| happens...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Had kids. Changed careers. Moved 2000 miles. Stopped running.
| No cell phone but infinite scroll isn't limited to the
| handheld devices.
|
| Still have a 68k line /etc/hosts from the Steven Black list.
|
| Most alcoholics do need to keep all the liquor out of their
| homes. This is a necessary but insufficient condition for
| many of their recoveries.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| > The problem isn't the availability of the stimulus, it's
| the lack of control over your desire for it
|
| ...
|
| > pushing the button
|
| It's possible you just didn't recognize the way they're
| exercising control over their desire for it. If you're
| framing it in terms of alcoholism--speaking from experience
| here--you don't come up with convenient ways to get away with
| not drinking, just convenient ways to go right on drinking
| even when you know you shouldn't and wish you wouldn't.
| [deleted]
| pjerem wrote:
| Does this works for you ? (Blocking)
|
| I've tried it and even closed all my social media accounts. It
| sort of worked. For social medias... But it changed nothing, I
| found other addictions on the internet. It's just ... the
| smartphone. I blocked a little portion of the infinity that is
| the internet, but my lizard brain is smart enough to know that
| infinite content is still there, more easily accessible than
| letting my mind wandering.
|
| I think I should speak about it to a psychiatrist but I'm not
| even sure it's a topic they can handle nowadays.
| enos_feedler wrote:
| Read Atomic Habits.
| corobo wrote:
| I've not managed it completely yet but something that
| decimated (oo, literal usage) my social usage was to get rid
| of all the apps
|
| The mobile web interface equivalents are usually decent
| enough to sate the addiction but the quirks and oddnesses
| that try to push you to the apps will stop you falling into
| doom scrolling
|
| Also of course when you're up against an algorithm, get rid
| of the data. All the page likes, groups, friend-of-a-friends,
| etc you don't need - unlike. Or go nuclear and create a new
| account
|
| Facebook for example has no content that keeps me coming back
| on my new account -- it even says that I need to add more
| friends to get more content, nothing at all on the home feed.
| I gave it up by accident :)
| swalsh wrote:
| Thats a good point, up until now I've assumed this is an
| issue of willpower. But the app is a consumer too, if I can
| cutoff its food supply, it'll be much weaker.
| shinycode wrote:
| Infinite scrolling feels just like eating only pure sugar.
| It's not quality food but really addictive. To fight this
| addiction physical blocking is one part of the solution. The
| other part is psychological and thus personal. What works for
| me and make me change might not me the same for you. That is
| why reading a book like Atomic Habits might help, but maybe
| you'll need a few others to understand what needs to be
| changed to fight this. For me, one day I tried to remember
| what content I saw and what I got from spending tens of ours
| scrolling. The answer was nothing. I learned nothing and got
| nothing from it. Just like eating pure sugar all evening vs
| going out a bit walking and feeling refreshed or biking or
| whatever. I don't want to be filled with empty stuff anymore.
| I don't want socials to steal hours of sleep anymore. I don't
| want to have the feeling that I'm giving McDonald's every day
| to my brain. I found the ratio to feel satisfied is more like
| 10-5% rather than 80% of my free time on it. I deleted every
| single social app and I never ever missed it. Because they
| provide really nothing for my life and I have so much better
| to do around me or with other sources of content. That's just
| me
| pjerem wrote:
| > The answer was nothing. I learned nothing and got nothing
| from it.
|
| I actually now have the inverse issue : now that I blocked
| "pure sugar content", I consume a lot of more interesting
| content. Like, HN is interesting to read, I have only
| subscriptions I like on YT and I feel like they make me
| learn. I still watch/read a lot of shit but I've also found
| a lot of gems I'm glad I found.
|
| I'll read Atomics Habits since a lot of people recommended
| it to me.
| shinycode wrote:
| Then it's a matter of equilibrium I guess. Even if you
| love biking it's harder to do it safely at night. So we
| << naturally >> wait for sunlight. When things we love
| are accessible at all times and this barrier is removed
| the equilibrium have to be imposed maybe by introducing
| other thing like, maybe, more social interactions,
| talking to people etc. Whatever fits in the cycle to
| maintain an equilibrium.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| What do you use for the button?
| thelittleone wrote:
| This article shows how to modify a red industrial button to
| add USB.
|
| https://bikerglen.com/blog/usb-big-red-button/
| sodality2 wrote:
| A small push button attached to a Raspberry Pi. It runs a
| bash script that sends the network request to my AdGuard Home
| server, adding a list of domains to the blocklist. After two
| hours, it undoes the changes.
|
| I usually review the DNS requests in the two hours after, to
| look for other time-suckers, and have since added every
| single non-productivity-related website to the blocklist.
| Apparently I compulsively check the weather dozens of times
| whenever I can't access my normal procrastination sites.
| codazoda wrote:
| Do you have more info about the button and how that works?
| I'd love to read about it.
|
| I've built a simple slot machine and loaded it with a
| raspberry pi. Now I'm building some rudimentary slot
| software for it, but I also need to wire up the buttons to
| the GPIO pins.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Here's one guide I found: https://raspberrypihq.com/use-
| a-push-button-with-raspberry-p...
| megablast wrote:
| A raspberry pi just for a button??
| dylan604 wrote:
| If it was sitting in drawer not doing anything and now it
| is doing this, then it's still better than being in the
| drawer.
|
| Plus, what else that is small form factor and can execute
| ssh scripts when triggered by a smashable button are
| there?
| tyre wrote:
| Reminds me of this Dash buttons Amazon was pushing a
| while back.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've seen some people have actually repurposed those
| useless things to something actually useful. I never did
| stop to read up on how/what they did to repurpose, just
| filed it away as one of those things that could/might be
| interesting to look into when my long list of other
| interesting things gets low.
| piceas wrote:
| I leave the pi on in the drawer to control/use IKEA
| tradfri buttons via their gateway.
|
| A giant plush enter key allows for smashing as needed.
|
| https://flyingtiger.com/products/enter-key-3015609
| Goety wrote:
| I'd buy it
| lrvick wrote:
| I just ditched my smartphone entirely. Humanity survived until
| the 00s without them. You can too.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I mean you can doom scroll on a desktop or laptop machine as
| well.
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| Interestingly I find that while you can doom scroll on a
| laptop for me it doesn't "work". Perhaps because my laptop
| is work territory (both actual work and hobby) so I
| automatically don't doom scroll there or maybe it's just
| that lots of content is optimised for mobile and the
| experience is "better".
| carlmr wrote:
| Also, I always carry my phone, I don't carry my laptop
| most of the time. Pulling out your non-work laptop in a
| boring meeting is also something you don't do.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I pretty much never use a phone, and all my screen time
| is a computer.
|
| How do you even mindlessly watch youtube vid after
| youtube vid on such a tiny screen?
| johndevor wrote:
| https://www.thelightphone.com/
| vanviegen wrote:
| And yet, here you are... ;-)
| mastazi wrote:
| Same here. I have an iPhone that I take with me maybe once a
| week, e.g. if I know I will need to call an Uber.
|
| Exploring the option of getting a feature phone but do I
| really need to carry it?
|
| I also tried a Linux phone but it wasn't very good in terms
| of usability and it soon became unusable due to hardware
| failure.
| phs318u wrote:
| Out of interest, which Linux phone did you try?
| mastazi wrote:
| PinePhone Convergence edition, I had an OK experience
| with Mobian but quite a bad experience with the default
| distro.
|
| The HW failure was largely my fault because I didn't take
| good care of it.
|
| The new PinePhone Pro looks very promising, looks like it
| can be a daily driver and I would like to try it out as
| soon as Mobian runs on it.
|
| Edit: I'm not clear if Mobian runs on PinePhone Pro
| already? Looking at this link it seems it does
| https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2021/12/28/pinephone-pro/
| but looking here, it seems we're not quite there yet: htt
| ps://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PinePhone_Pro_Software_Releases
| ...
| yayr wrote:
| most tools are multi-use. A smart phone is currently the best
| "convenient world remote control" you can have. It is also
| the best "distraction toy" you can have...
|
| ...self-discipline does not come easy, especially if supply
| and demand are strongly in favor of distraction...
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| I got the new iPhone SE (small screen) in 2020 so I limit my
| screen time. It has worked but not as well as I'd hoped for..
| maybe I need to go back to my razr.
| farmerstan wrote:
| Humanity survived without winter jackets until the Ice Age.
| Then all of humanity would have gone extinct without them.
| dbalatero wrote:
| Not sure that's the same thing.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah but there is nothing on social media that you actually
| need to survive.
| tayo42 wrote:
| phones are pretty convenient though. even just having a
| camera and gps in one small device is nice.
| beebeepka wrote:
| For day to day activities? No, you probably don't need
| GPS and camera.
|
| I gave up my smartphone a decade ago. It's only
| "inconvenient" when people expect me to have internet in
| my pocket.
| sushid wrote:
| I don't _need_ it but using a smartphone instead of
| navigating via a physical map and taking photos of
| memorable events throughout the day sure is nice.
| xxs wrote:
| The car has a map + navigation already, and I care very
| little about documenting events... although I do use the
| phone during tear downs for the purpose. Still the prime
| use of the (my) phone is actual phone calls.
| chrismcb wrote:
| There are a lot of tools on life, that make it more
| convenient, that aren't required to survive. Like a
| hammer for example.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Smartphones aren't only for social media.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Would you mind kindly linking to or detailing how someone might
| set up such a setup?
| sodality2 wrote:
| Essentially just an AdGuard Home installation on my VPS. I
| then added all the URLs and blocked them all in the web
| interface, and sniffed the network request in the browser
| console. Then, I unblocked them. For each one of these, I
| saved the corresponding "copy as CURL" command. When the
| button is pressed, the "blocked" command is called; after
| waiting 7200 seconds, the "unblock" command is called.
| BareNakedCoder wrote:
| My method is super simple but does require a wee bit of self
| discipline. I "HALT!". I even have "HALT!" written on a post-it
| on my monitor. Whenever I notice that my (valuable) attention
| is wandering, I yell "HALT!" in my head or out loud (depending
| who is nearby). This makes me snap out of it, to break the
| pattern. Ideally, I return to what I should be doing but very
| often I can only do the minimum. The minimum being sitting
| there doing nothing, thinking of nothing (except the thing I
| should be doing), until I get bored and want to do something
| ... but only allowing myself to do what I should be doing
| otherwise I must continue to sit doing nothing (being halted).
| It's often too hard to halt AND switch do what I should be
| doing, so this method breaks it into two steps. Halting alone
| is much easier to force myself to do since doing nothing is
| easy. Once in halt-state, the only possible exit is to the
| proper do-state.
|
| Oh, I just noticed something. HALT!
| anubiskhan wrote:
| Reminds me of Always Sunny, "Sickness, BEGONE!!"
| esperent wrote:
| I have something similar except that it's permanent and only in
| software (although I love the idea of a red button). I use
| NextDNS with a huge list of blocked websites. I set NextDNS as
| my dns server on windows and android so they're blocked on my
| laptop and phone.
|
| To use one, I have to go to next dns and enable it, then when
| I'm finished I disable it again. I find this is mostly enough
| to make my usage mindful.
| askura wrote:
| I used to scoff at things like Windscribe's ROBERT which does
| similar things for social sites, clickbait, gambling sites,
| porn etc...
|
| Thinking it's more like a child blocker. But I've had battles
| with addiction and issues myself with keeping focused. Being
| able to have some kind of actual switch for what I can access
| often acts as a mental toggle. It changes my mode so to speak
| and I end up getting more done.
|
| There's tons of cool free filters or blockers etc but I love
| your method. A physical button could be great for that mental
| switch aspect I was talking about.
| koide wrote:
| That was going to be my question, don't you just distract
| yourself more instead with other, non digital, things?
| mikeomoto wrote:
| > I'm still young so maybe my mind hasn't matured enough to
| where I can combat this well.
|
| I'm not sure this changes as you age, it certainly hasn't for
| me. :(
| askura wrote:
| About to turn 34 and still with the same poor mental focusing
| of 14 year old me :/
| Tistron wrote:
| I'm 40, so when I was a teenager the internet did not have
| so much different distractions. My mind was great at
| focusing. I'd read books, cover to cover, and tune out
| everything else. I'd sit hours and hours straight and make
| websites for IE4. today I struggle to read a chapter in a
| book without getting distracted. It's pretty disheartening
| to notice. I'm much better at other things, but I wish I
| could still read like I used to. I think the worst ones for
| me right now are YouTube and hacker news. I'll have a look
| at the procrastination settings here, but for some &PS@PS#
| reason my phone won't uninstall YouTube.
| pjerem wrote:
| > I think the worst ones for me right now are YouTube and
| hacker news.
|
| Same thing.
|
| If anything, any strategy I tried just made me replace
| awful content with more quality content.
|
| But you can still be addicted to "good" content. And it's
| harder to block because the FOMO is harder with sites
| like HN and interesting YouTube content.
| wmitty wrote:
| My (crude) version of the same thing requires that I go 1000
| meters from my house to press the button to enable the DNS for
| another 30 min of browsing (button is on a custom phone app,
| distance measured using phone GPS).
|
| One feature that I want to implement is to have the system
| randomly enable for 10 minutes - and to signal this by changing
| the color of light from a desk lamp (Phillips Hue). The idea is
| that when this happens, I would drop what I was doing and leap
| for my phone to get some bonus browsing in. Me being controlled
| by the system like this might be fun?, or at least illustrate
| something?
| ralls_ebfe wrote:
| I just realized: you did not actually hide some mysterious,
| physical button somewhere 1000m from your home.
| hinkley wrote:
| Related to this but somewhat tangentially, I've been trying
| to figure out how I could programmatically determine if I
| look "busy" and engage Do Not Disturb for a period of time
| (roughly pomodoro interval) so that emails and alerts can't
| distract me. The problem is that when I'm doing rudimentary
| code my interactions can be rather intense and obvious, but
| the more technical the problem the more I slow down, mulling
| things over in my head or wondering why we wrote code this
| bad and why it hasn't broken before. I can be pretty deep in
| thought at this point and not showing my tools much to go off
| of.
|
| In the end I think just making a pomodoro tool that
| automatically disables alerts until break is by far a simpler
| and more accurate prospect.
| sourishkrout wrote:
| I have tried a number of similar approaches (pomodoro etc)
| before which let us to create an extension to auto-toggle
| notifs when you focus on coding. Works for VS Code so far.
| Check out https://stateful.com/@sourishkrout & https://mark
| etplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=stateful.... If
| you're on VS Code I'd love to hear what you think.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Before I read "custom phone app", I was imagining a
| mysterious physical red button somewhere up a telephone pole
| you had to climb, which through some abuse-of-job-privileges-
| or-connections you had wired directly into the telephony
| wires leading into your house. Or perhaps a comically large
| high-voltage pull switch labelled "reddit" which sparks a bit
| for no reason. Maybe a series of such pull switches, one for
| every major distracting website.
|
| I wish you hadn't clarified.
| lopis wrote:
| That would have been so much better. It would force OP to
| run back to maximize his browsing time, thus forcing them
| to exercise a bit.
| dsign wrote:
| Just coming here down to note that despite, or because the
| lizard part, our brains are wonderful creation machines.
| All the comments up to this parent, including the
| mysterious physical red button, are great.
|
| On my part, I think the trick is being selective with the
| addictions we indulge in. Exercise, reading, having sex,
| cooking, going on walks, writing, 3D modelling. A good mix
| of addictions is great in life!
| jdironman wrote:
| Seems like it would be ineffective while traveling. Unless
| you could configure it to be 1000 meters from current
| location! I'm interested in doing something like this. I've
| been playing way too much Elden Ring this week and I'd like
| to cut back in general on consumption of anything.
| manholio wrote:
| People who still build magical red buttons and DNS blockers
| aren't that far gone, they can still build stuff. Most of us
| are completely paralized on our couches, drooling at the
| telescreen while a steady dose of soma is administered.
| Writing a comment is a chore and building a custom app is a
| distant dream project. We have plenty of daydreams, but are
| no longer capable of executing them.
| rkhassen9 wrote:
| Wmitty I've dreamed of this. Any chance you want to sell the
| setup?
| Aeolun wrote:
| How do you stop yourself from just grabbing your phone and 5G?
| sodality2 wrote:
| The DNS server is set in my phone as well (still works over
| data). But even if it wasn't, I live in a third-world country
| that still has crude data caps (the United States) so
| consuming video would probably quickly approach it.
| tertius wrote:
| How are you setting DNS in your phone?
| cannonpalms wrote:
| Typical DNS-level blocking software like pihole also
| functions as a DHCP server, allowing all devices on the
| network to share the DNS settings with no additional
| configuration necessary.
| sodality2 wrote:
| WiFi settings or DNS over HTTPS settings on Android 9. (I
| had to forget my network and reconnect with static
| instead of DHCP to manually set a DNS IP)
| [deleted]
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The Freedom app has similar options where you can disable
| turning it off during a session or even disable Task Manager /
| Activity Monitor while it's active too.
|
| https://freedom.to/
|
| Anything that pisses me off works. Usually that's fully logging
| out of an app in a browser and not using any mobile apps.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| I eventually found the pricing section...the green bit at the
| bottom, after 'try for free', behind 'freedom premium'.
| Thanks to my off button (and several comments herein), i now
| so much more appreciate how my off button is free. As in cost
| to use, and availability.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That's awesome. I have an extra zigbee scene button, maybe
| that's what I should use it for. To block HN when I ought to be
| working.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| My /etc/hosts file on the machine I work on all day blocks 68k
| hosts 24/7. No social media sites at all except Twitter. No
| ads.
|
| Meanwhile, the Leechblock browser add-on stops me from using
| the few things I do otherwise (bits of Reddit, HN) allow
| between 09:00 and 17:00 which is not perfect but it's a start.
| Except ... I disable it a lot :(
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Except ... I disable it a lot :( _
|
| Not sure if you know, but there are advanced options to put
| various roadblocks in your way, such as disabling access to
| the options menu, or disabling access to the add-ons menu
| entirely.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| What's the performance impact of such a large hosts file ?
| xxs wrote:
| You gain performance by blocking thousands of sockets
| opened, data transferred and processed.
|
| Host lookup should be O(1) and entirely in memory, so I see
| zero issue perf. wise to begin with.
| abvdj2 wrote:
| would you share the hosts file by any chance? 68k seems
| better than what I have
| djKianoosh wrote:
| it's probably something like this:
| https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
| ratww wrote:
| Not OP but I can recommend those also for blocking social
| networks: https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/tree/master
| /corporatio...
| angusturner wrote:
| This is awesome. I use the "self control" app for Mac OS X,
| which is pretty effective, but obviously doesn't stop me using
| my phone.
|
| Would be interested to learn more about this approach.
| blindmute wrote:
| What would be cool is to flip it. Press the button to get a few
| minutes of browsing allowed. Then, make the button deliver an
| electric shock upon being pressed. I bet you'd soon stop
| pressing it
| corobo wrote:
| I keep setting things like this up (Current: Pi-hole) but my
| problem is I break through it virtually instantly because I'm
| the one that set it up (Current bypass: Log in to pihole,
| disable)
|
| Anyone know of a way that could thwart someone who's ~20 years
| in to computing? Doesn't have to be clever, just needs to be
| enough of a road block to not be worth the effort bypassing. If
| there's an exploit past the roadblock I'll find it haha
|
| "Just be more disciplined", etc: I know but it turns out we're
| fighting ADHD here, working on that front separately
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| Oh you evil genius. I'm stealing this idea.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Please do! I use AdGuard Home [0] and the built-in mechanism
| for "blocked services".
|
| [0]: https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
| kempbellt wrote:
| It isn't the push-button setup that you've built, but
| PiHole is a decent option for this purpose as well.
|
| Occasionally I add social media sites (including HN) to the
| block list.
|
| It's very easy to bypass when I really want/need to, but it
| does cut down the more unconscious " _CMD + T_ - news
| /redd/face - _enter_ " moments that happen when I'm bored.
|
| Prevents the occasional unnecessary mindless scroll by
| creating a couple extra steps.
| sodality2 wrote:
| That's exactly right - It's always good to put roadblocks
| and increase resistance to bad habits, and take away
| roadblocks and decrease resistance to good habits. It
| works better for me than cold turkey.
| janmarsal wrote:
| Thankfully my monkey brain is stronger than my lizard brain when
| it comes to things like infinite scroll, modals and other
| horrible UI features that nobody in their right mind should add
| to any website. Even just a couple of minutes of twitter usage
| makes me rage quit the whole website. Why do you pause my video
| when I scroll down it's just a politician speaking I don't need
| to see it only listen WHY YOU DO THIS?
|
| I'm also one of those people who randomly clicks and "paints" the
| text on every website I use. On Reddit this means that I manage
| to close the thread by accident all the time because someone
| thought it would be a good idea to open the threads in a modal
| that closes when you click outside of it. Oh and once I tried to
| use Quora. It asked me to log in before I even knew what kind of
| a website it is. Now I hate Quora with a passion even though I'm
| not even sure what kind of a website it is exactly. I can only
| imagine it's full of modals, infinite scroll and other features
| that makes my skin go green and pants purple.
|
| So I only end up getting addicted to websites that are simple and
| old fashioned enough like HN and wikipedia (as long as I don't
| click a cursed en.m.wikipedia link by accident). Btw, on youtube
| each time I click subscriptions it defaults back to the grid
| view. I want a list. Monkey wants list! YOUTUBE
| AAAAAAARHGFHGHGHFFG-
| firasd wrote:
| Yeah this happens to me on Reddit as well. Twitter used to be
| like this too where a tweet opened like a "lightbox" but a
| couple years ago they changed it so that clicking a tweet goes
| to a page with the individual tweet. Generally in UX I like to
| avoid this concept of dialog boxes, modals etc but everyone
| ends up re-learning that after naively implementing things in
| this "A screen pops up over another screen" manner
| ar_lan wrote:
| > I'm also one of those people who randomly clicks and "paints"
| the text on every website I use.
|
| My old mentor used to do this too, and I really never
| understood why. Since then, I have seen others do it too,
| occasionally. It looked more like a fidget than anything
| helpful. I once tried it just to see if this was some hidden
| technique I was missing out on, but I didn't notice anything
| particularly helpful - it didn't help me keep focused on the
| text or anything, and it distracted me personally.
|
| I'm very curious what the benefit is, or at least the reason?
| From an apparent lizard brain :)
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| on wide pages it helps my eyes find the next line. It's not
| really something I do conciously though and I'm barely aware
| that I am doing it.
| solarmist wrote:
| I do it when I'm reading something, but my attention isn't
| fully (or is difficult and requires back and forth with
| references) on it to mark either the paragraph I'm on or the
| sentence I just finished reading.
| andrepd wrote:
| Re twitter and reddit and YouTube: old.reddit.com and nitter.eu
| and newpipe/invidious respectively.
|
| All these projects show we're patently far from the only ones
| who get driven up the fucking wall by absolutely brain-dead
| design being pushed over the user's wishes.
| demindiro wrote:
| With LibRedirect[1] you automatically get redirected from
| twitter et al. to these instances.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/libredirect/LibRedirect
| [deleted]
| aeno wrote:
| completely off topic, but you're not Jan Marsalek[0] by any
| chance? the Wirecard criminal that is wanted by Interpol? :)
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Marsalek
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| > Why do you pause my video when I scroll down it's just a
| politician speaking I don't need to see it only listen WHY YOU
| DO THIS?
|
| So you think the standard should be to keep a video playing
| even if one's scrolled past it? Are you insane?
| corobo wrote:
| Why decide? Gimme a toggle in the settings to pause or throw
| it into the corner when I scroll past a video I've pressed
| play on
|
| Personally I prefer it to pause, but I don't really watch
| many videos on Twitter
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The only insane thing is to have an algorithm guess whether I
| want to watch the video or not, instead of just letting me
| decide with a single damn click.
|
| Autoplaying videos that stop playing after scrolling is one
| of the worst UX crimes in history of UX. At the same time in
| 2022 I still cannot prevent "autoplay" of animated gifs that
| bombard my senses in every feed unless I outright block
| literally everything other than text.
|
| And the sad thing is that software quality in general is most
| likely just as bad, only not as visible.
| phit_ wrote:
| not op, but yes when I actively unmuted it, it should keep
| playing
| shakna wrote:
| There's a bit more subtlety and tradeoff here.
|
| For example, I doubt most people watching a video on YouTube
| would like the video to stop playing when they scroll down.
| If they wanted to pause it, they'd pause it. They also
| probably don't want the video to transition to the next,
| whilst they're reading threads.
|
| If you're in an infinite loop stream however, you do probably
| want it to pause or stop, without intervention, as you've
| scrolled away and dismissed the video.
|
| However - you may not want that to happen whilst you're still
| in-thread with the video. If you're looking at comments on
| the video, you probably still want it to continue. But if you
| reach the bottom of the thread, you probably don't want to
| have it pause and have to find the start of the thread to
| continue playing it, just because you scrolled an inch too
| far.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| That's fair, as always context matters. But I feel it was
| implied the context of our discussion was infinite scroll
| pages like twitter (he specifically mentioned that),
| tiktok, instagram etc.
| shakna wrote:
| That's true - which is why I spent the majority of the
| comment speaking about a situation in an infinite scroll
| where you do not want the video to automatically pause.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| This is something I also noticed a lot and find it equally
| infuriating. I can only guess why things are like this: you and
| most users on HN have at least a rudimentary understanding,
| often an expert understanding, of how a browser works under the
| hood. You know what a server is, what HTML is, what a browser
| history is, how cookies work, etc. But some manager wants to
| tap into the huge market of technically illiterate people who
| don't even know what a browser is, for whom a smart phone is
| nothing less than black magic. The manager tells his devs to
| just "make it work" for the most challenged user, to abstract
| away all these nuances of how a browser works. They use test
| groups to find out how my grandma expects a website to work and
| they basically make a smart phone converge towards one of those
| gizmos you saw on Star Trek, and then you get something like
| the Twitter interface.
| brimble wrote:
| > The manager tells his devs to just "make it work" for the
| most challenged user, to abstract away all these nuances of
| how a browser works. They use test groups to find out how my
| grandma expects a website to work and they basically make a
| smart phone converge towards one of those gizmos you saw on
| Star Trek, and then you get something like the Twitter
| interface.
|
| Nooooo they do not do this. If they did, modern UIs wouldn't
| confuse my elderly parents _much worse_ than old ones did.
|
| Dear all tech companies (but looking at you, Google, since
| they won't stop buying cheap Android phones): every time you
| decide to have some full-screen horseshit notification pop up
| on an action, instead of doing the usual thing (say, a "hey,
| update this for new stuff!" thing) I get a fucking phone call
| to help "fix it". Goddamn stop it, the rest of us hate that
| too (my intent was to open the app to do something, so _don
| 't get in my way_) but it's usability poison for the olds.
|
| That includes those new tabs in Firefox every time there's an
| update. It's confusing. Stop it. Oh, and FF, bring back
| normal-ass menus, because my parents (unfortunately) use
| Windows. Browsers have proven Apple right all along with
| forcing the top-of-screen "file, edit, view..." menu, since
| apparently even major vendors can't be trusted to do the sane
| thing with those instead of cramming it all in some
| mysterious kitchen-sink button-opened dropdown.
| mikewhy wrote:
| > > modals and other horrible UI features
|
| > and most users on HN have at least a rudimentary
| understanding, often an expert understanding, of how a
| browser works under the hood
|
| Y'all, with your expert knowledge, know there's a dialog
| element in HTML, right?
| danuker wrote:
| > something like the Twitter interface.
|
| Good. The fact that they alienate power users means the
| platform will not be preferred by power users, and most of
| the content on it will have dubious value.
|
| I am thankful to HN's existence for this reason. It is among
| the last outlets where I can get quality content.
| oblio wrote:
| > Good. The fact that they alienate power users means the
| platform will not be preferred by power users, and most of
| the content on it will have dubious value.
|
| It doesn't work like that. Stratechery explains why.
| Aggregators aggregate users and even power users like to
| talk to/be listened to by a lot of people.
|
| So Twitter and Youtube and the like don't even need to
| target power users, in general. They need to target the
| greater population, and once that population is captive, if
| you want to have any kind of audience as a publisher,
| you're wrangled to where the users are, you're captive,
| too.
|
| Apple does the same thing with devs. They primarily target
| not super sophisticated middle to upper class users with
| decent disposable incomes. Since they "own" a huge amount
| of these users, developers have to build applications for
| them if they want to make money. And then developers are
| second class citizens on Apple platforms. Apple removes an
| API overnight? Better get cracking to fix your app ASAP.
| Apple doesn't support modern CI/CD platforms? Have Amazon
| stack up consumer desktops in a warehouse to kind of work
| around that.
| danuker wrote:
| > Stratechery explains why.
|
| I have experienced it myself, and anyone else can
| theorize all they want, but they can't invalidate my
| experience.
|
| As an example, I can no longer use YouTube for tutorials,
| because they have no dislike signal visible to me, and as
| such, I can't judge whether they are worth watching.
|
| I can not stand Reddit's new UI. But even with the old
| UI, the massive amount of users attract a lot of heavy-
| handed moderation, which also turn me off. I use it for
| "entertainment" and not "research" or "speech".
|
| Even though HN has much fewer users, it is among the few
| platforms where I can use it for real speech, like deep
| insight.
|
| Many platforms have such a low signal-to-noise ratio that
| I am wasting my time on them, and don't find them useful
| for neither entertainment nor speech. I don't care what
| Stratechery says I like, when clearly I know myself
| better.
| jxramos wrote:
| So true, 100% on the tutorial videos. I found myself
| watching this super basic tutorial video the other day
| that had a lot of polish and shine but lacked a huge
| amount of substance. I wondered how such videos would
| operate if the downvotes were still visible. Yes
| downvotes played a strong role in signaling tutorial
| quality.
| DaftDank wrote:
| > I am thankful to HN's existence for this reason. It is
| among the last outlets where I can get quality content.
|
| Hopefully this doesn't make me some kind of elitist or
| something, but I specifically never link to Hacker News or
| mention it on my social media accounts because I don't want
| HN to become "watered down" like so many previously high-
| value content sites/forums have been over the decades. I'll
| just share the linked article if I want to share something
| I found here.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Oh and once I tried to use Quora. It asked me to log in before
| I even knew what kind of a website it is. Now I hate Quora with
| a passion even though I'm not even sure what kind of a website
| it is exactly."
|
| Quora used to be good. A place where you can ask any question
| and if it was interesting enough, interesting people answer.
| Like a good question about wikipedia, made Jimmy Wales answer
| directly.
|
| But over time it all became very generic and force login to
| read anything, made me not visit at all anymore.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > I'm also one of those people who randomly clicks and "paints"
| the text on every website I use. On Reddit this means that I
| manage to close the thread by accident all the time because
| someone thought it would be a good idea to open the threads in
| a modal that closes when you click outside of it.
|
| I thought I was the only one with this habit hah!
|
| IMHO this "close modal when clicking outside of it" is a UX
| pattern you need to be careful with in general, because it's
| easy to "miss" a click and accidentally close something, even
| without this habit. It's okay for some things that are truly
| temporary (i.e. delete confirmation dialogs and the like), but
| clearly not everything.
|
| But hey, old.reddit.com still works, and is mostly okay.
|
| > I don't click a cursed en.m.wikipedia link by accident
|
| I got this extension to automatically redirect them:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ -
| also useful for some other things like redirecting Reddit to
| old.reddit.com, and PostgreSQL documentation links to /current/
| rather than /9.4/ and such which still frequently show up in
| search results.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > I thought I was the only one with this habit hah!
|
| Nope. I think I would gladly institute capital punishment for
| people who institute pop-ups on highlighted text. "Oooh, you
| highlighted a passage of text, would you like to tweet it
| (with a link to source and user tracked)?"
|
| No. I was reading that. ** off.
|
| Outlook.com is particularly as depending on my random clicks
| I can end up with "new email + quote" or "new _Note_ " or
| some other thing.
|
| Some things I've managed to murder with adblock rules but
| really I'd just like my browser to not show the relevant
| triggers.
| ratww wrote:
| I also thought I was the only one. To be fair, my text-
| painting is half readability enhancement and half
| fidgeting. I am kind of annoying in pair programming
| sessions.
| Ntrails wrote:
| I find it really hard to read large sections of text on a
| screen without the highlighted text play that somehow
| anchors my view (this is a largely subconscious process I
| think).
|
| But yeah, my wife will go batshit when trying to read the
| same thing over my shoulder. "Just stop, I can't read
| when you do that"
| markussss wrote:
| GitLab's diff or Code Review has an extremely annoying
| feature for people who fidget with text, especially when
| _dragging_ text.
|
| In addition to highlighting and "painting" the text, I
| often click and drag the highlighted text around. If some
| text is dragged onto the code view in Firefox, the dropped
| text seems to be treated like URLs, and opened either in
| new tabs or in the current tab.
|
| https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
| org/gitlab/uploads/666d09080e20ea8...
| efreak wrote:
| If gitlab allows uploads by dropping files outside of the
| textarea, it might be a bug related to that (either in
| the browser or more likely in gitlab). This is standard
| for dragging urls or files into the browser from outside
| when the website isn't a drop target, afaik. You might be
| able to write a user script to disable it.
|
| Alternatively, if you feel like rebuilding Firefox
| yourself, it looks like nsBaseDragService.cpp _might_
| help you with preventing stuff from being dropped
| anywhere; I haven't read the whole file, but going by the
| name, overriding aCanDrop and mCanDrop to false might
| help. See lines 62, 84, 92. This _might_ allow you to
| continue dragging stuff around but disable dropping
| stuff.
|
| [1]: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-
| central/source/widget/nsBaseDr...
| core-utility wrote:
| The "New Email + Quote" thing gets me frequently, the
| quoted text below will just be some random section of text
| and I have to go back, deselect the text, and start a new
| email.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| I "paint" text as well.
| imglorp wrote:
| Sometimes I need to zoom and paint to improve the contrast
| of something. Even on HN for downvoted things, sometimes
| that helps.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I'm 90% sure I'll be done with Reddit if they ditch old view.
| It's honestly that integral for me lol
| Root_Denied wrote:
| The old.reddit redirect and RES are really the only reason
| I've continued to use the site at all.
|
| With a well curated selection of subreddits (and removal of
| a lot of the "default" ones) it's actually really good. My
| brain naturally starts going "these links aren't really
| interesting anymore" after 100-200 links, and I task switch
| as a result.
| srik wrote:
| I share your affinity to the older reddit ui but why bother
| using an addon for redirecting when you can opt out of the
| redesign in settings instead.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| This way I don't need to sign in or remember cookies.
| SilasX wrote:
| Because a) they randomly toggle your setting back, and
| don't respect it at all on mobile, and b) features are
| slowly breaking on the old UI as well: gallery links not
| working, the "report" button taking seconds to load and
| then having a modal that breaks interoperability and
| hijacks Esc.
| efreak wrote:
| > hijacks Esc
|
| I hate squarespace with a passion for this. I'll be
| loading a forum or other page and hit esc to stop the
| page from loading. It works--but a few seconds later, it
| prompts me to log into the CMS/management.
|
| As far as modals go, I actively want modals to respond to
| esc. I don't want to have to reach for my mouse to close
| a pop-up. Modal popups are the only thing that should
| hijack esc.
| blable2 wrote:
| Explain "Paints" as this primate can't understand.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Selecting the text as if you were going to copy it
| stack_framer wrote:
| Clicking text and moving the cursor for the sole purpose of
| highlighting that text.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > On Reddit this means that I manage to close the thread by
| accident all the time because someone thought it would be a
| good idea to open the threads in a modal that closes when you
| click outside of it.
|
| The whole point of modals is to enable the user to close them
| by clicking outside of them. So this way if you want to show
| new users something like an onboarding tutorial, they can just
| click outside of the modal if they are like "WTF is this??",
| rather than needing to look for the close button. The fact that
| many people abuse them doesn't negate the fact that they are,
| if used correctly, actually a better experience for the user.
| Arrath wrote:
| That may be the point, but it sure is annoying behavior that
| I don't particularly want in this use case!
|
| I'll often click and close out of a thread just by trying to
| get focus back on the window so I can scroll down, and its
| annoying as all hell.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| The way Notion does this is annoying as hell. I am in a data
| entering view and there is no "submit" button??
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's why they want us back in the office. The executives do the
| same thing, so they know.
| corobo wrote:
| > On Reddit this means that I manage to close the thread by
| accident all the time because someone thought it would be a
| good idea to open the threads in a modal that closes when you
| click outside of it
|
| I'm not one of those people who paints but this has got me so
| many times. Honestly I'm not even one of the people that hates
| the redesign (Admittedly because I spend less time there now)
| but that has dinged me so many times. Why is everything a
| modal?
|
| The "This page looks better in the app" message on mobile is a
| well earned diss aimed at their web designers
| amelius wrote:
| It seems your monkey brain is not very happy.
| maydup-nem wrote:
| quora used to ask for login only when you followed a link while
| already on quora (so opening from google search wouldn't prompt
| a login). you could just copypaste url and look at the thread.
| but not anymore, they closed this off since recently. fuck
| them, community-driven websites shouldn't become fenced off
| like that because some lizard brain correlated compulsory login
| with registration count.
|
| +1 on reddit "modal" bs, i don't paint, but simply like to
| click shit from time to time. it's horrible.
|
| +1 on rage quitting bullshit sites out of disgust.
| shakes_mcjunkie wrote:
| The old Reddit design was just so much better. As a long time
| front end dev I know this can be an annoying take. But
| product teams push out so much redesigning that's just
| unnecessary and this happened with Reddit. The official app
| has less functionality and is less intuitive and the new
| website is a garbage fire of pushing you "related content". I
| guess I'm glad that kept old.reddit.com at least.
| traviscj wrote:
| The original seems to have been designed with different
| goals in mind. I have no doubt that the new ux better
| optimized their new goals, I just don't agree that the new
| goals were as useful to me personally.
| exciteabletom wrote:
| You can still work around the Quora BS by appending
| `?share=1` to the URL
| maydup-nem wrote:
| thanks, that's good to know
| pomian wrote:
| On the other hand, why does every shopping, manufacturer, parts
| supplier, etc. Have to paginate everything? That only makes sense
| if you are trying to increase page views with ads. It is
| frustrating to have to click next, re load all the background
| clutter, sometimes every ten items.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I've always wondered if this has something to do with
| instilling a feeling of artificial scarcity.
| sovok_x wrote:
| Or just offload their servers cause infinite scroll makes the
| process of loading additional pages mindlessly faster and
| much less cumbersome.
| heffer wrote:
| Oftentimes it is so that you have to interact with the
| website which subsequently allows the webpage to autoplay
| media with audio or track engagement with a particular piece
| of content.
| ehnto wrote:
| I much prefer pagination, because I can get back to where I
| was. There are technical ways to make infinite scroll deep-
| linkable but I almost never see it in practice.
| sovok_x wrote:
| There are multiple browser extensions for generic infinite
| scroll, like AutoPagerize, AutoPatchWork etc. so...
| hnick wrote:
| It is most likely just a relic from slower internet
| connections. Anyone who was browsing in the early 2000s didn't
| want an unknown number of images downloading all at once,
| especially on a mobile device. It does have little value these
| days but keep in mind some people are still on slow
| connections, and some categories of search results can be quite
| large.
|
| You might as well ask why Google results paginate but you
| probably answered it (ads).
| slig wrote:
| I'd guess because it's a PITA to do infinite scroll "right" and
| make the thing work properly with the back button.
| rg111 wrote:
| 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
| dboreham wrote:
| I've had some success with time blocking (which I usually do by
| Google searching for "30 min timer"). But I'm curious what you
| do about asynchronous interrupts? e.g. you block out your
| morning carefully, then 1h into things a guy you called three
| weeks ago to ask if he would estimate for painting your fence
| shows up and wants to spend 30min looking at the job asking
| questions. Now your time blocks are scattered to the wind. I
| find in my life that interrupts of this nature are quite
| frequent. Almost every day. (and: no you can't ask the painter
| dude to schedule a time next week. He'll never show up).
| rg111 wrote:
| I suggest that you read the related chapter from Cal
| Newport's book. That would be helpful in understanding more
| about timeblocking.
|
| Daytime is the worst time for focused work- in my personal
| experience.
|
| Either go deep into the night or wake up really early.
|
| Or any time when you cannot expect interruption.
|
| Focused work also works best when you have someone looking
| out for you- could be a partner or parents when you are
| young.
|
| I take those responsibilities in the house that have clear,
| regular timings. Even if they are harder.
|
| I combine timeblocking + pomodoro, so I get breaks. I walk,
| drink water. I never read or pick up my smartphone.
|
| Whether you are at work or at home, you have to be vigilant
| about 2-3 hours of focused, isolated work. You have to carve
| the time out. You know better about your situation. So I will
| leave that to you.
|
| Don't do meetings, or open emails, or browse social media in
| this time.
|
| I was never able to go beyond 6 hours of very productive,
| innovative time. That was the peak. The usual looks like
| 1.5-2 hours per day.
|
| It also does not have to be a big chunk. The time can be
| divided into two. But don't do more.
|
| And, I will also state the obvious- no matter how much time
| is gone from your block, do the rest honestly. Be vigilant
| about it. Do not be a time-use purist. That harmed me a lot
| when I was in HS. I would plan to spend 4 hours on something,
| and if one hour were gone, I would do none of the rest 4.
| Don't be like that.
| mariebks wrote:
| Check out the app Sorted on iOS (not sure if on Android). You
| can set all your tasks for the day and all their lengths
| (great for timeblocking), a default buffer between each task,
| and then autoschedule all the tasks throughout the day. If
| one gets interrupted, you can re-schedule them for the rest
| of the day after a certain time.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Infinite scrolls are deeply addictive. The best way I have found
| to combat them is to get busy with a really interesting project
| that I care about.
| sp332 wrote:
| Aza Raskin, who improved and popularized infinite scroll, has
| repeatedly apologized for it. He co-founded the Center for Humane
| Technology, and has a podcast about perverse incentives that
| drive tech companies to make users' lives worse.
| https://www.humanetech.com/podcast
| ehnto wrote:
| I think he can sleep easy that it wasn't entirely his fault. We
| already had infinite scroll before social media, it was
| probably just a matter of time before it made it's way over
| there.
| [deleted]
| ImaCake wrote:
| If you are on iOS you can, and should, use the App Limits
| functionality within Screen Time in settings. It won't solve your
| problems, but it will help nudge you away from doom scrolling.
| resonious wrote:
| 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
| continue to scroll Instagram while cooking. It's very similar to
| how some people can knock down some beers a couple times a month
| socially, but some people end up in a vicious spiral of drinking
| every single night.
| onion2k wrote:
| I will never understand how people moralize behaviours rather
| than outcomes. Drinking every night is fine if you don't do it
| to excess. A beer or two, or a glass of wine with dinner, or a
| nightcap, doesn't hurt anyone. Drinking every night to the
| level where you're damaging your health is a problem.
|
| Having a few beers a couple of times a month is great. Binge
| drinking a couple of times a month to the point where you harm
| yourself or others is a problem.
|
| It doesn't matter how often you do it. It matters what happens
| when you do. The time frame is essentially unrelated.
| f1refly wrote:
| Two beers a day is very, very dangerous according to my
| girlfriend, a social worker.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| All I can say is that mindset is more important than amount
| consumed. Just look at depressed people drinking, a single
| beer already makes the person more likely to become an
| alcoholic. yet two or thee beers every evening wouldn't
| suddenly create an alcoholic out of me.
| onion2k wrote:
| My partner is a therapist and strongly advocates having a
| glass of wine with dinner most nights.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Two drinks each night versus one is quite a difference.
| It's double the amount of alcohol!
|
| Current recommendation from the Netherlands Nutrition
| Centre:
|
| > It is advisable to refrain from drinking alcohol, or to
| consume at most one glass a day. This advice applies
| equally to men and women.
|
| > Moderate consumption of alcohol at one glass a day may
| reduce the chance of getting certain chronic diseases,
| but also raises the chances of getting breast cancer for
| women. Drinking more than one glass a day, is not
| beneficial at all, and has negative effects on health. It
| increases the risks of having a stroke; and getting
| breast, intestinal, or long cancer.
|
| > The potential benefits of alcohol do not outweigh the
| negative effects on your health.1
|
| (Personally, I drink only in the weekends; usually one
| glass, occasionally two. It prevents making a habit out
| of it.)
|
| 1:
| https://www.voedingscentrum.nl/encyclopedie/alcohol.aspx
| onion2k wrote:
| _Two drinks each night versus one is quite a difference.
| It 's double the amount of alcohol!_
|
| 2 bottles of 5% abv beer has a little less alcohol than 1
| normal sized glass of 13% abv red wine.
| MandieD wrote:
| Unless I've made an arithmetic error, those two American-
| sized beers (12oz each, 700ml of beer total) contain 35g
| of alcohol, and the American glass of wine (6oz, or
| 175ml) has 22.75g. Less alcohol than the two beers, but
| still more than most people should have on a daily basis.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| How are you calculating that? _One_ standard 330ml bottle
| of beer at 5% has a little less alcohol than a standard
| pour (150ml) of 13% wine. As soon as you move to a pint
| or 500ml can of beer you go over it. This is why a glass
| of wine and a bottle of beer are taken as roughly equal
| in terms of alcohol content. 330x5% <
| 150x13%
| onion2k wrote:
| A glass of red wine is 250ml.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That would get you exactly three glasses from a bottle.
| That's... not a normal pour of wine in any country.
|
| A standard size bottle of wine (750ml) serves five or six
| glasses, but the hospitality industry usually goes for
| five out of a bottle. 150ml (or 5oz) is what you can
| reasonably expect in restaurants and bars for the average
| glass of wine.
|
| Do you honestly pour a third of a bottle at a time for
| wine?
| k8sToGo wrote:
| First of all, drinking alcohol every day is too much if you
| count your alcohol units.
|
| Second, first you start with a drink every week, then every
| day, then every hour,... that is how you develop your
| addiction.
|
| Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People who
| are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and
| complete abstinence is the way to go.
| onion2k wrote:
| _first you start with a drink every week, then every day,
| then every hour,..._
|
| Unless you don't. I've had a glass of wine with dinner
| several nights a week for the past 20 years, and I haven't
| progressed to drinking during the day.
|
| People use alcohol as a form of self-medication when they
| have other problems. If you don't have the other problems
| then limited regular alcohol consumption is probably fine
| (I'm not a doctor so I can't say it actually is.)
| k8sToGo wrote:
| I agree with you. I do not have that problem either. But
| it is well known that some people are more prone to
| addiction than others. So general arguments like "one or
| two beers every day" is fine, are a bit dangerous.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > Third, what you suggest is moderation drinking. People
| who are addicted to alcohol argue that it does not work and
| complete abstinence is the way to go.
|
| And people who are _not_ addicted to alcohol argue that
| this approach does work for us with no effort, and that
| blanket advocacy for complete abstinence is moralising
| based on behaviours rather than outcomes.
|
| Some people have an innate risk of alcohol addiction and
| should absolutely practice complete abstinence. Some people
| are at a risk of alcohol addiction due to their personal
| circumstances and the culture they live in and, while
| abstinence is not the only solution, it's probably the only
| feasible one. Some people have a tendency overdrink on
| occasion due to their personalities and social lifestyles,
| but they do not need complete abstinence to keep this under
| control and can do with intentional moderation. Some people
| enjoy social drinking and even getting a bit tipsy
| sometimes, but outright drunkenness feels so terrible for
| us that we are at no risk of alcohol addiction and see no
| point in practising complete abstinence ourselves.
|
| Everybody is different.
| irjustin wrote:
| > video games and social media are in the same class as drugs
| and alcohol.
|
| Disagreed - one key aspect of the latter is physical dependance
| where withdraws are potentially life threatening.
|
| It's similar sledge hammer approach to putting weed on class 1
| or treating all wrong doings as 'sin'.
|
| They are not the same things, should not be thought as the same
| nor treated the same.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| I mean things can be addictive. I used to smoke hella weed
| and was dependent on it to function. Basically I was addicted
| to wake and bake and just be high all day. I was still
| "functional" to others but to myself I was miserable and a
| husk. I was going to the dispensary every couple days and
| spending forty bucks. I'm not saying weed is bad, but like
| anything else moderation and control are required. Now I just
| smoke on very special occasions like my bday or getting a
| promotion/raise. But let's be real while accepting that some
| people (like me) can get addicted to some things.
|
| I never got hooked on nicotine or alcohol. Nor on video
| games. But I'm sure some people do get sucked in and feel
| like crap.
| snek_case wrote:
| The concept of physical vs psychological dependence is kind
| of outdated, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EaiP31qWf0
|
| I don't see anything wrong with talking about a video game or
| social media addiction. Of course it's nowhere near the same
| level of danger as a heroin addiction, but if it's counter-
| productive and there's the same kinds of behaviors involved,
| it can be a useful model.
|
| Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is a
| drug. It's not expensive, and it's not known for tearing
| families apart, but it builds a tolerance, it produces a
| withdrawal, and people will change their behavior to get
| access to more coffee, may become aggressive when they can't
| get access to it, etc.
|
| If you think that you waste too much time on social media,
| then just like with drug addiction, there's a question of
| first realizing/accepting that this is even a problem at all.
| Then, once you've realized that there's a problem, you might
| want to think about coping strategies, replacing social media
| with other activities, developing healthier habits, etc. And
| just like with a drug addiction, you might find quitting cold
| turkey difficult.
| irjustin wrote:
| > physical vs psychological dependence is kind of outdated
|
| I wouldn't say outdated, but I do agree it is 100% up for
| debate.
|
| Kurzgesagt did a really similar video[0] on addiction, but
| the basically walked it back from such a hard line stance
| in a correction/update video[1]. It's not so easy to tease
| apart the social vs the physical vs the pure mental.
|
| > Just the same, you can be addicted to coffee. Caffeine is
| a drug.
|
| Right, I think you're agreeing with me. That they have
| similar aspects, but to treat them the same - like putting
| caffine on Class 1 - would be insane.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdJAQZxJ6vY [1]
| https://youtu.be/JtUAAXe_0VI?t=224
| snek_case wrote:
| I'm assuming you mean schedule 1. Nobody is suggesting
| that coffee should be placed in that category.
|
| I don't think there's a problem in society with people
| equating coffee or videogames with highly addictive
| drugs. It's more the opposite. People don't realize that
| addiction is something that could happen to them, or that
| they have an addiction to something. Alcoholics and drug
| addicts often live in denial, even when it has really
| damaging consequences in their life. So, if someone is
| addicted to something that's not widely considered
| addictive, it's even easier to deny that this is even a
| problem.
|
| When the idea of an addiction to porn or videogames is
| brought up in an online discussion thread, people are
| quick to dismiss that this even is a real problem.
| Consider though that gambling addiction is very much
| real, and a lot of gambling takes places with machines
| that are effectively simple videogames. Addiction to
| video games isn't as devastating, because you're not
| losing huge sums of money, just time, but presumably, the
| addictive mechanism is more or less the same.
| Calavar wrote:
| > The concept of physical vs psychological dependence is
| kind of outdated, see:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EaiP31qWf0
|
| You are conflating two terms here. Addiction (which is what
| the video is talking about here) is a set of behavioral
| patterns. I agree that the line between psychological and
| physiological in addiction is blurry. But addiction is not
| the same as dependence, which is about tolerance and
| withdrawal and is purely a physical phenomenon.
|
| To give some examples, when a person misses work because
| they are drunk or when they spend their rent money on
| heroin, that is addiction. When a person has seizures
| because they haven't had a drink in two days, that's
| dependence.
|
| I agree with GP, video games may be addictive but there is
| no physical dependence like there is with alcohol or, as
| you pointed out, even caffeine.
| stevage wrote:
| What about the way that people who scroll a lot lose
| their attention span, can't sit still without stimulation
| etc? Maybe dependence isn't exactly the same thing, but
| there is some kind of physical change happening in the
| brain, no?
| esperent wrote:
| Very few drugs have life threatening withdrawal symptoms.
|
| Alcohol does but you have to abuse it to an extreme degree to
| reach that level. Most people with issues around alcohol are
| a huge distance away from getting dangerous withdrawal
| symptoms.
| thfuran wrote:
| >one key aspect of the latter is physical dependance where
| withdraws are potentially life threatening.
|
| No, it isn't. Only a pretty small fraction of drugs that can
| have physical symptoms of withdrawal have potentially life
| threatening withdrawal.
| weq wrote:
| Are you kidding me? Have you not seen people die from
| selfies?
|
| Anyone can become addicted to anything and suffer the same
| consequences peddled by religion for "drugs". There is no
| argument against this, humans can programme themselves just
| as opiates, pathways are pathways.
|
| My ex-wife was a Doctor with PTSD from being raped (she was
| raped by a doctor who was drunk, then raped by a physcologist
| who treated her, got her pregnant, then forced her to give up
| her kid) (med school, what a cesspool!)
|
| She was addicted to gaming AND social media. They were the
| only way she could stop thinking about her PTSD which haunted
| her everyday. She is a functioning Senior ER doctor. She had
| all the same symptoms as my mate who was raped by an uncle
| when he was a child and consequently took up drugs in
| adolencence. he gave up drugs. She hasnt given up gaming, or
| scoail media, and she is only a trigger away from killing
| someone on the ER table due to it.
|
| FYI i found out we were getting a divorce because she
| unfriended me from FB. Are u kidding me? What an ADDICT!
| Threatened to kill herself unless i had a baby with her. That
| was my last straw. She couldnt do a sh*t in the morning
| without scrolling. Somehow FB status was more real to her
| then life. Least she have a moment to recollect her trauma.
| irjustin wrote:
| That's absolutely terrible for everyone involved and sorry
| to hear what's happening to you. Finding out a divorce via
| FB unfriend is pretty nuts.
| pfundstein wrote:
| The common denominator is of course dopamine, and drugs, social
| media, video games, etc, all offer an easy and reliable hit.
| superkuh wrote:
| 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.
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| The question is if these vectors of addiction are compounding
| or if it always affects people who were prone towards addiction
| anyway. My hope is the latter. Not that having a population of
| 10%(?) addictions isn't tragic, but it's better than eventually
| having a population of 90% addicts because we eventually offer
| personally tailored addictive products at scale.
| leodriesch wrote:
| I'd agree with you. It is in a similar vector.
|
| The problem with that is that, different to drugs, social media
| is not regulated (in terms of UX and manipulation of
| behavior/emotions).
|
| Social media is allowed to make their platform as addictive as
| they possibly can. You're not allowed to create and sell a drug
| that is perfected for addiction.
|
| Social media and video games are sort of a Wild West in terms
| of regulation, and I think we'll have to see some in the next
| years to combat this.
| ZYinMD wrote:
| 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".
| Wiseacre wrote:
| Do you play them the moment you wake up in the morning?
| ZYinMD wrote:
| Yes when I get addicted. The problem is it's hard to refrain
| even if you try. Social media on the other hand are totally
| easy to refrain from opening if you know you have more
| important things to do.
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