YouTube addiction, one month sober

https://www.sophiajt.com/youtube-addiction-one-month-sober/

by _xivi • 2 years ago

227 223 2 years ago

yea, this is pretty extreme, but 8-10 hours a day is a lot. I did a version of this with facebook and reddit for a while, I noticed I was wasting a lot of time on them so I uninstalled the apps off my phone and blocked the websites with the 1blocker, for facebook it was easy bec they made the desktop site so unusable I tried to use a few times and now basically never go there. reddit was harder but once the api thing happened, that gave me the motivation to just stop scrolling endlessly, I still have it accessible on my pc bec it'll sometimes pop up in search results, but I no longer spend hours scrolling, reading comments and getting in stupid slap fights with strangers.

wahnfrieden5• 2 years ago

Many people hit 5-7 hours of phone use a day just through morning, lunch, breaks, and bedtime use as part of daily rituals that add up astronomically over time

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

Not to downplay the levels of addiction and how challenging it can really be for many. But one thing I've done recently is use `AdGuard` on my iPhone to begin blocking specific domains that distract me too much, and it was amazing how in a few of those cases, the problem just went away immediately.

I was expecting it to be a fools' errand to be my own gatekeeper. But just getting a "page won't load" error a few times, and suddenly I'm not scrolling Reddit etc. for an hour at bedtime. I also find myself gravitating towards more productive things to do. I'm equally as bored, but the quick jolt of brain drugs I get from Reddit now has to come from working on my purely-in-software microwave or whatnot.

tomlue• 2 years ago

I made the habitbreaker chrome extension on this principle. It just blocks user selected websites for 30 seconds before loading. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/habitbreaker/kgioba...

The idea is just to defuse instant gratification. Works pretty well for me.

diimdeep• 2 years ago

found src, https://github.com/tomlue/habitbreaker will see if it is compatible with firefox

here is two more extensions, one for youtube and another to block social network feeds

https://github.com/AlexisDrain/Less-Addictive-YouTube https://github.com/jordwest/news-feed-eradicator

siver_john• 2 years ago

I did this my first year of college, blocked all distracting websites with an extension on Chrome. I still had it so I could watch on phone or if I Incognito windowed but putting that extra amount of effort kept me from mindlessly browsing the moment I got bored with homework. I finished all my homework in record time and was well prepared for my classes, I think I stopped doing this because I ended up becoming very bored.

nritchie• 2 years ago

YouTube, like the entire Internet, is such a mixed bag. There is some really first rate content but most of it is total junk. Like Little Richard says "It ain't what you do, it's the way how you do it."

wahnfrieden5• 2 years ago

It’s not just a bag of many contents. It’s an ad board full of dark patterns to steal your focus and attention.

RajT882• 2 years ago

There is some really first rate content but most of it is total junk.

A lot of the gaming-related stuff is just pure garbage.

"Secret gaming room" channels are especially egregious. Saw one where a kid bought a used boat (the kind with a below-deck area with a bed, kitchen, etc.), the kind you can get for ~20k or less if it is ~30 years old. Made a "secret gaming den", and then intentionally sunk the boat just to add some drama with the "secret den" filling up with water.

There's so many of these idiots on YT, that I can't even find the video now among hundreds of pages of videos.

Yes, they need to stay off my lawn.

mvdtnz• 2 years ago

I just searched "secret gaming room" and watched the first result. That is one of the worst things I have ever watched. 5 million views. Unbelievable.

PascLeRasc2• 2 years ago

Deleted for an annoying reply

standardUser2• 2 years ago

I have no idea what that second sentence means, but unless there has been mass removal of content on YouTube, then it stands to reason that there is at least as much good content now as previously.

djha-skin2• 2 years ago

I used to watch between 45 minutes and two hours a day of YouTube when bored at work. At my last place of employment, this skyrocketed though; I was very bored that that job.

In January of 2022 I decided to take a YouTube "fast", kicking YouTube for a while. I couldn't bring myself to commit to more.

It was waaaaaay hard to stop. I got on Nebula as a sort of Nicorette for a while, a month or two. I can recommend Nebula as a sort of sieve for really high quality content btw. I stopped my subscription, but it was great to only be able to watch videos that didn't feel like they were trying to hook me, all while getting some really good stuff out of it. I particularly liked Half as Interesting, RealLifeLore, and Johnny Harris, all of which were on Nebula. These videos didn't contribute to the "hooked" feeling, giving me something to use to wean myself off YouTube.

After my fast was over, it was so hard to stop that I didn't start again.

I will still watch the occasional YouTube, but it's usually either shared by friends or specifically searched for by me.

I have gotten looser in the last few days, but I have regretted it. I started swearing in my head less when I stopped watching YouTube. I had fewer intrusive thoughts. I had a clearer head, and I want to keep that.

My Psychiatrist has told me no screens two hours before bed. I started living by that too, and have found much more rest when I do. I discovered by doing this that I have a screen "budget", that I can't go over that without restless leg, twitching, and pain at the end of the day. Now that I know this, I am less inclined to use that budget on YouTube.

I miss a lot of creators on there, but I went back to watch some of them recently and was disappointed. Other mediums simply provide better content. Blog posts seem to be the best for this.

There are still some creators that are amazing, and I am truly missing out! I miss watching Primitive Technology videos for example. I still allow myself to specifically search for these, by I try to limit myself to one or two videos a day or less. I find that to be the sweet spot for keeping off of being hooked.

steve_adams_86• 2 years ago

One of the strange things about YouTube is you can get sucked into it and forget what good content actually looks like. It becomes a matter of what’s relatively good on YouTube, not overall.

You’re right that there’s good content on there, but I’m not convinced someone would be missing out on 99.9% of it. Or more.

I’ve used it far too much in the past as well. Today I feel like it was purely a vice and a distraction. My impression of various things being “good” was based on its ability to keep me watching without feeling immediate shame or being made too aware of how I was distracting myself from more important things. Had I never seen most of it, not much would be different. Things would likely be better for me.

davkan3• 2 years ago

What do you do for two hours before bed with no screen time? Read physical material? I'm not sure what I would do to wind down before bed besides reading or watching something. I do find that I need a similar amount of down time before bed after more engaging activities like going out or playing video games online. I usually try to read longer form articles or watch tv. I'm not sure what else I'd do around the house for that amount of time every night.

djha-skin2• 2 years ago

I bought a kindle and read programming books on it. I have to stay away from thrillers, fiction, etc., they're almost as bad as screens for driving my heartrate up. But I've really enjoyed the 10-30 minutes making myself smarter while actively helping me sleep that Kindle provides.

prometheus76• 2 years ago

My wife and I have been playing chess, and I'm usually reading a light book of some kind between moves. We also usually have some relaxing music playing and not many lights on. We even turn all the lights off and just play chess using a kerosene lamp or candles. It's quite relaxing.

aliasxneo• 2 years ago

My Psychiatrist has told me no screens two hours before bed

I struggle with this, but it's incredible what a difference it makes when I make it happen. I'm mostly content with watching a show before bed now (which is technically a screen), but this comes from having Netflix/YouTube up, my phone out, and my laptop sitting in front of me (yeah, it's crazy one can operate like that).

More importantly, I've been strict on "no screens in bed" which has also played a key role.

grep_name• 2 years ago

The only thing that keeps me from trying nebula is my inability to download videos. There are very few youtube channels that I particularly care for, some of them are pretty small and over the years I've found myself recommending things that have disappeared to people one too many times.

So I run an autodownloader that downloads a bunch of channels as well as my liked videos for posterity. I'd like to give nebula a try, but ultimately it's important to me that I'm able to save the content I consume and access it later

srvaroa2• 2 years ago

I haven't needed to be so drastic, but removed the YT app from my phone. There is a fair amount of good content that I find very worth consuming from YT (mainly educational videos) and would not like to miss. But, the mobile app makes a very strong effort to push you to shorts, which is the real danger. Shorts are proficiently engineered to just suck my brain into a doom scrolling comma. I tried removing shorts from the app, but it keeps pushing them in your face, so I ended up deleting it and watching via browser, logged out. I've heard several acquaintances having the same experience / solution.

It's a pity the YT PMs insist on designing the app like a Vegas casino, I'd really like to use the YT app for healthy usage, but well.

bcraven• 2 years ago

Android users can use ReVanced to patch out many aspects of the official app, including shorts.

A patchlist is here: https://revanced.app/patches

sbergot• 2 years ago

This is something that I see mentioned by a lot of people but I really cannot relate. If a video is shorter than 10 minutes I usually don't bother clicking. There is something that I find unappealing about short videos. That said I am 100% victim of reddit doom scrolling. But just seeing a short video makes me close the app or scroll faster.

srvaroa2• 2 years ago

It basically "oh well I'm going to take a 2m break, let's click that short video " and getting sucked into the vortex.

A similar effect happens to me on Twitter. I sometimes click on a video / dumb meme account, etc. just to take a break or whatever (Twitter does a much worse job at creating the attention vortex, so it's easy for me to literally make it a 2m break). BUT, some hours later the algo digests my click and turns my feed into absolute garbage repeating an endless firehose of dumb meme content. (In Twitter's case this is actually helping me: I really avoid clicking on dumb content so the algo doesn't go nuts.)

burnished• 2 years ago

I used to feel the same way, I got 'hooked' when I finally clicked on a short made by some tremendous nerd demonstrating a sword fighting technique and in some ways it was the perfect video - short, self contained, and interesting. After that I started watching more and my assessment is: probably not worth it. Its a good format for gags or quick demos but I find that too many that get recommended to me are base emotional appeals (pretty lady thumbnail, cute animal, rage bait, context free 'discord memes', etc) compared to the long form stuff.

Just in case it wasn't clear; not trying to change your mind, more a heads up that they might find bait you find to be shiny.

Oh but shoutout to one of the series with short-form content (2-5 minutes typically, not a 'short') that truly respects your time; no intros, no talking, just purely answering the question; 'what happens when I put this red hot nickel ball on this?' [1] red hot nickel ball.

[1] https://youtu.be/wxyKA5dea5U?si=gNOow9LBT1BCcPpX

hoherd2• 2 years ago

Here's a UBO filter that hides YT shorts https://letsblock.it/filters/youtube-shorts

DarkCrusader2• 2 years ago

I would highly recommend Youtube Revanced, even if you already have Premium or don't care to block ads. The Vanced Manager app can selectively apply patches to the official APK, removing shorts being one of them.

I had a similar experience to yours. It's very hard to not get sucked into them. I would keep scrolling even when I am actively disliking the actual content being shoved into my face.

It was a very sober realization for me that our brains can hijacked like this using the TikTok formula.

ar_lan• 2 years ago

On iOS, I've been using Vinegar with Safari.

I find my consumption to be way down because the YouTube site is... good, but not great, on Safari, but I can still readily consume what I like.

It also supports picture-in-picture and I've never seen an ad on YouTube in the past 3 years except when I load them on my TV. I didn't even know there was an adblock competition going on except for in the news because I've just never seen any.

pxc2• 2 years ago

NewPipe lets you watch shorts but completely lacks the shorts-type UI, so it's not addictive. Also has no ads and lets you play things in the background or with the phone screen off.

autoexec2• 2 years ago

having recommendations and auto-play disabled is great too. I only see youtube videos that I choose to see and never see anything else unless I'm searching for something

cooper_ganglia• 2 years ago

I never go on Facebook, but I do have an account because my Quest 2 forced me to login with one. Anyway, a coworker sent me one of those short-form Facebook Reel videos about some new tech. I watched it, and then the next video played, and I watched it, and then I swiped, and watched, and swiped, and watched... I started at 11am, and when I next looked at the clock it was almost 3pm. I was like, what the hell?? lmao, I do regularly use Youtube, so I try to consciously avoid YouTube shorts now.

teaearlgraycold• 2 years ago

If you disable watch history YouTube will not let you use Shorts, will disable the algorithmic home page suggestions, and you’re (maybe) robbing Google of another source of ads targeting information.

swozey4• 2 years ago

I guess this is an adhd "superpower" of mine. I leave youtube on 24/7 and pay almost no attention to it.

A big reason why I can ignore it though, when it's on 24/7.. mine plays the exact same documentaries, almost always WW2 or US Revolutionary War stuff over and over and over again. I watch a LOT of history documentaries but I have absolutely no interest in either of these time periods and have probably never searched for or liked any American history video. I'm a swords and shields guy.

The last month straight it's been on a revolutionary war kick with some 3-5 hour long George Washington documentary in between another one about how Goebbels ran off to argentina and his wife wouldn't join him so he married his dead brothers widow. I know everything about the guys now.

My theory is it plays the same stuff over again because it's already cached and saves them bw, them assuming you're not actually watching anyway but they can still pump viewership numbers for advertising.

RE: Thread.. I'm awful at getting off the computer after work. I'll move on to personal projects and everything else and just sit here for the whole day. My adhd + being able to instantaneously get dopamine has me chained, I like to go camping to detox.

Been forcing myself to go for a walk at 5pm now that it's not pitch black out then anymore.

iamsomewalrus• 2 years ago

ADHD-haver here. I do the same thing but with music. I created a playlist of albums I've heard hundreds of times. The songs are in album order and when I play the list I play from the start of an album somewhere in that list.

It keeps that part of my brain occupied, but not focus, while I work on the task at hand.

swozey4• 2 years ago

I go through really weird phases with music. Music is a huge part of my life, sometimes I play piano, guitar, produce.

There's points I'll realize I've gone 6mo+ without opening spotify except for when I'm driving. Just months and months of the news or youtube as background and no music.

sph3• 2 years ago

I hate this characterization of ADHD. I have it as well (diagnosed and medicated), and more distraction is the last thing I need. I cannot for the life of me imagining doing anything useful with youtube running in the background.

I think it simply depends if you were growing up with TV in the background. I haven't, so it's not soothing, it's maddening to have noise, loud chatter and unwanted sounds going on when I'm trying to direct my uneven focus.

The only thing that do not detract from focus is droning, instrumental music: psytrance or techno. But only when the workload is low. Otherwise I need absolute silence.

swozey4• 2 years ago

I definitely have my "ok I need no sound to focus" moments which is probably a good 20-40% of my day.

I sit in quiet a lot so I'm not distracted like you mentioned. It made working in an open office awful for me because I HAD to have headphones on with noise playing so I wouldn't hear other people and get distracted by THAT, and I DON'T want to sit there forced to have music on.

But if I'm not doing anything complex, hopping around social media or just relaxing yeah I've probably got 20 different things going on at once. Music, youtube, 350 tabs spread across 3 monitors. Can't sleep without audiobooks/tv on, etc.

I absolutely hate the ultra silence it gives me anxiety.

autoexec2• 2 years ago

For me it depends on what I'm doing. Sometimes music works, and sometimes lyrics are too distracting, and sometimes having a TV on in the background is helpful, but sometimes it tanks my productivity. I tend to need something in the background though unless I'm working on something that takes a ton of focus or my own brain will distract me .

data_ders2• 2 years ago

I’m so addicted to the internet that when I block social media, I find I get quite the similar fix from work Slack. Like browsing channels I have no business being a part of and constantly checking for validation of my comments via emoji reactions.

Does anyone know of ways to be a successful work-from-home knowledge worker while also locking down Slack to not be another slot machine??

Does anyone else feel conflicted about the internet as both a means to a comfortable/lucretive career but also the ultimate drug?

I’ve thought of only allowing Slack for 10 min each hour to make it more like an IV drop of info, but what happens when I actually need to DM in real time?

meta P.S. I’m refreshing this and reading the replies — what a rush! So much more rewarding than what I should be doing. :)

wahnfrieden5• 2 years ago

Only check it on a schedule, keep it closed, and turn off all notifications

hoherd2• 2 years ago

Keeping it closed is such a sobering experience. Sometimes I will close Slack to make an effort to get into focus mode, and run `sleep 3600 && open /Applications/Slack.app` to make sure I'm not leaving my coworkers hanging forever, but also let me get some time boxed focus time in.

data_ders2• 2 years ago

If knowledge were the only requirement, everyone would have six-pack abs and millions in the bank?

I agree that your suggestion is rational, but the article brings up addiction and lack of control which I feel describes me. I’d love a “just block it”, escape hatch of a solution but maybe I’m SOL and have to learn mindfulness

the_af3• 2 years ago

"Only check it on a schedule, keep it closed, and turn off all notifications""

Not possible at "remote first" workplaces.

luplex• 2 years ago

Start meditating, improve your sleep and work out. I find this improves my willpower whenever I do it.

lynx232• 2 years ago

You forgot to mention celebacy :-)

"Workout improves your willpower" sounds a lot like a 90 year old thing.

hermitdev• 2 years ago

My new job we use Teams (which sucks), but has configurable quiet-hours. I have mine set to only notify my phone between 7a-7p, and only when I'm not active on the desktop. Helps quite a bit, except I do sometimes miss notifications. So it goes. If it's _that_ important, they'll call.

swozey4• 2 years ago

7a-7p is a very long window to get slack notifications. I'd tell an eng to cut it to 9a-430pm or something if I heard they did that (assuming a usual 8-5 / 9-5ish).

I never acknowledge any slack message before 9am my time. I did that at one company and realized how absolutely miserable it would make me when I was getting dressed in the morning to see some fire going on or request or anything work related before I was "on," even if I wasn't really involved.

Gotta keep my mornings pure and innocent now.

hluska• 2 years ago

You’ve gotten some great advice!

Running long distances works really well for me.

There’s a neat thing about running. Humans are really good at it provided we can focus on what we’re doing and maintain a pace. Focus is hard in the modern world but when you lose that focus, your lungs will tell you right away.

Work is the same thing. We really don’t want to sprint through the tape and bonk when we’re 20% through. Instead, we want to find a pace, focus and hold it.

bloqs• 2 years ago

Best change I made was to totally restrict all phone and technology usage entirely (I mean entirely) for the first hour of the day. At that point I only handle direct personal comms like time sensitive texts, and don't use anything other than directly work output related tech for the following two hours.

My ability to focus skyrocketed.

garciasn• 2 years ago

I made a conscious decision to cut all social out of my life during the 2016 election. Since then I have done more and more to curtail my use, including setting aside time for non-electronic time: vinyl music listening, real book reading (I have never been an ebook fan), tabletop/card games, and/or puzzles.

I set specific times of day when I will allow electronics and I have disabled notifications from work-necessary apps outside of work hours and silenced notifications from all apps except from those folks I’ve explicitly allowed (my elderly parents and kids). I have silenced notifications from everyone else, always.

You have to be diligent and find alternatives to fill your time. I recently started seeing someone new after a divorce. She is amazed at how “disconnected” and “relaxed” my lifestyle is compared to others. We don’t fill our days with ‘stuff’, outside the home or electronic in nature, opting for purposeful downtime that allows for quiet, creativity, and relaxation from the mandatory parts of our lives.

You can get there. Just think of the life you would prefer and make time and take meaningful and small, incremental steps toward it.

Good luck.

joombaga• 2 years ago

I always appear offline, and only open it a few times a day, or when needed to send a message or start real-time collaboration. Ideally I'd always appear online, but there is no way to do that with Slack. Basically I don't want my perceived presence to be a signal for others to message or avoid messaging me. I've explained my usage to my team, and expressed a preference for scheduled synchronous communication over asynchronous communication.

amarant2• 2 years ago

This might be controversial, but I've found that micro-dosing psilocybin removes the urge of such distractions, and allows me to focus on what needs to be done.

I've been told I might have undiagnosed ADHD tho, not sure if relevant. Anyway, YMMV, but it could be worth a shot!

Probably a good idea to combine with exercise and/or mindfulness exercises.

reaperman2• 2 years ago

Also for those in your position:

- Exercise, strength training is great but always include 30+ min of cardio at least once per day. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurobiological_effects_of_p...

- Diet, vitamins/minerals. Magnesium is particularly important. Making first meal of the day high-protein tends to be helpful.

- Sleep. Generally most improved by exercise.

- Caffeine. Depending on your neurological phenotype, may be very helpful or may be very counterproductive.

- Other supplements. Many of the anti-depressive supplements like Huperzine, Ashwaganda, etc. can be double-edged swords (work well at first then backfire). Some precursors like Phenylethylamine, L-Dopa, 5-HTP, etc. can have profound effects similar to prescription drugs, though all tend to have very short half-lives. I'd honestly lump most of these in with "prescription drugs" in terms of potential for large effects and major side effects.

If you're skipping ahead to illegal (in most jurisdictions) drugs like psilocybin, you may also consider all the prescription options for anything that affects the dopamine or serotonin systems. Everyone is different and most drugs are net-negatives (sometimes in dramatic life-altering ways), so it often requires a lot of patience and effort to go through all of them until you find what "works" for you.

Almondsetat• 2 years ago

And what happens when you don't have access to the drug?

Aurornis4• 2 years ago

You won't get very far by only playing whack-a-mole with negative behaviors. You have to start introducing deliberate, positive behaviors. Structure your home, workspace, and workday around what you choose to be doing.

The little tricks to limit things and set timers can help, but the root problem is that you're describing yourself as being on autopilot: You get magnetically pulled to the next time waster.

Work on being more deliberate in your choices. Fill your time with things that provide a sense of accomplishment and remind yourself throughout the day what the goal is. If it helps, write the goal out on sticky notes and put it on your monitor, then review it throughout the day.

When you're tired and need a break, get away from the computer. Go for a walk or just stretch. Don't let your autopilot draw you back into the default easy time waster yet again. Create an array of positive activities to fill your time with so that you have more things to choose from, not just another round of scrolling something on a screen.

reaperman2• 2 years ago

Yeah this is probably the most true thing in this stack. You cannot "un-learn" something, including bad habits. Once you've learned something, it's part of your brain. You can only build a different pathway and strengthen it so that it becomes the default, and then the old habit/learning will slowly atrophy and fade away -- but it never completely goes away.

Positive reinforcement is the only way to train yourself new complex behaviors. Preferably using back-chaining for new environments. To reprogram existing behaviors you need to find the points where the "wrong" behavior is triggered and identify something that always occurs just before that trigger point. Then program/train yourself to do the new behavior based on the preceding trigger. That way you start down the path of the new desired behavior before the old undesired behavior gets triggered. Eventually it will atrophy and rarely get triggered any more (but still sometimes).

We share >80% of our DNA with any other arbitrary mammal, so you can use any book on dog training for this. I recommend Sophia Yin.

331c8c71• 2 years ago

I think the site and app blockers, timers etc. can be very helpful in the transition and in forming/keeping better habits. But those are just _tools_ and not the _goals_ so I agree hundred percent with your main message.

chezui• 2 years ago

Biggest for me was realizing this behavior is rooted in escaping discomfort and boredom. When I was writing my thesis I would go into a ton of internet "research" rabbit holes like bushcrafting or electronic music production or video games but after I defended, I found that these things no longer have much appeal to me, something that I surfed the internet for obsessively seems boring now.

Becoming comfortable with discomfort was huge -- the thing that I'm avoiding is probably the thing I need to do and will feel great afterwards.

Sometimes the anxiety is high and I find working with another person helps, either sitting beside them or actively. In the WFH era I found FocusMate to be super helpful, you pair with another person and share what you plan to do to in that time block via video chat and then go on mute and check in after the session to see how much progress you've made.

I find this alleviates a lot of anxiety and having a block of time where you verbalize your goals makes it manageable.

You can try for free and do up to 3 sessions per week. I did it and found it helpful so I bought the year subscription.

Here's my referral link: www.focusmate.com/?fmreferral=Tj3Vcqqaei

Or if you don't want to use that just www.focusmate.com

lynx232• 2 years ago

It sounds like you need to work on your self control. I think that is not really related to a specific compusive behaviour like too much screen time. Its a personality trait people affected by need to work on to get more peace. The internet is just a way to vent, prior to that, you'd have found other things to compulsively do.

jyunwai• 2 years ago

Read books about habit formation and apply the ideas about identifying a trigger to a habit, and altering the response. Most importantly, you can consider identifying and addressing the emotional motivation behind the habit.

I’m a fan of BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” as the book includes memorable summary diagrams, and the author is credible as an active researcher (his work was cited in the lectures of a university course I later took, after reading his book on my own). Alternative books are James Clear’s “Atomic Habits” (which cites BJ Fogg’s work) and Charles Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit.” There is a lot of overlap between the ideas of each book, so you can’t go wrong, though I found that BJ Fogg’s book was the most concise.

The most relevant idea from Fogg’s book is that behaviour is a function of motivation, ability to do a behaviour, and exposure to prompts for the behaviour. From a summary of his book [1]: “B=MAP considers that there are 3 key factors that need to be present for any behaviour (B) to occur: motivation (M), ability (A), and prompts (P). The model proposes that when these three elements are present at any given time, the person is pushed above the ‘threshold’ for action to do the behaviour.”

It sounds like you’ve already thoroughly attempted to change the habit by reducing your ability to engage in the behaviour (via blocking social media). Fogg, in his chapter on changing a habit, strongly recommends addressing the motivational aspect behind the behaviour. You can consider the question: what is it that motivates you to check for emoji reactions? For example, Fogg discusses how a person fixed a sugar consumption habit once she identified that it was a response to grief from losing a loved one, and addressed her grief in a healthier way—this may or may not be relevant to you.

Prompts are also important (via asking yourself: “what prompts the behaviour to check social media?”), as Fogg also recommends using them as a starting point to change your response to a healthier alternative. But he emphasizes the importance of focusing on the motivational aspect, as he wrote that it would not have been enough for the person with the sugar consumption habit to simply replace sugar with a healthier alternative like celery—the motivational aspect was the most important for her case.

[1] https://www.habitweekly.com/models-frameworks/the-fogg-model

cloverich• 2 years ago

Agree w/ other comment you need to focus on positive replacement rather than negative enforcement. This is how I'm viewing my use of social media now: I'm basically just lonely. Older and in a new city, few friends and even rarer social contact, outside of (healthy) family life. Social media is my only connection to professionals and other like minded people outside of work, and if I'm not getting much social benefit at work, that's all there is.

So goal is not to eliminate social media, but to recognize why I'm doing it, and look for real-world social (or other constructive) ways of pushing it out.

imiric• 2 years ago

I’m so addicted to the internet that when I block social media, I find I get quite the similar fix from work Slack. Like browsing channels I have no business being a part of and constantly checking for validation of my comments via emoji reactions.

Seeking validation from others is very human, and many people do that in real life as well. The difference with the digital realm is that the response is represented as emojis on your screen, so it gives you something direct to focus on. In real life the response requires interpretation, social cues, etc., and is not as immediate.

If you work remotely then don't feel so stressed about this behavior. Tools like Slack can be a huge distraction, so you can try disabling notifications when you want to focus on work. Just like you blocked social media, you can reserve specific timeslots to check Slack. I'm sure your coworkers would understand, as they likely also feel the same way.

At the end of the day, like any harmful habit, you have to break it with willpower and sometimes force, but this is manageable with digital tools. You're not _physically_ addicted to this.

slothtrop• 2 years ago

You have to deliberately make time for, and schedule, other activities away from your machine. Otherwise your idle time on the machine will just be spent on similar cheap thrills that are either glorified social media or feeds.

I walk, read books, exercise, cook, and spend social time with others. If I'm not exhausted I'll also practice my instrument and write. Eventually you won't have to think about it too much just by avoiding excess screen-time, but until such a point, owing to habit and conditioning, one feels very lost going without.

JohnBooty2• 2 years ago

    Does anyone else feel conflicted about the internet 
    as both a means to a comfortable/lucretive career but 
    also the ultimate drug?

yeah. it's like, hey, the only thing i'm good at (software engineering) is intimately tied to an always-on connection to an infinite distraction machine

i mean obviously i mitigate it as much as possible (blocking sites, etc) but daaaaaaaamn. what a fundamentally tricky tension.

AbstractH242• 2 years ago

It's interesting; I'd never say that about chefs or folks in the restaurant industry.

Plenty of other unhealthy habits in that line of work, don't get me wrong. But little association between the pleasures of food and making the food.

rightbyte3• 2 years ago

I’m so addicted to the internet that when I block social media, I find I get quite the similar fix from work Slack.

Install "LeechBlock" in Firefox and "AppBlock" for apps. Block Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, CNN or whatever bad habit feedscrolling sites you use.

Limit it to like 2200-2300 in the beginning and then just set a total ban after one or two weeks.

It helped me alot. It was ridiculous how I had like muscle memory to open these things for no reason at all, all the time. I noticed first after I got the block message I set myself.

After a month or two the bad habit was gone.

Reddit got some third party mirrors for specific threads I want to read in search results (with a clunky high bar to reach) and there are plenty of alternatives to CNN. Etc.

matsemann• 2 years ago

I used leechblock when writing my thesis in a period of heavy procrastination. It was quite mind-opening how often it would block me from just zoning out and go to a webpage and start scrolling.

Leechblock allowed me to just press "visit anyway", but just having that short "uh oh" moment let me know I was mindlessly doing something without even thinking about it. Like checking the front page of HN for the fifth time that hour.

ssgodderidge• 2 years ago

For those who use TamperMonkey[0], here's a basic script [1] I wrote to replace HTML on matching URL's with your own message.

[0] https://www.tampermonkey.net/ [1]: https://gist.github.com/stephengodderidge/df3b33b92bb3eeb2f3...

AbstractH242• 2 years ago

meta P.S. I’m refreshing this and reading the replies — what a rush! So much more rewarding than what I should be doing. :)

I always find a bit of humor in discussions such as these on social media.

Glad you acknowledge it.

optimalsolver• 2 years ago

I just wish YT thumbnails were selected from a random point in the video.

panick21_• 2 years ago

I think that sounds good compared to now, but if it actually happened, it would lead to a lot of unintended consequences.

pzmarzly• 2 years ago

Clickbait Remover extension may help you https://github.com/pietervanheijningen/clickbait-remover-for...

Or you can write a userscript / custom CSS to hide thumbnails altogether.

Or you can browse YouTube through RSS feeds (which afaik still work).

gnopgnip• 2 years ago

The extension dearrow will do that

carleton• 2 years ago

DeArrow is an extension by the SponsorBlock guy that does this.

lm284692• 2 years ago

Youtube killed my addiction themselves, they removed any kind of recommendation to my account since I opted out of all tracking, now when I go to youtube.com I get an empty page, unless I know exactly what I want to watch I don't even bother

RajT882• 2 years ago

This! I know they think they are punishing you, but after a while I came to appreciate it.

PascLeRasc2• 2 years ago

Same thing with the ads every 5 minutes always interrupting a complex part of the woodworking video I'm half watching. Thanks for the reminder to focus on real work, State Farm.

sph3• 2 years ago

Good to see someone talking about it.. I used to spend my free time watching Youtube, these days it's only during dinner before I put on a TV show (and just before bed where very long LPs put me to sleep in minutes). What helped I only notice in retrospective: I got diagnosed and medicated for ADHD.

Now I actually have the focus and drive to do the things I should be doing, rather than lazying my day off on YouTube with a hidden yet growing shadow of worthlessness and self-hate. In fact, now that I have improved focus, I don't have the patience to sit and watch Let's Plays any more. I either zone out, doze off or think about stuff I should be doing, and I just turn it off.

YMMV.

Aurornis4• 2 years ago

YMMV.

Very glad you found something that helped, but this is a good place to warn people that everyone is different. In some people, stimulant treatment can actually kindle problematic behaviors like the one you escaped. For some, they enhance focus but that results in more focusing on the hobbies, distractions, and side projects.

I bring this up because while ADHD medication is great for some, there's a growing problem of people reading positive anecdotes and assuming it's quick fix for all things lifestyle related. In clinic practice there's a growing number of people showing up with everything from stimulant-exacerbated Dermatillomania (skin picking disorders) to problematic behaviors with porn consumption after seeking out stimulant treatment based on internet advice. Stimulants are powerful drugs, and there's an entire other conversation to be had about the excessive prescribing practices of some of the providers out there (my pharmacist friends are in disbelief at the size of some of the doses they're handing out to people these days).

sph3• 2 years ago

Very glad you found something that helped, but this is a good place to warn people that everyone is different. In some people, stimulant treatment can actually kindle problematic behaviors like the one you escaped. For some, they enhance focus but that results in more focusing on the hobbies, distractions, and side projects.

Certainly. On dexamfetamine, focus has a distinctive sticky quality to it. I need to be very careful where I direct it. Opening HN mid-morning means a productive session of commenting and getting into Internet arguments.

It's a negative side effect that can be overcome with a good routine and schedule. I take my meds, sit at my desk and open Emacs at 9am every day, 7 days a week. Distractions are blocked, so the path of least-resistance is just doing work. But then again, good routine and schedule are relatively easy to set up once medicated.

0x3444ac53• 2 years ago

Thank you for bringing this up. I have PTSD, and that compounds with OCD and ADHD, and for years I was just sort of a slave to compulsions and trauma responses and a whole host of other things. More often than not had bad reactions to SSRIs, and generally avoided any medications for a long long time.

When I finally did start taking stimulants for the ADHD, it was magical. I was really really worried that it would cause me to get locked into obsessive compulsive cycles I was already in, and talked to my doctor quite a bit about what would work for me.

I started taking methylphenidate in 2022 and it was life changing. It was the first time that I felt I had some amount of control over my focus, whereas before I would just get stuck on whatever anxiety inducing thought I've had.

Now, I've never been more regulated, and it's never been easier to pull my attention to something else. That isn't to say that it's solved all my problems, it hasn't. I still have bad days and triggers and can still spiral out in different ways, but I'm managed to hold down a job for an entire year now.

Currently, I'm still struggling with trying to figure out what I need (in an emotional sense) at any given time. Should I have a cry? Reach out to a friend? Do yoga? Eat some food? Etc, and I'm working with my therapist to try to figure out that intuition a little.

P_I_Staker• 2 years ago

It has become increasingly clear to me is the dangerous under-prescription of ADHD medication is the real problem, and we need to stop with this propaganda.

babypuncher• 2 years ago

I got diagnosed and medicated for ADHD.

This is a huge factor. I find myself slipping into a pattern of non-stop YouTube or social media scrolling when I haven't been taking my meds. I've had several friends who also have ADHD tell me similar stories.

I wish ADHD was more well understood by the public. I blame two decades of jokes about the disability just being hyper kids through the '90s and '00s. Many people don't even realize that ADHD often persists into adulthood, where it is arguably more disruptive to the patient's lifestyle.

richrichie• 2 years ago

This is an eye opening article.

My list of vices: Youtube X Hacker news Telegram “news” channels

psyclobe• 2 years ago

YouTube is amazing, just stay away from content that encourages you to buy stuff. The free documentary channel is amazing (check out their Apollo series) but lately once you’ve seen all the amazing education videos (think vsauce, smarter every day, David butler) it does turn into a nervous tick constantly opening the app.

KptMarchewa• 2 years ago

For me, doing stuff like that only replaces one thing with another. If I block youtube, I'll be spending that time here. If I block HN, I'll stay on reddit. If I block reddit, I'll spend time on Skyscrapercity.

The real solution seems to be having stuff in life that actually gives you self-actualization and spend least possible time at work fucking around.

jimt1234• 2 years ago

For me it's like trying to cut out junk food and replace it with healthy alternatives. I'll eat healthy for a while, then find myself returning to junk - youtube, imgur, reddit, x, instagram, etc.

ivanjermakov• 2 years ago

Happened to me. I stopped using Reddit completely once Apollo shut down and started reading HN a lot.

Sometimes it's hard to find what to do and you still need some "filler" activities.

xetplan2• 2 years ago

Totally agree. We are social creatures. The only way I would be able to completely stop would be to hang out more at a local bar. I already go to the gym as much as my body can recover from.

At least with HN there is the possibility of something interesting and not just mindless bullshit.

Everything is relative too. I think of my World War 2 vet grandfather. He worked a mindless job, then came home and drank beer until he went to bed while watching TV.

We seem to pretend before the internet that the average person would clock out from their amazing, uplifting job and then head off to some Vienna Circle level discussion about the nature of reality.

While often falling way short, my reality is much closer to that than any of my ancestors could have ever dreamed of.

TriangleEdge• 2 years ago

I have done the same thing with YT. Notice my first post on HN is adding this website to my hosts files because I found it too addicting. As of date, I have unblocked YT but kept almost all of the social media sites. I watch Twitch for background noise nowadays. I find it to be less addictive since it feels more ephemeral to me.

farleykr• 2 years ago

One thing that made a huge difference for me was turning of my watch history. If you do that you get a message on the homepage saying that it can't recommend videos until you turn on your watch history. Not very visually pleasing but it keeps me from scrolling through recommendations and now I only watch videos when a channel I follow puts out new content or when I choose to specifically search for something.

cowsup• 2 years ago

Another benefit is that the mobile app’s “Shorts” menu also stops working if watch history is disabled. Sometimes the app takes me there on launch, and now I’m greeted with a message saying I can’t explore an endless feed unless my watch history is active. Fine with me!

cracoucax• 2 years ago

Oooh yes thanks for this, instant disable. History could be convenient at times, but hey not as much as my sanity.

havblue• 2 years ago

I've also found that just deleting your history occasionally can be beneficial as it keeps you from going down a rabbit hole of repetitive but addictive content to watch new things.

frabcus2• 2 years ago

This is my favourite YouTube feature! It makes the home page lovely.

peterb0yd• 2 years ago

Oh my, you just saved so much of my time! I had no idea you could control so much. YouTube is so clean now! Thank you.

nomius102• 2 years ago

I want to point out that you can do a similar thing on reddit too. There's a setting for disabling recommended posts on the home tab. Combine that with unsubscribing to all subreddits (maybe except /r/nosurf) and you get a detoxified home tab.

I tried to do something similar with twitter (now known as X), but it doesn't seem to work.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

Nice to see this post. With all the discussion and borderline obsession on here about ad-blocking and YouTube I can't help but think of the role addiction plays.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 years ago

YouTube dominates TV streaming in US, per Nielsen's latest report

https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/20/youtube-dominates-tv-strea... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39463296)

matesz• 2 years ago

Just realized when I logged out from YouTube I got automatically logged out from Chrome as well. There is no other way. How is that even allowed, that google single-signon infiltrated my browsing experience. Something has to change.

futureshock• 2 years ago

It’s bit weird, but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return. Apple released their screen time features in 2018, so this issue was just starting to hit critical mass right as Covid hit and dumped us all deep down the digital rabbit hole.

Now I notice even more social proof to keep going deeper into the digital life. Public shaming over green chat bubbles and genuine confusion if I tell someone I’m on not on a Meta owned social network.

I wonder if we’re all so addicted now that it’s no longer social acceptable to talk about our addiction. I wonder if we just started talking to each other less as well.

bombcar2• 2 years ago

Covid and work-from-home normalized screen time.

The same thing has happened in the past (an old Wodehouse school-story has a kid being yelled at for reading "trash" (David Copperfield) during class instead of the Latin he was supposed to be working on.

SamBam• 2 years ago

I think that suggesting it's no different from people thinking that reading books was going to rot people's minds ignores the very real increases in teen depression, loneliness, and suicides over the past decade, as well as increases in adult depression and isolation, and the credible research that says that social media and screens are probably strongly contributing to it.

Aurornis4• 2 years ago

but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return.

Strange, I had the opposite experience: COVID brought screen time discussions front and center as everyone was getting desperate for things to do away from their screen or becoming cognizant of how much screen time was at the center of their lives now.

I've always done a lot of outdoor activities. There was huge upward trend in the number of people I saw on hikes, out walking, or biking during COVID. It felt like everyone was getting outside again.

But obviously there was another world where people retreated to their homes, got comfortable with screens, and never unplugged.

DougN72• 2 years ago

The casino scene in the Percy Jackson movie [1] (and book) have always seemed hauntingly accurate to me as far as describing much of modern life.

The thing we all have a finite amount of is time, and we’re increasingly distracted to where we waste more and more of it on unimportant, artificial digital worlds/life while the real world passes by. As I’m getting older, I’m seeing how precious youth, energy, and health are, but those who have the most of that (younger people) seem to be sucked in even more. We’re racing towards the dystopia shown in the movie Ready Player One.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-Fbl2QVJc

reidjs• 2 years ago

I am completely lost as to how that clip corresponds to anything mentioned thus far...

themagician• 2 years ago

Social media is no longer just some activity you do. For many, it has become a way of life. Their income and livelihood relies on it. Many children growing up today aspire to be popular on social media. What happens on social media has become part of their core identity.

It will only accelerate from here.

carlosjobim3• 2 years ago

Social media has been the only open venue for young people for a while now, where the door to success is not closed and welded shut by old folks. Sure, all those likes and followers will not give them any monetary benefit to speak of, but neither does working or having a career.

If it was conceivable to raise in the ranks and get good compensation and respect by hard and diligent work, young people would be very interested. But that's not been the case for a long time. Young people will always flock to where they can succeed on their own merits, wether that was being a soldier, sailing in the merchant fleet, digging for gold, acting, business, technology, etc.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

Many children growing up today aspire to be popular on social media. What happens on social media has become part of their core identity.

They'll probably grow out of it. Half my high school class thought they were going to be major league baseball players or NFL players when they grew up. Now they're accountants and HVAC installers.

rightbyte3• 2 years ago

For many, it has become a way of life. Their income and livelihood relies on it

It would suprise me if one person in my 30k pop county lives of "social media". And I don't put the bar that high. Like atleast McDonalds pay.

Maybe one in 100 000 does? Concentrated to big cities. I have never seen any stats on this. Some quick searching just gave Forbes and other probably made up numbers.

swatcoder2• 2 years ago

You overstate how permanent one's "core identity" is.

The mentality that you mention, which really only applies to some small number of people, won't survive (1) a prolonged economic downturn that dries up ad revenue breaks the ad-supported business model, (2) a large war that summons young people away from their homes or impacts infrastructure, (3) a strong economic upswing that open promising new opportunities, (4) a legislative change in the accessibility of social media, etc.

At least some of those things that dramatically disrupt the current social media landscape will happen. It's just not that durable in its current form, and we already see that in its changing landscape, with more of the gardens becoming walled to keep balance sheets stable, more of the previously-leading service bleeding off users, more self-regulation actions meant to outmaneuver legislative hearings and lawsuits, etc

People can have social media as their "core identity" all they'd like, but they'll eventually discover that everyone's life ultimately involves a bunch of chapters where your "core identity" looks real darn different. Most don't get to keep a "core identity" just because it happens to be the one they adopted in their teens or twenties. In fact, most learn that they wouldn't even have wanted to anyway.

nonameiguess• 2 years ago

Age? Social group(s) you're in? I not only don't get confusion from telling anyone I have no social profiles or account on any web service, I can't even recall the last time anyone asked. I suspect the probability of this happening to you depends pretty heavily on the peer group you're interacting with, possibly the country you're in. I continue to meet and exchange contact info with new people every now and again. It's always phone numbers and nobody has asked for anything else.

Hell, as much as it may be a bad thing compared to a healthy information ecosystem and better balance of physical activity with passive video consumption, I'm not even sure an addiction to an algorithmic content feed is all that bad compared to many other alternatives. Consider many countries are still in the midst of epidemics of opioid addiction. I think my wife might be "addicted" to YouTube. She seems more interested in watching endless Bob Ross episodes than anything else in life right now, but ultimately it has her painting and that isn't terrible. She's also an alcoholic and that's an addiction that put her in the ICU for 5 days twice in the decade we've been married. My best friend from high school tried to quit cold turkey in 2016 and died at the age of 36 from physiological withdrawal symptoms because she detoxed at home and not in an ICU. I'd much rather have my wife sucked into algorithmic rabbit holes than finding those duffle bags of empty bottles this author talks about.

While I'm sure there are more productive ways to use your time, YouTube is at least not directly killing anyone, and if you're getting some useful information or entertainment value or both from it, that's a heck of a lot better than other things you could get addicted to.

webdoodle4• 2 years ago

I've seen the opposite. I drastically reduced my smartphone and online time a couple years before Covid, but completely ditched my phone at the end of 2019. It took a few years before I met anyone with my level of dedication, but now I meet them every few months. Most are tech or ex-tech employees, but some are just closer to retirement.

mnky9800n• 2 years ago

I have to many two factor authentications that for some reason only use Google or Microsoft apps. Also there's bankid but I guess that still can use a key fob for the time being. Otherwise I would be happy to get rid of my phone.

stevage6• 2 years ago

You literally have no phone? Amazing. I'm full of questions, like how do you socialise with people who expect to be able to change plans at the last minute?

Scarblac• 2 years ago

Seen from here, in the last half year I've seen far more articles on "OK, we're all addicted now, how do we get out of this mess" than ever before.

asciimov2• 2 years ago

I wonder if we just started talking to each other less as well.

We have. Sadly people aren't allowed to be bored long enough to decide that they should see what other people are up to.

It used to be common to call or even drop by unannounced to check on people. Doing these things is now seen as some great sin.

It's like we are all eating plain ramen every day, and aren't getting our vitamins. Sure we are full but we have deeper needs.

phone86753092• 2 years ago

It used to be common to call or even drop by unannounced to check on people.

This has been considered rude at least since my parents were kids in the 1950s.

I would imagine it was a lot more common before the telephone at home was widespread, but I've always found turning up unannounced to be rude.

winternett• 2 years ago

It feels like I haven't logged onto it in ages... Chrome pushed an update that made me have to log in and do TFA each time I opened the browser, and that was a nail in the coffin.

The best content on YouTube is berried behind a wall of Mr Beast and Pewdie Pie style fluffery that I can't find any real value in most of the time. They dictate what is favorable, and that ruins the entire experience for me. The search has been flooded with SEO title spam, which makes finding specific content damn near impossible and/or very tedious.

I don't think you can be addicted to a hammer if it's a highly functional tool in getting work done. I don't think you can get addicted to a television if it's a tool used for relaxation or entertainment. I think we need to stop considering that apps become addictive, and really speak on if they manage to deliver on their promises and functional purposes.... Just my opinion.

Most apps become extremely annoying after years of being highly functional, and that represents corporate corruption more so than having an addictive product. It's not addicting if it does not fulfill a valid purpose when it begins to charge money for ad laced content or repeatedly waste people's time, apps cease to be useful after that point.

WheatMillington• 2 years ago

The best content on YouTube is berried behind a wall of Mr Beast and Pewdie Pie style fluffery that I can't find any real value in most of the time. They dictate what is favorable, and that ruins the entire experience for me. The search has been flooded with SEO title spam, which makes finding specific content damn near impossible and/or very tedious.

This is not my experience at all. The recommendations engine is what keeps Youtube as my #1 entertainment platform. My Youtube Recommendations ebb and flow, sometimes are better than others, but my feed absolutely never devolves into lowest-common-denominator super popular content, and is mostly dominated by small-to-medium sized channels in the categories that interest me.

laurentlb• 2 years ago

My experience is that I first search for content I'm interested in. Then YouTube keeps recommending things that are related (in the same domain, or on the same channel).

I haven't seen any PewDiePie recommendation in years (to the point I even forgot him).

I don't really know what's actually popular on YouTube. All recommendations seem very personalized.

johnny22• 2 years ago

I use the "don't recommend channel" a lot with youtube if i see stuff I don't like.

stevage6• 2 years ago

OP was watching YouTube 8 to 10 hours a day. That is not simple relaxation.

karaterobot• 2 years ago

Perhaps for self-serving reasons, I think of a Youtube addiction as being more like addiction to traditional TV than to things like twitter, instagram, or maybe even TikTok.

I say self-serving because my average daily phone use is <30 minutes, I'm not present on any social networks besides a reluctant LinkedIn account, but I do watch more Youtube than I should. I'd like to think it's unrelated to those things, because I only watch channels I'm already subscribed to, and am uninterested in being steered by recommendations.

stevage6• 2 years ago

Yes, it sounds like you use YouTube much like traditional TV. For others it is more like social media, like Twitch is.

flyinghamster• 2 years ago

It's not just the internet, and I'm increasingly finding the crap online and off to be insufferable. However, enshittification has been a great antidote to media addiction. No sense turning on the TV or going onto FaceTube if the experience is absolute crap.

I'd much rather actually do something that just veg out watching TV.

ChuckMcM2• 2 years ago

Great post and parts really resonate with me. I got addicted to World of Warcraft. It was contrary to my own self image that my brain could do something to me that I didn't endorse, but post WoW I recognized that it did exactly that.

I started sliding down that slope with No Man's Sky but have since corrected (fortunately NMS isn't as well put together as WoW or it might have been worse).

The key for me is running away from something you feel you have no control over feels like a better solution than dealing with the pain. Escaping into a world that has expected behaviors that you can understand is, for me, less painful than a world with people advancing bad agendas for self serving reasons.

The pain is real, the fight doesn't stop, every day you shoot for "well I didn't give in to my fears today, on to tomorrow."

NoPicklez• 2 years ago

I think it's important to not forget that video games (in particular WoW) are fun to play. They're fun to play like its fun to play sport, exercise etc etc. They are fun to play and that on its own is a good reason to play them.

Everyone has things they feel like they should be or need to be doing every day.

We are allowed to do things that give us joy that take us out of the day to day, it's just whether or not these things start to consume so much of your time that you negate other important areas.

ChuckMcM2• 2 years ago

You are correct, they are fun to play. The challenge is knowing that the activity has become unhealthy. Every addict that I personally know thought they had their issue under control until something helped them realize they didn't. I didn't go downstairs at my daughter's birthday when everyone there was singing and she was blowing out the candles. I didn't go because I was 'healing the raid' and me leaving probably would have resulted in a wipe. That was my "wait, what am I doing" moment.

pimlottc2• 2 years ago

They can be fun to play, but you do have to check in with yourself occasionally to make sure you’re still enjoying it.

It’s surprisingly easy to fall into a rut and just keep doing what you’ve been doing even when it’s not really doing it for you anymore.

addicted• 2 years ago

In 2015 or so I quit Facebook. I had also quit smoking and drinking about 3 months earlier.

The feelings and withdrawal I went through were exactly the same.

Ever since I’ve been convinced that social media are not passive or even active sources of content. They’re much better viewed as addictions like smoking or drinking.

And just like smoking or drinking some people may be able to use social media responsibly, but many others are gonna be badly addicted and even the ones who do it responsibly will largely be worse off for it.

latentcall2• 2 years ago

One of my best friends is definitely addicted to YouTube. I am starting to suspect my wife is too. YouTube is great for music and educational videos, but let's be honest the bulk of content is not that.

In the early days of YouTube I would say I was addicted, or spent a lot of time on there. At one point I realized how much of a waste of time it was and now only look up car repair videos.

I hope everyone can get out of the YT rut.

endisneigh• 2 years ago

I wish I could block shorts. Christ sake I’m already paying for premium. Let me block it, and not just from the mobile client - everywhere.

xyst• 2 years ago

I can put away social media. But I can’t put away my phone due to how everything is digital now - bank, health, travel.

standardUser2• 2 years ago

Half of what I use my phone for is in service of other aspects of life. Finances, travel plans, communicating with friends, work, research, etc. It's the other half - the scrolling mostly - that provides little value.

But I'm not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

jjulius4• 2 years ago

Genuinely curious - aside from, say, 2FA, what do you need your phone for for those services that you can't do via the web on a laptop or desktop? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm just thinking through how I use bank/health/travel services and am struggling to think of something that can only be done via a mobile app.

I've forced myself to go laptop/desktop-only with most services and have found that I can keep my phone away from my person for most of the day, save for moments where a service requires 2FA.

mmorearty• 2 years ago

I've had good results recently by deleting all my social media apps from my phone, BUT allowing myself to use them through Mobile Safari. And I did not bookmark them; e.g. for Instagram I type "in" and then Enter.

This gives me some friction, without having to go cold turkey. All the popular social media sites have mobile websites that are "good enough", but slightly clunkier than the apps, and also they can't send me notifications.

My phone screentime per day has dropped by about 1/3rd.

r9295• 2 years ago

I did the same, and additionally set my display to grayscale. I don't even want to open social websites unless I actually wish to browse them. The compulsive fix these apps provided when I was bored or waiting was taken away and my habit subsided.

garrisonj• 2 years ago

If you are using Arc, I created a boost to block Youtube. You can add a custom message to yourself in the CSS settings.

https://arc.net/boost/208CA384-0BC8-4EEF-A944-BC551D4AD48D

alphazard• 2 years ago

The problem I see with YouTube is that I always start on low-regret content like lectures, or a news clip about a current event I want a summary of. Or a video that a friend said was funny (that's good signal).

But then rather than recommending more content along the same lines (which I would probably bookmark but not be encouraged to click), there is a short low quality video that somehow slides under the radar of "not worth my time". And then this chains together, and what started out as a low-regret interaction has spiraled into a high-regret one.

uBlock rules for the shorts, recommendations, etc. basically solved this problem for me. I think there is a ton of potential with the alternative YouTube frontends too. We have access to an unprecedented amount of information, it's just hidden behind malicious interfaces.

ThemboMcBembo• 2 years ago

I had the same problem. Blocking those elements helped, but was a pain to set up on each device I used. Switching entirely to alternative front-ends like Invidious was what finally helped me stop getting sucked in by those.

nomius102• 2 years ago

I highly recommend the Unhook extension. It's highly customizable, and personally I have it set to remove all recommendations. Sometimes I also disable the comments.

It's been a year since I've used it, and I definitely see an improvement as the platform is no longer pushing content down to me, but at times I find myself frantically searching channels I used to watch, to see if there is a new video since I last checked. I only remember a dozen at most, way fewer than the ~100 channels I was subscribed to.

Overall an improvement, but I don't consider myself cured.

al2o3cr• 2 years ago

    The counsellor... well, let's say they have a specific task at hand.

LOL I assume this went like the scene from "Half Baked": "You ever SUCK COCKS for YouTube? Get outta here!"

zeitlupe• 2 years ago

To me, the most difficult part about quitting youtube, twitter or reddit is that these websites are incredibly rewarding and an incredible waste of time at the same time. Reddit has great discussions on careers, hobbies, whatever you do not stumble upon elsewhere, but the rewarding content unfortunately always comes in packs with some mindless scrolling and mediocre memes – I've never managed to have one without the other. Quitting them means to forfeit a huge, valuable chunk of input and I am yet not sure what's better.

throwaway277432• 2 years ago

Honestly Reddit has never been that great for me. In my experience a lot of content even in niche hobby subreddits is regurgitated opinions presented as authorative facts or baseless speculation disguised as professional insight.

In the few hobby subreddits that I frequented, non-mainstream opinions or new ideas were often drowned out by the hivemind and people with less experience or knowledge. In short, a real discussion rarely came up or was even possible.

And in the case of questions I realized that so many people have no clue but still feel compelled to answer.

I'll omit my rant on career advice subreddits here.

For my hobbies specifically, I've reverted back to forums. You can have a relaxed discussion over the span of weeks, and interesting threads might remain active for months. You can get to know the users by their signatures, and the average age of users is also higher. Some of the users might even be professionals instead of just hobbyists, where I feel that was rare on Reddit.

drcongo• 2 years ago

Absolutely baffled by this.

kirill5pol• 2 years ago

The YouTube addiction is definitely real... but it's quite sad since mixed in with the entertainment it's one of the best sources in the world for education (video lectures, how tos, etc)

One thing that worked well for me is having two separate profiles, one for educational and one for everything else. That way the education one didn't get as polluted with the most addictive recommendations

(little self-promotion) One thing I found to be useful was to try to focus on learning more actively, so I built a tool that turns educational videos into mini-courses where it will ask you questions about the content and then use spaced repetition to help you actually remember the information.

One of the other parts is to ensure that the suggestions/feed is focused solely on education, and that you don't fall into the addicting videos trap... (I have the v1 but still working to make this better)

But I think if the addiction is bad enough as in the post, it's probably a better idea to go cold turkey

(link is https://www.platoedu.org)

frabcus2• 2 years ago

My favourite extension for customising YouTube right now is Unhook.

https://unhook.app/

I hide all recommendations and suggestions, so basically all I can do on YouTube is look at channels I've subscribed to, or search for videos I need.

I use it on mobile (Firefox on Android) too.

add-sub-mul-div• 2 years ago

Youtube is not a big thing for me, but Reddit and Twitter shutting down the respective clients I used for each got me off both platforms permanently. Enshittification can be a good thing.

webdoodle4• 2 years ago

Reddit's enshittification was a driving force for me as well. If fact, they might be the golden standard of enshittification: they killed there warrant canary, crap interface changes, took money from Peter Thiel and Jack Ma, ignored mod pleas for help with bots, went closed source, killed 3rd party apps and scrapers, sells user data to anyone, censored anyone that didn't parrot there politics, and finally suspended and cancelled thousands of dedicated Reddit users who protested any of the above.

I hope there IPO sinks to the bottom of the stock market and is delisted.

pxeger1• 2 years ago

My solution has been to redirect the YouTube home page to the subscriptions page. This prevents me from watching recommendations.

I also created a new YouTube account (note this doesn’t require you to create a new Google account), and manually added all my subscriptions. This means it has no data on what to recommend me and so the recommendations are terrible and I never even want to click them.

This encourages me to carefully curate my subscriptions, so I only watch high-quality videos from consistently high-quality channels.

I also have nebula but I find increasingly many of the channels are too low-quality for me. I think this is because my standards have been raised and my detection of low quality has improved. I’m now not sure that it’s worth it for me though.

Accacin• 2 years ago

Anyone else use YouTube as basically background noise? When I'm working I live putting on some ASMR and just listening to it in the background.

I find it less distracting then music or podcasts.

timeforcomputer2• 2 years ago

I feel like something bad is happening and I am unsure how much of this is me being negative. I "quit" the internet in late 2018 due to severe addiction and years-long disengagement in my hobbies (reading, programming, thinking, music, art, ...) and only recently have started reintroducing it into my life, for example, catching up with what people do on YouTube, trying to get an idea of "what people are talking about". It feels like a fever dream and I am unsure whether this is due to me picking up my extremely unhealthy internet browsing habits that I had pre-2018, and I wonder whether there is a "healthy" internet that I am not seeing.

I made a twitter account recently and followed Jonathan Blow, Sebastian Lague, and 3blue1brown. I just scrolled through the default twitter page and I got karen videos, a naked woman in a car caught cheating, israeli soldiers harassing someone, a police dog mauling someone. I made an instagram account to see 3blue1brown videos on my phone and went to the default page (I assume it knows nothing about me) and I was given videos of disabled people doing sports which are clearly meant to be "funny", with extremely hateful comments apparently from children, spelling out the N-word with separate letters, etc. That was in 3 minutes of using Instagram and I gave up. I am interested in game development and a google search of "game development" gives me absurd "industry knowledge" youtube videos and r/gamedev. r/gamedev is just "meta-commentary" pointing out "societal problems" of game developers, you won't make money, noob assumptions, angry at the world, even mixing in discussions of depression, self-hate. It is a mess. Where are the people talking about neat collision detection tricks? I am aware that this is the "surface level" and I will eventually need to find and curate a variety of incoming "feeds", such as group chats with good engaged people, great forums, etc., but I just don't feel like it is "natural" to find them. I feel like I need to start a project for myself to intentionally build my own "algorithm" which leads me to find enriching content. I feel though that that is actively going against what "the internet" wants me to do. It is so easy to find such hateful things, and I am worried it will bring me back to being as depressed as I was before quitting the internet.

edg5000• 2 years ago

With the larger platforms, the more you use the platform the more specific the feed or recommendations become. What you describe sounds indeed like the surface level feed that a new or logged out account would get. Ignore all feeds and search for specific things, such as collision detection. Then you will come across genuinely good channels which you can subscribe to. The feed will then no longer show those crappy superficial popular topics. However the YouTube Shorts has an insanely addictive nature, I regret every second spent in that feature. To contrast, the rest of youtube contains so much useful educational content. I really learned a lot thanks to these videos. In the last two years I stopped watching regular videos and started watching Shorts, which I find truly regrettable.

graeme• 2 years ago

Everyone will have their own solution dependent on their own habits and brain quirks. But, some things which worked for me which you might wish to try. I found some things are useful to have, but distracting in other contexts.

As an example, people often text me a tweet. I want to be able to read the tweet, or look up certain sources of information. So I don't want to block twitter. And being logged out prevents reading a thread. But I also don't want to scroll my feed. Solution --> stay logged in, but with my work account which has a dull feed.

Instagram is a waste of time on my phone. But I need to login occasionally to check messages and I like seeing the odd update. Solution --> use nextdns to block on my phone, check on computer in browser.

So on my phone I identified instagram, youtube and twitter as the things where I waste the most time. NextDNS blocks youtube and instagram entirely, and the for twitter I use the login solution above.

On my mac I'm most likely to waste time checking various websites. So I just put anything I want to check into Netnewswire. It gathers it all, it's quick to go through, and then when it's done there's nothing else to check.

I also catalogued "what do I actually want to do on my phone" down to the level of even reviewing the modqueue on reddit in the browser. Then I made homescreen shortcuts for any of it, so I have an easy thing to tap which lowers friction for doing something I want, rather than something aimless.

Also sounds funny but I made an effort to close all tabs and open loops on my mac before starting my day. Have always been the type to have too many tabs, and it sort of takes up mental RAM.

There's no single big solution, but by chipping away at the problem and checking "what do I find unsatisfying" and "what do I want to do, where?" I've made a system that actually works pretty well for me.

I've tried cold turkey before, and it works great, especially if it's only for a single service. But the thing is it's kind of inconvenient to totally block youtube or twitter or anything as they often have useful info. Corraling them has been more sustainable for me.

atum47• 2 years ago

Are you addicted to YouTube or everything else kinda sucks? That's the case for me. I've been watching a lot of YouTube cause I can still find things worth watching over there, no matter how hard they try to push shitty content and shorts down my throat.

alienicecream• 2 years ago

Avoiding clickbait is easy, you just need to realize that some scumbag is trying to get you click on their trash so they can make money. So why would you do it?

jjulius4• 2 years ago

Avoiding [addictive thing] is easy, you just...

That is not a true statement for an addict. What's easy to you may be complicated for an addict. Addiction is not necessarily straightforward.

npteljes3• 2 years ago

It might be simple, but not easy.

cynicalsecurity3• 2 years ago

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. An addition to information in the informational age sounds really nonsensical.

jjulius4• 2 years ago

An addition [sic] to information...

That's not what they are addicted to.

cynicalsecurity3• 2 years ago

Then it's not problem with youtube. Youtube is simply a tool, a media platform. The guy has problem with watching junk, not with youtube or the internet.

_xivi• 2 years ago

Once I was aware of the amount of psychology tactics that goes behind youtube channels, I've come to the realization that I'm not "chilling" while on Youtube, more like being targeted by psychopaths.

I heard MrBeast on a podcast (the flagrant) describing the formula they developed to manufacture `captivating` content, how they make multiple thumbnails and A/B tests which one is more engaging, and all the effort and psychology manipulation that goes behind the scene. It was a huge turn off.

I never watched MrBeast content personally but I've since noticed the same patterns implemented by 'Education' channels like Veritasium who I previously pictured as innocent & informal. They actively hunt and bray on you consuming their content.

mtlmtlmtlmtl• 2 years ago

Vsauce is the saddest one for me. It used to be really interesting long form(at least back then it was "long form", now several hours long videos are fairly common in that space) educational content, now it's just spamming shorts in order to sell their subscription boxes full of toys.

purpleblue• 2 years ago

I deleted TikTok and Instagram, and my screen time dropped by 4 hours a day. That's 28 hours a week. I didn't realize how much time I spent on it, but it makes sense because I would watch it as soon as I woke up and before I went to sleep. I was gobsmacked at how much time I saved.

Now I spend all that time playing Baldur's Gate 3.

gherkinnn• 2 years ago

YouTube's excessive ads (disabling adblock serves as a forcing function) and them no longer recommending stuff with the right settings applied solved the YT problem for me. While I've never shared OP's state, I too sunk too much time and attention on that platform.

It is still there for those rare occasions I need it. But I no longer get pulled in.

Siecje• 2 years ago

I wish I could disable shorts on Android.

I have a watch later playlist that I want to get through but I find myself scrolling on shorts.

GaryNumanVevo• 2 years ago

Does anyone else not seem to be super susceptible to the dopamine/attention hacking that plagues modern social media? I watch YouTube occasionally, but I often run out of interesting stuff to watch, so I just go read a book or something. I have ADHD (non-medicated) so you think that this would be a nightmare for me.

oliwarner• 2 years ago

I'm tempted to follow. Doomscrolling YouTube Shorts seems fun at the time, but wastes hours of my life. When I stop, I feel like I've lost control; regret.

Google want my eyeballs for 2 solid hours, but I wish they'd let users focus their viewing time with a few basic controls. I'd disable Shorts in a heartbeat.

What an I waiting for? There's still plenty of long format content I genuinely enjoy. Perhaps it's time for an alternative client.

dcchambers• 2 years ago

I am beginning to go on a tirade against short-form and never-ending-video content/social media. TikTok, Insta/FB Reels, YouTube Shorts, etc.

This stuff is dangerous for a large percentage of individuals. And AI generated video content is only going to make it worse.

Imagine you're wearing your Apple Vision Pro or Meta Quest or future VR headset, watching a 180 degree "immersive" AI generated video. The eye tracking system notices your eyes fatigue slightly and it determines your attention is lacking. The algorithm instantly tweaks some settings and modifies the inputs to the AI video generation tool based on what it thinks (knows) will make you pay more attention, as it inserts subtle adverts here and there. AI video generation isn't free after all.

Five years ago this sounded like dystopian science fiction - but it's basically already possible with today's technology.

aequitas• 2 years ago

One issue for me is that everything leads me back to YouTube. When I want to cook a meal, there was this great YouTube video with a recipe from a while back I need to rewatch. Do some crafting work? Gotta check these videos about woodworking first to make sure I know what I’m doing. Somehow the visual content can bring the right information and nuances that a cookbook or manual can’t. Especially with food, like when does it look done. A video is like the picture of a thousand words, but times a thousand frames.

jimmysong• 2 years ago

I like Unhook, a browser plugin that takes out recommendations for YouTube. The YouTube home page then becomes more like a search engine and you can use it for that, but you won't keep going by watching more videos that are similar or related.

stevage6• 2 years ago

I'm so glad he wrote this. I wish more people would talk about it. YouTube and especially TikTok are totally designed to fuel addiction and there must be a lot of people deeply affected by it.

francoispon• 2 years ago

the only thing that has been stopped me watching youtube is stopping my premium sub and seeing all those ads every 5s, drives me crazy enough to stop watching all together

pimlottc2• 2 years ago

YouTube has been getting really aggressive about recommendations lately. They’re easily the majority of my homepage, and you can’t watch a single video on a new topic without getting flooded with related suggestions. Never mind there’s dozens of channels and topics I have enjoyed in the past, they rarely show up in the suggestions.

It’s gotten to the point that I use incognito mode for random video links to avoid wild swings in recommendations.

YouTube addiction, one month sober

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