Ask HN: How to stop my addiction to social media?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32065238

by _qzu4 • 4 years ago

6 10 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I am starting to notice that social media is having a negative effect on me. I get value from places like Hacker News and others. There are some good information on the internet. The problem is that I seem to be addict to it and I need to stop. How do you control your urge from checking social media websites often? Do I have to leave my phone at home?

emrah• 4 years ago

If you are truly addicted, I think you need to treat it like an addiction. What to do is simple. I'm sure you already know what you need to do, but find it very hard to actually carry out.

Throw out your smartphone, replace it with a dumb phone. If that's not possible, the next best thing is to delete all the social apps from your phone and resist the urge to install them back and don't replace the habit of checking them on your phone with checking them on your laptop/desktop.

Lastly, it's crucial to replace the time you spent on social media with something else useful.. read, draw, make music, study something, go outside, sports, gym etc

mardiyah• 4 years ago

which 'social media' ?

LordNibbler• 4 years ago

I like Leechblock on browser and use app limits on phone. Basic idea is to break the loop.

zippyman55• 4 years ago

Flip phones are nice from a time perspective with little interruptions from social media. Not much you can do, and the pay as you go are 1000 minutes for $100. Then leave your smart phone in the car.

nso95• 4 years ago

Block them

ActorNightly• 4 years ago

Social media addiction isn't "bad" unless you are spending time on social media that you should be spending doing other things, like your job, spending time with family, exercising, e.t.c, or its measurably making your mental health worse. If you are full-filling all your regular obligations, and rather spend your free time browsing SM, there is nothing really wrong with that.

That being said, its of the utmost importance to realize that most of the stuff you read on SM is fiction, until strongly proven otherwise. And arguing what is right/wrong in fiction is a pointless exercise.

mattbrewsbytes2• 4 years ago

Highly disagree. If you are spending a lot of free time (obligations are met) then you are exposing your brain to lots of fake/misleading stuff as you indicate. Its designed to pull you in and keep your eyeballs on it, exposing to more "content". The fact that OP posted here asking how to stop indicates this is a problem and shouldn't be dismissed as: Social media addiction isn't "bad". Replace "social media" with recreational drugs/alcohol in your statement and see how it reads.

Social media allows people (and companies and politicians, etc.) to create the narrative they want the world to see. I would suggest to the OP to stop following anyone you personally don't know or keep in contact with as in unless you met them or have common acquaintance, don't follow. The exception being professionals or things related to career. I find following various people/companies related to technologies to be beneficial.

gravitate• 4 years ago

Get a dumbphone or feature phone which is a basic phone with no ability to install apps. Check the socials on your own terms by setting aside an hour each day to engage with others. Social media is asynchronous communication and doesn’t need to be real time and instant. You are in control of when you use it.

mattbrewsbytes2• 4 years ago

Here's some ideas:

- Delete the social media apps from your phone, set a strong password/2FA and make yourself login via web to check.

- If its a social media account used for purely browsing/posting (i.e. not used to keep in touch with family) delete it. It really changes the browsing when you can't comment and don't have a "score" to look at. [PS]

- Stop following people you don't personally know, except maybe tech related stuff since following those can be helpful (zero day vulnerability stuff, cool features, etc.) If you limit yourself to people you know, as in you actively keep in touch with, then feeds become less cluttered. Its less engaging but thats the point.

- Are you doom-scrolling? [0] Looking at "news" on places like reddit can do that. Having an account to have a curated list of sub-reddits sounds like a good idea, right? No. It encourages you to post comments which pulls you in. Limit to top 50 in r/all, any "news" that shows there might be actual news vs. scary headlines. Limit via time.

- Get an app that tracks time spent online or specific sites. Limit yourself, make it a game to lower your time.

- You'd be better off binge watching some shows/movies you like.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling

[PS] - I look at the HN points as an indicator if something I commented on is getting comments, like there might be an active discussion happening. I'd rather they changed it to that to encourage discussion and not encourage point gathering, but I don't work here so meh.

martin_a• 4 years ago

What works for me is setting the screen to greyscale. YouTube, Instagram and alike lose lots of their "impact" with me when the images aren'ts as nicely colored. ;-)

With Android this can easily be done through the Developer options.

Ask HN: How to stop my addiction to social media?

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