About internet addiction

I used to love the internet as a kid. I'm 23yo, but I still had the opportunity to learn what the "old" internet was like (at least old to me, you may laugh though). I remember what going to cyber cafes was like, the old youtube tutorials from 2009 with 009 sound system music in the background, flash games, piracy being so common and sites like megaupload and the like being so used. I might be writing this from a very nostalgic perspective, but I hate how websites have evolved over time along with social media platforms. Purposefully designed to make you spend every minute they can in front of a screen. I started having problems with technology around the covid era and haven't been able to fully recover since. At this point I'm considering getting rid of my smartphone and getting a dummy instead. I don't use Instagram, I don't use Facebook. The main source of my problems might be Youtube, as I can find myself watching stuff I don't even care about and only realize afterwards that the video I'm watching about "science" or "finance" is in reality useless. They only make you "feel" as if you're learning something. When in reality, you're learning soykaf. I also hate what has happened to the Youtube platform as a whole. "Give me X minutes of your life and I'll change it", "how to be 99% whatever" (I genuinely think there's an obsession with that number), "how X changed my life", etc. Pretty sure this is also heavily influenced by my algo. At the same time I keep thinking. How are some of the most popular youtubers nowadays risen to the top just by complaining about soykaf? (Asmongold, penguinz0, etc). It seems as if videos or posts online that provoke the most amount of negative emotions are the most engaging and popular. In the past the internet wasn’t taken that seriously, and most things online revolved around fun (might be heavily biased on this one) rather than anger. Overall I want to spend less time in that soykafhole. And in the clear internet in general. Maybe visit this board once in a while and no more. I want to ask advice about your own experience with the digital world today. I also open the discussion towards what you remember the internet being like in the past and how it compares to today. Recently I spent some time on the old Youtube using the Wayback Machine and was amazed seeing how videos didn’t have cuts or changed camera perspectives every couple of seconds as is common nowadays. I would like to know if you've struggled with tech addiction in the past and what "tricks" helped you along the way. I know that well, in reality, these "tricks" I'm talking about may not exist. You can't shortcut your way out of some things I guess. I still want to know what things have helped you though. Thanks for reading this post.

wish there was an easy way to block all clickbait and contentslop - that's one of the main reasons major platforms don't want you to use backends or extensions - it gives you a chance to circumvent their addictive algorithms

>>91152 I really hope there was too. Youtube has become full with slop content. You can find videos about literally anything. I also wanted to add: many people think that YT does not "count" as a real social media and thus exclude it from the "official" list. Which is not true at all. In fact, many people don't know this but it is the most used social media across all age brackets in the US. It's also the one with the most active users worldwide.

>>91151 > At this point I'm considering getting rid of my smartphone and getting a dummy instead. Turn your smartphone into a dummy instead, at least initially. Turn on grayscale mode, get one of those minimal launchers for apps, delete all but the bare minimum that you need (phone/email/messengers, GPS, music, web browser). Some advice I've gotten from the dumbphone/no phone threads here (that I've yet to follow, and likely should) is to keep a note of everything that I do on my phone, and then work out how it could be done on the computer/elsewhere. > Pretty sure this is also heavily influenced by my algo. I go over my solutions to this in my answer to >>91152. But if your algorithm is causing you strife, remove it. Go through and be thorough about which channels deserve your attention and which need to go. > Overall I want to spend less time in that soykafhole. And in the clear internet in general. I read an article by a blogger about how people seem to equate the mainstream social media sites with the entirety of the internet. As a result, when said sites are flooded with garbage or AI slop or grifters, it can seem that the entire internet is filled with this activity. When in reality, it just appears this way from their limited perspective. The internet is not limited to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. There are blogs and wikis and web rings and so many other interesting little communities. Seek them out and you will be all the more better for it. Article I referenced: https://mayvane.day/blog/2026/01/doom.html > I would like to know if you've struggled with tech addiction in the past and what "tricks" helped you along the way. Yes, I think quite a few of us have. Mine was Discord, for a period. I'll spare you the details, but it culminated in me asking the mods to temporarily mute/ban me for a bit so I could break the cycle. After a few rounds of this, as well as some thorough de-conditioning (reminding myself that Discord is a terrible platform that harvests data and is like kicking dead whales down the beach up time), as well as blocking Discord in my hosts file (basically a DNS block) I eventually stopped caring enough to visit it. The "one simple trick to quit your scrolling addiction" is: - Block YouTube (or whatever it is that's been sucking up your attention) and promise yourself you will stop using it for a day (or an hour, or some small amount of time) - Find something else to fill the time with (reading, walking, drawing, etc.) - Take it day by day, and let it build up over time. When you falter, remind yourself about how long it's been and how nice it is to have the streak. That's it. Also those "Give me X minutes of your life and I'll change it", "how to be 99% whatever", "how X changed my life", etc. videos are designed to suck up your time and make you feel good without actually doing anything. In closing: As hypocritical as it seems to recommend you a YouTube video to watch (like giving an addict a fresh hit), this video by Reject Convenience is solid: I Switched to a Dumb Phone - 2 year check-in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VICMCwu-b1U >>91152 > wish there was an easy way to block all clickbait and contentslop The Brave browser has options for this in the "Filter lists" section. It uses the "Fanboy Adblock Homepage" filter list. I wager uBlock Origin can also do this if you're still on Firefox. Alternatively, if you use an Invidious instance to browse YouTube, you can set preferences to not show suggested videos. If you are on mobile, use a custom YouTube client that you can tweak to remove suggested videos. Finally, you can use RSS feeds and an RSS feed reader to "subscribe" to a channel. The format is as follows: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<CHANNEL_ID_HERE> The best option (from my biased perspective) is to make a list of all of the channels who make good content, get their RSS feeds, and then get updated on them through your RSS feed reader. You can set up scripts to automatically download the videos from YouTube and watch them offline, then delete them when you're finished. Or you can "stream" them through MPV and yt-dlp. > that's one of the main reasons major platforms don't want you to use backends or extensions - it gives you a chance to circumvent their addictive algorithms This, tbqh. Time spent on the platform means more time to influence you or show you ads. Get an ad blocker (Brave Browser on mobile/desktop works well) and do something else with your time.

>>I read an article by a blogger about how people seem to equate mainstream social media sites with the entirety of the internet. I've seen this discussion on this forum lying around as well before. If it is the sites that I visit or the internet as a whole that has changed. Overall the internet has become much more concentrated, at least in terms of how much time people dedicate to certain pages. I remember exploring much more in the past rather than sticking with one page forever, something much rarer certainly nowadays. I will def read the blog, thanks for that. >>as well as blocking Discord in my hosts file (basically a DNS block) I eventually stopped caring enough to visit it. I use Linux as well and I've done this in the past. I'll give it a get go. As for the recommendations I have turned YT history off. Seems that recommendations go off after doing that. >>Get an ad blocker (Brave Browser on mobile/desktop works well) and do something else with your time. I currently use the uBlockOrigin + Firefox convo. I know that Firefox recently has started to switch to the dark side of the moon. Selling your data and stuff as everybody else. I like Firefox though and I'll stick to it for a while. Maybe switching to LibreWolf or something else in the future might be worth idk. As for this video: >>I Switched to a Dumb Phone - 2 year check-in Will check it out. I'll try to spend less and less time over the next few weeks and post my progress here (if any). I've seen somewhere in the past before that people that take loans and say words such as "I will pay" or "God" consistently are the least likely to pay. Somewhat funny that I typed "I will ___" several times here and had to delete a bunch after realizing this. That being said I will (here it goes again) try to do my best. My plan is to post at least my progress. It will serve as well as a reminder of where I am at. Also it's not like Lainchain is very well known for being fast, so hopefully this thread will stay for a while.

truth be told, the internet was cool but you are not missing a whole lot....the most important thing about the internet was not how cool it was or the aesthetics of the cool cyberpunk anime but the important thing to take away from it is that it changed society...it made the average person capable of accessing all kinds of information whereas for many, many years the average person could just sit around for years being dumb as a box of rocks (although probably intelligent in their own way) there was a lot of unique lulz but you can find lulz elsewhere in life too...we all thought we were talking to sexy girls in other countries when really we were talking to pedos unbeknownst to us also, there were negatives such as young developing children becoming addicted to it, information overload, the establishment tricking everybody into thinking they would become programmers, hostile corporate takeover of non-corporate endeavors.....the big thing about the internet is it was probably always a honey pot, but not overtly and eventually it changed from a medium for lulz and experimentation and research into a medium for control and surveillance (although you can still use it for research).....i kinda view having an online social life as a form of complex research so yeah, the point of what i'm saying here is don't worry about what you missed just because you're a youngin'.....there are many valuable things waiting for you in life....what you experience in your life will likely be far more lasting for you than anything you could have experienced on the internet in the past treat the internet as something which benefits you, not something "you missed out on".....and as always...... ***Make Sure You Control The Machine, Not That The Machine Controls You***

i will also add that i do not necessarily espouse the idea of 'gender norms', but that i think girls using the internet is more 'apropro' than guys using the internet, because the life of a woman on average will probably be more sedentary (hanging around the house, raising kids, etc...) where as the life of a man might on average be more nomadic (going out and about, going to work)....i think (only, on average now) that women tend to be more sedentary whereas men tend to be more nomadic, and in ancient days men went out to hunt, but women had to stay home in the house and raise babies) now don't get me wrong, some of the smartest, most capable male friends i had growing up were computer nerds....there is absolutely no doubt that internet increases intelligence, however what i am saying is that the "lifestyle" of using computers are more conducive to female lifestyles than to male lifestyles...men tend to be more ougoing, more athletic, more mobile, less sheltered, less complex psychology (on average) for example...i have older friends who don't even know how to use computers still and in just about every case my older friends simply don't have the patience or desire to sit in front of a screen and understand it whereas it takes their elderly wife no time at all to sit there and be patient and understand..... in WW2, remember American men were off fighting the war and American women were back at home being typists and telecommunications operators i think women have a better, instinct and intuition for identifying society's control apparatuses than men, as well, because women are more susceptible to be controlled by others and therefore obviously the establishment and those interested in control are going to make more attempts to control women than to control men...feminism is not wholly without merit if you investigate it, because women live a different sort of existence than men and so they have kinda developed explanations for how to perceive society, that is not in the wider historical narrative.... so yes, a young man using the internet is going to be super intelligent and more capable on average, but his lifestyle is going to predominantly more likely be geared towards things that don't really necessitate internet and computers all time, where women, especially housewives are going to spend more time (on average) in the house or in some kind of dwelling, and this sort of lifestyle is indeed conducive to research, and more conducive to sitting in one place for longer periods of time when your computer screen starts talking to you, just say no

>>91158 but even the most basic investigation into gender differences will tell you that men tend to on average have a better mind for understanding systems such as mathematics and engineering than do women, so it makes sense that more intense computer nerds would be men instead of women but i am referring to not technical proficiency but just using the internet in general in the way lain and her friends at school do sorta

>>91157 Thanks for the advice. The quote at the end also rocks. >>91159 I thought that the differences between men and women in math and tech are mainly due to their interests as a whole. More man are interested in "objects" than women. And women interests are a little bit more inclined towards "people". That's also why more men usually go towards those types of fields. Didn't know about this. Doing I quick search I found that boys tend to be better at math and girls in language skills. The differences are impacted by socioeconomic status and whatsoever, there a a lot of factors into play ofc. But that seems to be the overall trend. The standard deviation is minimal though, so I wouldn't say male are more mathy just because of biological reasons honestly. It's just that many more are interested in those fields and that creates the real variance at the from my perspective. Anyways, I don't want to enter the never ending gender roles discussion here.

>>91156 > I use Linux as well Noted. In that case, you have Not sure if you prefer a GUI or not. I use newsraft (https://codeberg.org/newsraft/newsraft) as prefer using the terminal and ncurses interface. Feeds (https://gfeeds.gabmus.org/) is another that's apparently decent though I have no experience with it. > I currently use the uBlockOrigin + Firefox convo. I know that Firefox recently has started to switch to the dark side of the moon. Selling your data and stuff as everybody else. I like Firefox though and I'll stick to it for a while. Maybe switching to LibreWolf or something else in the future might be worth idk. I recommended Brave Browser as I wasn't sure what you used. Librewolf is a solid choice, shame it's shackled to Firefox and Mozilla. You can import the Fanboy filters into uBlock Origin or use the element selection tool to remove the more distracting elements. > That being said I will (here it goes again) try to do my best. My plan is to post at least my progress. It will serve as well as a reminder of where I am at. Also it's not like Lainchain is very well known for being fast, so hopefully this thread will stay for a while. I wish you the best. >>91157 > treat the internet as something which benefits you, not something "you missed out on".....and as always...... > ***Make Sure You Control The Machine, Not That The Machine Controls You*** Reminds me of this line from Dune by Frank Herbert: “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Idk how true this is but https://digdeeper.club/articles/browsers.xhtml#brave https://digdeeper.club/articles/mozilla.xhtml I used to use brave because of the brave rewards stuff, and then because of the privacy stuff that I didn't really understand, and then because of the tab groups that are pretty awesome actually, but in the end, the system is not made with privacy in mind at all, everything just keeps getting soykaftier and we keep being betrayed. Willpower is the primary thing you have to work on when it comes to beating an internet addiction and cutting off the influence of propaganda, its really hard I know, and that's why people always ask for and expect 'hacks' and 'tricks' and whatever that isn't pure willpower because they think they've already lost that battle; don't give up lainon!, the first step in reclaiming control the hard way is wanting to, having a fighting spirit. What motivates me to try and undo the many years of pavlov induced addiction and hedonism is reminding myself that strength, physical and mental, is a virtue, and that the people in power want to crush us and if we give up we're weak, unvirtuous and failed at life. It was Nietzsche that said that hedonism is in actuality not an addiction to pleasure but a profound fear of pain.

to be honest i would say that internet addiction is a far cry better than being addicted to drugs & alcohol...hell, i'd even say the same thing about gaming if internet addiction or gaming is a huge deal the truth is eventually life is going to force you to have to face reality and step away from the computer.....but you won't have a life destroyed by drugs after you step away...look at all these nut jobs running around high on meth. i'd take internet addiction or gaming to that soykaf any day if you spend most of your life in front of a computer addicted to internet and video games as years go by you have a serious mental issue that will probably need to be addressed in other ways...maybe move out of your mom's trailer in the sticks and go and take on life...you can always play LoL on the weekends with your friends or whatever....can't beat the laws of the universe, entropy is real i think the other people you interact with on the internet like governments and corporations trying to influence you and sway your mind is more of a threat than the addiction itself, unless you have a mental illness and are 500 pounds and in that case you need to go get advice from your community. you can still go to church or become a freemason or something even if you don't believe in the religion

>>91171 ty, these are some great resources

>>91172 Thankfully I am not built like that character in the WoW episode of South Park. My life is more or less ok, but I just don't want to spend that much time in front of a PC, at least doing soykaf. If I'm gonna be using a computer, it needs to be to do something that I like. It doesn't need to be necessarily useful. Don't like the way in which everyone tries to be productive as much as possible. Doing cool stuff just for the sake of doing it is what I look forward to usually. Corporations have a huge incentive to keep you engaged, doesn't matter what they show to you. That's the point were at right now.

> At this point I'm considering getting rid of my smartphone and getting a dummy instead. I did this a few years ago and it has worked well. There are a lot of gimmick phones out there - ignore them. Just get one that is incapable of browsing the wired or downloading apps. Flip phones are great if you don't mind the number pad. The only "trick" I can give you is that you need to live your life offline. If you have no existence offline, you will try and find it in the wired. The dumb phone works for this, but it has to go farther. I'm in grad school now and that means I work in the wired. Every distraction is a click away. I've found that scheduling my day keeps it in check, as does displacing sites built on endless content that feature everything (corporate social media) with slower-paced sites which have more niche communities. >I might be writing this from a very nostalgic perspective I think what made the old internet special was that you had interests and then you went online to read and talk about those interests on sites run by people who cared about those interests. I find my experience in the wired is dramatically more satisfying (and less addictive) when I can visit sites dedicated to one thing. If I visit a twitter profile I enjoy, I inevitably end up scrolling my feed full of soykaf I could never enjoy.

Think it just comes down to having some discipline to it. Tell yourself beforehand what youre doing and make sure you're keeping on track. 'I want to watch YouTube for x minutes' etc. Do what you came for then do something else. Internet addiction/doomscrolling isnt really new though, i mean the joke goes that /v/ posters don't play video games ,they post on /v/. Its the same with drugs too, sure some drugs might be easier to abuse but the biggest pitfall is doing the drug just because and not thinking about it.

An easy way to get rid of your addiction is to get addicted to something else

>>91171 > https://digdeeper.club/articles/browsers.xhtml#brave I may come off as a Brave wage slave in my response. That is not my intention, and I apologies if it comes off that way. The complaints in the article have been addressed. Brave proxies requests to Google sites and other invasive trackers through their own servers. If that bothers you, you can block the requests in your OS's firewall or in the hosts file and the browser will work fine. They use some telemetry to query users and get feedback: https://brave.com/blog/privacy-preserving-product-analytics-p3a/ I personally don't care for this, so I disable it in the settings: brave://settings/privacy Also, you can install uBlock Origin in Brave. I use it in conjunction with Brave Shields for more granular control. I use Brave on mobile because I don't like ads and the default browser in GrapheneOS doesn't do enough to block ads for my uses. I use Brave (among other browsers - Tor et. al.) on the desktop because Librewolf was being buggy at the time. I recommend Brave to (normal person) friends and family members as it does a good enough job at blocking ads and pesky things by default. To them, it just looks like reskinned Google Chrome with less ads, which is all they need. To be clear: I don't care for a lot of what the browser pushes on you upon first install (Brave Rewards, Brave Wallet, Brave News, sponsored background, etc.). I disabled it all as I have no use for it. There are scripts available that will automatically debloat Brave, and I wager there are means of compiling Brave from source that remove all of these features by default. If such a version were to be released officially (say, as a "minimal" version) I would switch to that one. Again - I don't mean to come off as a Brave wage slave >>91177 > I did this a few years ago and it has worked well. There are a lot of gimmick phones out there - ignore them. Just get one that is incapable of browsing the wired or downloading apps. Flip phones are great if you don't mind the number pad. Can't believe I forgot to mention this article in >>91155 but better late than never. The title says it all, the author switches to using Signal on the desktop and using a cute little GSM dumbphone (and a "smart" watch). https://web.archive.org/web/20260113105221/https://www.alvarez.io/posts/living-like-its99/ > The only "trick" I can give you is that you need to live your life offline. If you have no existence offline, you will try and find it in the wired. The dumb phone works for this, but it has to go farther. I got an e-reader to read more. Download books, load onto e-reader, read as necessary. It's served me well over the years, it looks too beat up for someone to want to steal, and it was cheap enough that I don't care if I loose it. It also doesn't have internet so I don't need to worry about getting distracted.

>>91181 Thanks for the article. I read it, very insightful.

>>91151 im also a victim to the algorithm or so i was, im trying my best to get rid of algorithms everywhere, for example i use libretube instead of normal youtube with my past subscription, im glad to be only addicted to youtube, recently tho im a victim to ai chatbots (yeah what a loser i am) and im also a victim to nsfw since like 6th grade or something, curiosity got the best of me, but for now im dping actual progress, i got rid of big algorithms im relying a lot on my online friends wich makes me a bit scared that i will rely on discord too much algorithms aside i also switched away from big tech/propiretary solutions because omg you dont know how annoying it is to get an unremovable popup fpr some microsoft family garbage you dont care about

>>91151 Addiction is really complicated, still dealing with internet addiction. Mostly pr0n, videos and falling down informational rabbit holes. One thing is environment. If you're spending lots of time at home, indoors, don't go outside much, have mental problems, you will probably find yourself teleporting in front of the screen watching stupid soykaf all the time. Nothing really helps in that situation. I suspect that addiction is a completely rational response to the environment that one might be in. There's a lot of things converging to cause it, but really what you want is to just stop having the addiction, instead of scrupulously analyzing it. Uhh, advice... Get a dumbphone or stationary phone. Both are dirt cheap. Nokia S60 phones have working whatsapp and maps. Turn your smartphone off and stash it somewhere (or sell it, or use it as a server). If you use discord, what are you doing here brother. Delete your account. No excuses. Blocking websites and apps don't seem to work, and if they do, you don't really have that big of a problem with internet addiction. Neither does scheduling poweroffs or anything annoying. Go outside!!! If you stay home, you lose. Getting a job probably solves a lot. Don't stay up late. Use privacy frontends, they don't have algorithms. Won't solve the problem however. Youtube is a fuarrrking piece of soykaf in the way it encourages making videos that appear to have value, but have absolutely none. It's like starving and biting into bread that disappears when you do. Uninstalling xorg on my laptop helped a lot, not sure why to be honest I can only give these little tips. I'm pretty sure that most people who quit addictions can't explain exactly how they did it. It's really uncertain, one might have this problem for the next 10 years, or it might be gone tomorrow. I guess the safest option is to pick up your computer and spin-throw it out of your window >>91172 Idk dawg, drugs seem way cooler than the net. They don't seem to stick to me, I don't get a lot out of them. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side.

The best solution to fight the algorithm and internet addiction is to detach. To stop living through the computer. And addons and alternatives are just a bypass and evasion of the needed detachment. When I say detachment I don't mean to completely stop using computers and internet for ever, but rather breaking the psychological hooks that turn tools into addictions. It might require a phase of complete detachment though to do so. I believe that when you can be at peace; alone without any external input, then you are truly free. And instead of taking part in the BS of the collective unconscious, you will be creating something valuable. Close your eyes for a moment. Take a slow breath and listen to your heartbeat. It's the sound of life, of strength that has carried you through countless trials. Stay here for a while and listen, the peace you are looking for is to be found there and only there: within. It will always be there with you, remember to always look inward for peace instead of chasing after the external projections.

>>91172 How about drop some dexies or meth and write free open source software , win win addictions

>>91265 whatever you do, don't have sex or wank on them. I can't take adderall anymore because it makes me hypersexual and I jerk it until I swell or bleed, had to go on SSRIs temporarily to reset my brain

>>91151 Use .onion sites, read books, get outside in nature more and work out whenever you feel like going onto the normal personnet. Do it for 2 weeks and see what your brain feels like.

>>91257 Really solid advice in my honest assessment. In regards to the following two points: >Blocking websites and apps don't seem to work, and if they do, you don't really have that big of a problem with internet addiction. Neither does scheduling poweroffs or anything annoying. >Youtube is a fuarrrking piece of soykaf in the way it encourages making videos that appear to have value, but have absolutely none. It's like starving and biting into bread that disappears when you do. I can confirm. I've been struggling with addiction to the worst kinds of time-sink sites like pirated online TV-streaming services and Youtube. Tried all sorts of gimmicks to limit and manage my access to them, from browser extensions that block access after a designated time spent on the site to iptables connection time configurations. The former was too easy to circumvent if I really wanted to whereas the latter was just a pain-in-the-ass hassle, because I set it up as a nuclear option to limit all internet access across the board, which then inconvenienced "real" and productive uses related to information work (for example, I think online dictionaries are superior to any and all dictionaries in physical form, because it's just that much more efficient and quicker to lookup words and terminology, and possibly their synonyms, antonyms and etymologies that you actually need than try to shift through thousands of pages, unsure whether or not you end up actually finding that particular word anyway, not to mention having to settle for a restricted, bare-boned, minimal descriptions of the words in case you happen to find what you're looking for). As for modern-day YouTube, I used to spend several hours watching video essays, police cam footage, "you laugh you lose" videos and random movie clips, but nowadays less and less, because types of videos have become boring, in addition to the whole YouTube user experience turning painful and frustrating when you can't find anything interesting to watch. For instance, If you've seen around a hundred meme videos or police cam footage compilations, I feel like you've seen them all. I have actually begun to anticipate or predict the supposed "punchlines" or twists in these sorts of videos. You see someone filming a person eating something? Typically a bird, monkey or a squirrel comes and snatches the food, and then the person gasps in astonishment. If it's a video filmed on a boat, usually either a fish jumps out of the water and slaps the driver or one of the passenger in the face or a whale waves its tail for the camera. In similar fashion all the video essayist types, at least the most popular ones, really feel hollow and unsatisfying. Especially the left-leaning ones who critique and criticize capitalism. Sure, I might agree with what they are saying, but, if you really think about it, most of what they say isn't really adding anything new or tell anything that we didn't know already. For instance, Baudrillard alone already said most of what was worth saying way back in 70s and 80s in regards to media manipulation, meaninglessness of contemporary knowledge-work, and other such nonsense that we used to call "fake and gay", but no longer care if something is real or not, because reality isn't just that entertaining to people anymore. All that these over-analyzing YouTube essayists can do is regurgitate the words of better men than them or serve as a footnote and on-the-field vindication of these spiritual giants of decades past. Ramblings aside, I think the best cure to internet addiction is by coming to the realization of how stupid and empty your obsession and addiction to that something actually is. In my case it happened by going all the way in on said addiction and become insofar experienced on it that it ends up sucking all the joy out of it. These days I can't watch YouTube longer than 2 hours per week, not counting listening to ambient music to blur out all background noise when I'm trying to focus on reading and writing. In a similar fashion I managed to break away from my WoW addiction by coming to the realization of how dumb and pointless that hobby was: not only do you not own the character you tirelessly slave for, but all the "progress" you make with that character is not only incessantly done away with by every new expansion, the whole game itself is based on arbitrary restrictions that you can circumvent at any time, if you only had access (like by running a private server and giving your character all the best gear in the game or by flying to places you normally wouldn't be able to access). Those experiences rather quickly killed off that addiction.

>>91711 >the whole game itself is based on arbitrary restrictions that you can circumvent at any time, I've got another angle on making video games boring. In a simple web game like tower defense, it's easy to kill the joy of action by recognition of what you are doing without abstraction. I will click here, then here, then here. If this is happening, then I do this, else this. Fast resets help extenuate this. Oh, I'm having a perfect start- oops, things went a little wrong- why not start over? Cheese it, cheese the surprise out of it. What sort of video game can't be mapped onto a flowchart? I guess it doesn't fit well when there is a level of strategy where I have to scrap the flowchart every time I learn a new strategy or find myself in a novel situation.

The digital world is dehumanizing by its very nature. The original purpose for things like written language was to communicate human thoughts and human ideas and human feelings to other human beings. The digital world has completely subverted that idea, now humans create content not for the purpose of communicating their thoughts to other human beings, but to communicate their thoughts to machines, they tailor their content to appeal to inhuman algorithms, to maximize metrics such as "likes" and "views", all genuine human connection has been abstracted away and reduced to nothing more than a commodity. Humans are talking to machines and working at the behest of machines, and the so-called "AI revolution" makes this dynamic more obvious than ever before. This is mental illness, in my opinion. A very dangerous and insidious form of mental illness, the kind of that makes ordinary people internalize the misanthropy of their technofascist billionaire oligarchs and become dehumanized obedient slaves, their entire life devalued to nothing more than a set of numbers and statistics. It's no wonder that there is a loneliness epidemic and things like depression and schizophrenia and narcissistic personality disorder are running rampant and suicide rates have been steadily on the rise for the past several decades. I've been trying to unplug from it all as best I can but it's kind of hard to when everyone else wants to remain plugged in. I hate text messaging now, I'm totally sick of it and I used to call my friends and talk to them on the phone but nobody wants to do that anymore and they act like you are crazy for even suggesting it, expecting a person to give you the attention of a direct person-to-person phone call is considered rude nowadays, like it's asking way too much of a person. When I'm out and about on the street I see people staring at phones or walking around with wireless earbuds in, nobody wants to participate in reality anymore. I have no idea how to get out from under this, being unplugged and trying to immerse myself in analog reality ironically makes me even more alienated from other people than before, when I leave the house and go run errands or ride my bike or whatever my only company are the squirrels and the birds, the people I cross paths with are all somewhere else.

>>91257 >Delete your account. No excuses. I set up a discord bridge so I can keep in touch with some of my more complacent friends who are unwilling to ditch the platform. Need my account to remain active so I can use the bridge. Womp womp.

Refreshing to see like-minded people here. I have a lot of thoughts, recommendations and experiences regarding this but I'll try to keep it short for now since I don't particularly enjoy reading rambling texts myself. [Editors note after finishing: this was the best I could do, please forgive me] To sum my experiences: lost about six years to unregulated internet usage was waking up to it slowly but only during the past five months have realized how bad the effect is and what I need to do. My true "awakening" happened when I quit porn and used internet only as a tool for work for a period of over a month or so. I found out that integration through RSS for selected content such as podcasts and writings is fine. This includes four (4) selected youtube channels that I view through MPV like one anon here recommended to do. Moderate consuming of shows and movies is fine. Obviously quality information purely propagated through text and that is related to my projects is fine. Everything else falls under the pathological and harmful for me. It should go without saying that smartphones should be gotten rid of. First off I am absolutely convinced that the stimulation that internet entertainment provides is harmful for our flourishing in several ways. It creates disinterested, dull and shallow minds that lack any experience of the more fulfilling aspects of existence. Your experience of real world is stripped of any possibility for deep enjoyment, your capacity to engage with more difficult materials and find meaning and value in them is harmed. Your capacity to engage and truly enjoy works of art (digital or otherwise) is culled. All of this become absolutely clear to me when I stopped engaging with it in ways that is the norm for a lot of people and was for me. Some thoughts on the "form" of the content that works as addictive. First I found video itself suspect as youtube was absolutely a big part of my addiction but I considered that I would not find the same degradation of mind and compulsion to forever repeat when I was watching shows or movies without distraction. At the same time text and pictures on news are addictive and those are made to make you scroll and read for hours (news are absolute waste of time in any case). Other curious thing that I noticed was that a lot of people like to talk about algorithms but then again one can scroll reddit until ones brain falls out and the content is not tailored based on your profile. Based on these observations I identified the following commonalities. First common denominator is rate of updates. Second is absolute accessibility 24/7 and endless catalogue. Third is lack of effort to enjoy and small units of content. Indeed, taken alone these things can be harmless yet when combined they become parasites on our lives. Ultimately everyone finds through experience what is harmful for them (I'd hope). I fear that some will never be able to experience how delightful it is to be in what I take it to be the normal, unstimulated state of being during the everyday. I only found it through excessive harm that I've caused myself but I wonder if most people will ever find the same or if it even exists and I'm just completely alone in my experiences and that people can moderate and get to enjoy spikes of their shallow slop for an hour with no quality of life decreased. I now know that I can't. For me, giving an inch means losing it all. I don't plan to be for long. Indeed I relapsed yesterday after a couple of weeks. I simply cannot cope with imageboards either or at least not in my current state. Maybe after a year I could reintegrate since I find Lainchan to not always be waste of time. I still find value in seeing writings that people have put effort into and it helps me to get push back on the ideas that I have. Sadly most anons do not write quality posts and do not aspire to. Ideally one would have a real life community and people but I have massive difficulties with connecting to other people and don't mind being alone so I don't vow all of this off. I take all real-life connection to be superior to its internet counterpart. All comment sections are worthless garbage. Ideally everyone has websites where they publish their writings and then people communicate through email or otherwise if they have something to say peer-2-peer. Imageboards and forums work only when people are sincere and put the effort in and you are STILL dealing with the 24/7 updates and all the compulsion that comes with that. Despite several failings my trajectory has been positive. Failure has already taught me lots and the continuous periods of non-pathological usage keep getting longer. My advice is the following. You have to get rid of your phone. If your bank doesn't offer ANY other 2fa auths then strip all applications other than it, change everything familiar to you in the phone (and preferably the phone itself) and do not use it outside of verification. Always throw it back into somewhere you can't see it and can't access it easily. The goal is to forget and defamiliarize to break all habit. This goes for desktop too. Change everything familiar from DE to wallpaper to browser look and so on. This made a huge difference in terms of sticking to my rules. Rules, yes you need to write down what you are committing to (use a notebook). I found out also that writing down my impulses, positive changes, reflections immediately after failing and other things very helpful especially to get me back on track. Note that if you don't have a vision of what you are doing outside the internet you will never succeed. I have books, thinking, nature and meditation. I don't know how you find yours if you don't have them already. >>91171 >Willpower is the primary thing you have to work on Willpower is important but more important is to put yourself into a position where you don't have to expend any willpower in the first place. Your best bets are: fleeing physically, keeping triggers out of sight and breaking off anything that could remind you of the thing you are trying to avoid. Funnily enough even changing the look of your room can help to break off your brains connections.

>>91151 One thing that may help is using one of those 3rd party applications from Fdroid that can help you block those con artist channels on Youtube. I hate how Youtube changed cause of Jewish investors and misapplied AI. I also hate the increase of censorship on Discord. Twitter improved in terms of free speech after it became X but it still has significant room for improvement especially cause of the AI censor. In order to help address addiction, try to figure out how you can go to some forested or secluded place to camp or just spend the whole day there. It would also make internet use afterward more gratifying. I also recommend taking up hobbies that don't use the internet such as visiting an arcade, going to a gun range, or finding out something similar to throwing lawn darts.

>>91735 YouTube was founded by two Jews and then run by Susan Wojcicki who was also Jewish, you dumb gorilla n1gger.

I quit mainstream internet/social media after COVID ended. I essentially deleted all my social media accounts in one go. I used Youtube only for a while after that but now I use Invidious instances instead. It was the hardest the first month but after that I got used to it. I would recommend picking up a hobby to distract yourself. I like gardening. The way I saw it, the friends who actually care about me will be willing to spend 10-15 minutes setting something up to stay in touch with me. From the 100s of 'friends' on my social media, only about 7 of them remain. They all opened up Matrix accounts just to stay in touch with me. Now as a bonus I only talk with people who care about me. I've suffered through other addictions too and its more or less the same when it comes to quitting (outside of hard drugs). Just cold turkey for a month and see where you're at.

>>91155 >The internet is not limited to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. There are blogs and wikis and web rings and so many other interesting little communities. Seek them out and you will be all the more better for it. I first got on the internet in 1995, and while I was late to much of the Wild West era I still found great, niche communities. Over the past 15 years, as most of those places have been completely eroded or hollowed out, I've completely lost sight of these parts of the internet. What's worse, I'm not even sure _how I would go about finding them again_. I don't think it's as simple as "seek them out," because the only places I can think to turn to is mediated by the same soykaf infrastructure that hollowed out the internet in the first place. I've spent some time trying to surf gopher rings etc and mostly I find pages and pages of dead journal blogs.

>>91151 I mostly just use the internet for piracy, youtube and rumble. Majority of the channels I watch are people uploading really old content from VHS/old radio shows/schizo/esoteric stuff that is highly interesting to me. Usually these channels have less than 10k subs and they go under the radar hard. I admit since the start I mostly just use the internet for research, early image boards were really good for this but they've since been gutted with bots, probably because of how educational they were in the early days with high IQ anons inform dumping dozens of links to stuff like this etc. ( I may just be fuelling a nostalgia addiction with these obscure channels hard to say) Trying to get rid of tech addiction? Just get other hobbies, go buy a cheap instrument and learn that, go outside/work out more. Do more outside stuff, meet people, pick up a card game or something where you can go meet people and be entertained without technology etc. I'm terminally tech addicted but it has mostly been funnelled into researching and lately religious study.

Addiction is basically the result of not working hard enough, work harder

>>91151 You know what to do already, just stop visiting. If they truly don't add to your life, it is easy to let go.

>>92252 It's not. It's hard as soykaf to get off "short video" platforms. You are addicted after a first dosage if you surrender to watching them while you are bored. Then they're replacing your whole free time with mindless consuming effortless content and cheap dopamine. The process is so simple as you don't need to do anything, just move your thumb slightly, and let the carousel with endless circuis roll, as you stare at it with a numb brain. The algorithms are engineered to perfection. They track every "like", every comment, every swipe, and feeding you with the most relevant for you "information", where in information I mean soykaf. They act like drugs, they are made to be drugs, but instead of money and health they're taking your free time. Something you can't get back or heal. I think it's the purest evil that was ever existed. When they take your free time, ability to get bored, ability to think freely, you become a mindless consumer, so convenient for the government or corporation (that are not much different from each other nowadays). When you lose those abilities, it's hard to get them back. Because you unlearned how to be creative, how to imagine things. And it's so hard, when you can just enjoy your endless circuis. Right at your fingertips. There is only one way for rehabilitation. Delete all accounts. All apps. Everything. Stop touching your damn phone. Track your screentime. Start going on a walks and talking to people, or at least use your computer. You can't be creative on a phone. If you ever tried to quit cigarettes you will find the familiarities. Those "short videos" are no different, but instead of damaging your lungs they damage your brain. And the only way to stop smoking is to quit altogether. Once and for all.

>>92279 I was curt on purpose. When you aggrandize the "issue" with words like 'addiction' and 'rehabilitation', you make it appear more difficult than it really is, which is harmful. Young people like to characterize it as an addiction because of the generation's pathological tendency to denying responsibility; a narrative of young people being trodden on by 'the system' in many ways perhaps lends them the desire to deny responsibility for all aspects of their lives. Even for something that is their own action, they are not responsible for it because it is characterized as 'addiction', so they are 'technically not at fault'. You must know it is so simple as absence, then it is easy to stop. I had no problems with short videos, I can't ever fail to see their vapidity, so I can't be drawn to them. The materialist idea that "addiction is caused by (unspecified) chemicals in the brain, and audio-visual stimuli can trigger these chemicals, ergo videos can lead to addiction" is very ignorant. A person who is mentally steeled against short-form videos could watch a thousand and be unaffected, but if you force heroin or nicotine into his body, mental strength would probably not help. He may be mentally strong enough that after the event, he can resist all cravings that come after, but the physiological addiction could still be created. Therefore, what people call the short-form video 'addiction' can not be anything like a physiological addiction. In response to anyone who will bring up gambling addiction and say this disproves what I say, I would object that gambling addiction involves different, more complex mechanisms; it preys on people who aren't immune to mental traps, such as 'magical' luck thinking (for instance, believing that as a losing streak goes on, one is more likely to win) or cannot evaluate long-term net earnings (people focus more on their wins than losses, overestimating their overall presence, but the typical gambler, especially long-term, have made a net loss they are constantly failing to recoup). However! if one is to learn these things, or simply figure them out, they can be steeled against the allure of gambling; they can lose money, and say "it is too risky to try regain this" and save themselves the trouble. Now, the thing is, we can see there are closer parallels with addiction related to phones and gambling addiction. The problem is that when people talk about addiction and phones, it's always from the 'chemical' angle, always gotta mention the word 'dopamine'. The comparison to drug addiction reflects a sense of (willing) helplessness, as a drug addiction is more helpless, uncontrollable, rectified through intervention, whereas a gambling addiction is wholly mental and behavioral so must be amended on this level from within. But even then, a smartphone addiction is not even close to the level of a gambling addiction in how difficult it is to pull up from those mental trappings. Despite that, it afflicts the majority of the population, almost everyone in the young population except an extremely small minority. So what choice do they have? Their behavior is 'bad' and they know it, so calling it an 'addiction' is their way of feeling better about not making an effort to control themselves.

>>92279 > The algorithms are engineered to perfection. I think they're rather simple and work based on bold statistics and correlations of likes. I would call it "engineered to perfection" if they worked based on semantic analysis, EEG feedback and simulations of neuron circuits, but I doubt it's possible even today. That would be truly capable to fry our brains like popcorn. > believing that as a losing streak goes on, one is more likely to win But that is kinda true. By not continuing to play, you have zero chance to win. So compared to that, continuing playing increases chances to win. Not gradually after each try, but still, compared to not playing, which is the only alternative. Their mental model is a bit off, but this is actual correct idea behind it when you fix it.

>>92289 >But that is kinda true. By not continuing to play, you have zero chance to win. So compared to that, continuing playing increases chances to win. Lain, I am not sure why you pick a off-hand remark in a post that is generally not about gambling at all to pick at. Especially because, as I understand, you know what I mean by this, and that is the truly relevant part. Or I may have not explained properly... let me re-explain in that case. Say a gambler is playing dice for money with a d4, and needs a d1 for the payout. First roll he gets 3, then 2, then 2 again. In a situation like this, people have a tendency to believe at that moment "I will definitely win this round". That round has nothing special though, the chance is still 25% for a particular round. More broadly, the chance of four d4 rolls not turning up a specific number is 31.64%, which is not as unlikely as one may expect. But, they may firmly believe they will win this final round, and that would influence how much they would bet.

Ah, finally a place where I can share my greatest anti-internet addiction invention. The idea is simple - we need to invert the central axiom of our relationships with the wired: that it's always ON and we need to use willpower to turn it OFF. It's too draining and annoying and I kept failing at it. Instead, our new default should be keeping router OFF at all times and only powering it with a concrete goal in mind. To track this change I've started analogue internet access log: before powering my router, I add a new entry, state my goal and the current time, when I'm done - I note the end time and turn off router. I've been at it for two weeks now and it works like a charm, it's still okay to lose hour or two mindlesly scrolling here and there, just keep it all accounted. Also a reminder, internet withdrawal was (and is) absolutely real for me: I felt restlessnes, depression and anger for half a day at a time, it's only to be expected as I was using the internet as a mean to escape negative emotions. Godspeed anons, I wish us all a swift recovery from this menace, let's stop being mindless consumers and start living our lives.

>>91153 Is peertube worth anything these days?

>>92290 Why are you so sure that's exactly how people think? Have you asked a lot of gamblers?

>>92298 https://rg.org/research/gambling-researches-by-immunizenevada/cognitive-distortions-in-problem-gambling "The Gamblers Fallacy" is well-documented, though I really knew about this because I knew a ton of gamblers at my old workplace, and spent a lot of time listening to their conversations. My original point was not about gambling at all. It was about how the phrasing of "addiction" and the cultural associations around it when it intersects with smartphones, makes the problem seem worse than it really is. It also reveals a generation's desire to deny themselves agency in their behavior. To me, this is far more interesting, and I would rather talk about this. Unless you're telling me lainchan has no people interested in how technology and society interact?

>>92291 I have considered this, but how do you actually function? Most of the stuff I want to do involve computer in one way or another. I even use it for interests that are fundamentally offline activities - like looking up chords for song you want to play, or using online tools when preparing for Dungeons and Dragons sessions. >>92299 I don't know, Lain. I agree that you should take responsibility for your life, but it also seems obvious that some things are intentionally made easier, and some more difficult. By very smart people who don't have your best interest on mind.

>>92301 I'm not saying you should throw away your access point, but rather start using it consciously, keeping it turned off by default and tracking every time you turn it on. I like to download the things I need, like books and sheet music to use them offline & store locally for future usage. When I need an online tool, I just write it down and use it for however long it takes. Intentional usage is great—the main goal is just to cut out those long periods of pure consumption.

>>92288 >When you aggrandize the "issue" with words like 'addiction' and 'rehabilitation', you make it appear more difficult than it really is, which is harmful. I don't consider my aggrandizement harmful in any way, I believe that we largely underestimate the impact of social media and short form content on the society, that's why I used these words. And I think that the term "addiction" is on point, because there's a lot of similarities, and watching tiktok is definitely a harmful habit, it's just so widely socially accepted and there's no actual tangible substance to be consumed, therefore we simply don't look at it as the problem, and we definitely should. >Young people like to characterize it as an addiction because of the generation's pathological tendency to denying responsibility; a narrative of young people being trodden on by 'the system' in many ways perhaps lends them the desire to deny responsibility for all aspects of their lives. Even for something that is their own action, they are not responsible for it because it is characterized as 'addiction', so they are 'technically not at fault'. I don't think that it is a denying responsibility, and when comparing to actual tangible psychoactive substances like drugs, the user of such substances is already aware of all the consequences. Countless people pick up smoking, weed and alcohol every year, even while they are told their whole childhood and adolescence that drugs bad and you shouldn't do them. The fallacy is that with digital platforms we are largely unaware of consequences, and they seem not as serious as real drugs, even while there really is addictive behavioral, causes of depression and suppressed will, and the last two are caused because short form content consumers tend to socialize way less, because tiktok is much more entertaining. >The materialist idea that "addiction is caused by (unspecified) chemicals in the brain, and audio-visual stimuli can trigger these chemicals, ergo videos can lead to addiction" is very ignorant. A person who is mentally steeled against short-form videos could watch a thousand and be unaffected, but if you force heroin or nicotine into his body, mental strength would probably not help. Not everyone is mentally steeled. With younger generations, the tiktok usage comes from networking effect, and the one that doesn't use that app feel missing out of "new trends", "memes" or anything, and no one really want to feel like an outcast. I tend to compare SFC (short form content) with smoking and not something serious like heroin just because I did quit both and I found lots of similarities while trying to finally quit them. My friends are still using SFC platforms and showing me something from there once in a while. What I see is largely disappointing, not entertaining and the content does not bring actual value. What scares me is that I didn't notice that before. >I had no problems with short videos I think that the lack of experience of being addicted to them is what makes you underestimate the whole problem. But this thread is perfect for gathering experiences from other people about usage of consequences of SFC. >I would object that gambling addiction involves different, more complex mechanisms I largely agree with you on that, but, again, there's some sort of "roulette" mechanism in the way you interact with SFC platforms. You have a chance to get video that you don't like, the algorithm adds it to your profile so you encounter these video less and brings the incentive to stay on the platform for longest time. And if you get video that you do like, it again writes into your profile, so you don't leave the app. It can show some random videos from time to time to perfect the personal recommendations so you stay on the app the longest and will sure be in your own comforting information bubble. >Their behavior is 'bad' and they know it, so calling it an 'addiction' is their way of feeling better about not making an effort to control themselves. Judging from the experience nobody calls it that way as they do with drugs. They don't consider it addiction or harmful habit, I just think that they need to do so to at least acknowledge the problem and then try to get unhooked from it. Even while it's not as bad as heroin or gambling, because losing health and money really is more important than losing your free time, ability to be bored, ability to create and think freely. You just can't do that while you are hooked on SFC platforms and your free time is filled with garbage that you consume daily.

>>92313 >usage of consequences Usage *and* consequences, of course. Pardon me.

>>91155 >You can set up scripts to automatically download the videos from YouTube and watch them offline Sorry for my ignorance on this matter but how exactly can i do this? I tried messing with feebro's settings and i can't find anything about scripts at all

The old Internet was 1983 thru 1994.

>>92288 >Young people like to characterize it as an addiction because of the generation's pathological tendency to denying responsibility; a narrative of young people being trodden on by 'the system' in many ways perhaps lends them the desire to deny responsibility for all aspects of their lives. Even for something that is their own action, they are not responsible for it because it is characterized as 'addiction', so they are 'technically not at fault'. It’s not young people who are doing this. It’s older people who are patronizing young people. I do agree that “addiction “ is an overused term for extensive consumption of short-form content

>>91158 This post is kind of wrong. You rely on archaic gender stereotypes that haven’t been a thing since the 1970s Women aren’t sedentary as you think. They go out and do stuff as well. Also, a lot of our patrons who use the Internet to do research and whatnot are mainly male. Women don’t do as much stuff that involves computers as much as you think outside of watching video reels on social media Also men are just as intuitive about social phenomenon because they have to do a lot of grunt work>>92288

>>91172 This. I find it funny how so many people treat the Internet as worse than drugs in terms of recreational overconsumption. >>92313 TikTok is overblamed for all the world’s problems. It’s like people forgot about Vine. I’m not saying there isn’t any bad sides to TikTok but I seriously think it’s overstated because it’s a new platform The same fear porn over TikTok was the same over video games and TV. Also, people often watch video reels together, not just separately.

>>92313 >I don't consider my aggrandizement harmful in any way, I believe that we largely underestimate the impact of social media and short form content on the society, that's why I used these words. And I think that the term "addiction" is on point, because there's a lot of similarities, and watching tiktok is definitely a harmful habit, it's just so widely socially accepted and there's no actual tangible substance to be consumed, therefore we simply don't look at it as the problem, and we definitely should. People have been decrying social media as addictive since 2009. If anything there’s not enough factoring in human agency. >Not everyone is mentally steeled. With younger generations, the tiktok usage comes from networking effect, and the one that doesn't use that app feel missing out of "new trends", "memes" or anything, and no one really want to feel like an outcast. >I tend to compare SFC (short form content) with smoking and not something serious like heroin just because I did quit both and I found lots of similarities while trying to finally quit them. My friends are still using SFC platforms and showing me something from there once in a while. What I see is largely disappointing, not entertaining and the content does not bring actual value. What scares me is that I didn't notice that before. Have you considered that most TikTok patrons are just casual users? That they don’t really use it for more than half the day straight? >I largely agree with you on that, but, again, there's some sort of "roulette" mechanism in the way you interact with SFC platforms. You have a chance to get video that you don't like, the algorithm adds it to your profile so you encounter these video less and brings the incentive to stay on the platform for longest time. And if you get video that you do like, it again writes into your profile, so you don't leave the app. It can show some random videos from time to time to perfect the personal recommendations so you stay on the app the longest and will sure be in your own comforting information bubble Imageboards fit this more than TikTok in a way. Imageboards are tightly knit bubbles that will go apeshit over differing opinions and even doing random bans. I encounter more diversity of thought on Reddit. Imageboards are often the same old thousand patrons spamming the same old recycled jokes and sentiments

>>92299 >It also reveals a generation's desire to deny themselves agency in their behavior. To me, this is far more interesting, and I would rather talk about this. Unless you're telling me lainchan has no people interested in how technology and society interact? Young people aren’t willfully denying themselves any agency. It’s more the elders that are infantilizing young adults The brain development theory is being pushed to justify parents and teachers having an iron fist on young adults personal lives. Helicopter parenting and stranger danger are the main reason for this. Society now treats twenties as the second teenage decade. Hell, teens were considered adults up until the seventeenth century in the west. Nowadays, people think you’re not a real adult until age thirty. And yet or in their thirties nowadays are barely more functional than schoolchildren

>>92299 The people who pathologize Internet consumption as addiction are usually over thirty. They frame it as addiction due to ingrained technophobia They even wanna suggest banning kids from the Internet based on outlier incidents

>people treat the Internet as worse than drugs in terms of recreational overconsumption. i don't know, at least drug addicts and alcoholics have interesting stories to tell and they gain all kinds of valuable real-world knowledge and experience from their addiction. even food addiction has its perks, you could become a famous fetish porn star or be in the guinness book of world records as the world's fattest man. whereas someone who has spent their entire life being addicted to something that isn't even real has absolutely nothing going for them whatsoever, nobody cares about anything they've done, they're just a zero. they might as well not even stop, it's not like their life is going to get any better if they overcome their addiction.

>>92435 Seriously? This is exactly what I’m talking about. The moral assignment of Internet addiction being worse is due to aesthetics. Also those other addiction you mentioned like food and porn are normalized into freak show material like what you see on TLC. Also how is the Internet “not real”? It may not have tangible auxiliaries like with drug addiction at least it has pipes and poweders and syringes but that doesn’t make the Internet any less real

>>92435 >I don't know, at least drug addicts and alcoholics have interesting stories to tell and they gain all kinds of valuable real-world knowledge and experience from their addiction Drug addiction is sympathized as worldly and cool that’s why. Especially alcohol. Most drug users aren’t as worldly as you think they are. And the interesting stories they tell are probably embellished or not as glamorous if experienced in real time. Also those addictions you mentioned that are “cooler “ have more dire real world consequences Alot of druggies end up homeless or as shut ins with life support systems and they end up being broke due to medical costs Internet addiction doesn’t have close to that. Internet addiction is frowned upon because it doesn’t involve interacting with others.

>>92436 >>92437 you ever have somebody tell you about a dream they had? listening to someone's videogame experiences is even less interesting than that. i don't know if it's even fair to call it videogame addiction to be honest. it's just being a shut-in and a dullard, like some lonely old lady who has a bunch of cats and sits around watching fox news all day.

>>92438 A lot of people discuss their video game experiences with each other Hell, video game play through me are the most popular genre of live streaming.

We've reached a point Cable TV is more resourceful and informative than soytube

Small phones! Currently running an iPhone 13 Mini and it's just small enough to be uncomfortable. Before that I had the Palm phone (3.3" display!) but security updates stopped almost immediately so I shelved it when the battery started to go. Digital minimalism isn't as freeing as I thought it would be though, I stressed so much over lean hardware and organization that I almost think I would have been happier just buying what I wanted and showing a little restraint.

>>91728 People said the same thing when written media was first introduced. They thought it would make people apathetic.

>>91728 I am very much like you in the way you talk, but I gather your change is more recent than mine if you are coming here to talk about it. There are a set of very uncomfortable maxims of the world you just need to accept, namely that there is not much you can do about this, it will stay like this, and above all, you need to find a way to enjoy your time in this world despite this. I don't know about you but there is for me, a temptation to forget this and live as others, to not stand out nor stand against. I just know that my nature will drive me to misery if I do this, yet I am being driven to misery already. But between a noble and ignoble misery, the former is at least preferable, so I stick to my beliefs. My recent idea is to draw away from other people in an extreme fashion, to approach a hermit lifestyle. I can't exactly, but I can try in the ways that count.

>>91728 >The original purpose for things like written language was to communicate human thoughts and human ideas and human feelings to other human beings IDK about that. Its also just useful for note taking, reminding yourself of things you knew previously. You might say 'I two months ago is a different being than I now', but thats not the usual sense of things. This is pure speculation but I could very well imagine some sperg accountant in Babylon or Egypt or wherever inventing writing to make his job easier. His system would probably be basic and not well defined and complete, but it would serve the basic point of telling himself that at this time we had so and so many cattle and such an amount of corn and such like. Eventually this spreads, maybe he teaches it to his apprentices, maybe someone sees him using it and asks about it, but it starts, in this case as just a personal code embedded in a physical object. AFAIK most very early writing samples are accounting, inventories and receipts and such like. Poetry, novels, these things are much newer than spreadsheets as far as the written word goes.

>>91151 Those tricks really do exist, I have two for you: 1. Replace scrolling with videogames. It sounds like replacing cocaine with crack, but it's not. Videogames are way healthier than passively scrolling through feeds. It is an active way to generate dopamine. It's not supposed to be a permanent fix, but it will get you more "unhooked" to their claws. The second trick is the ideal, although a bit painful. What worked wonders for me was: putting my phone away from me and sitting in silence, letting my mind wonder and say whatever it has to say. In the modern society we are so used to being "engaged" that we don't let our brains manifest its desires, or pains, or even breathe out. It's painful not only because it's boring but because doing this will bring out some painful things you were ignoring, but if you are there for it it will be clear what you have to do. You have dreams and desires, but your brain is getting the dopamine it wants from the apps in your phone, but if you make it understand that it's over, it will go to the healthy routes to hit that dopamine. Working on projects, exercising, writing, drawing, reading... something you actually do instead of being passively entertained. For example... in one of those meditative instances I fell asleep, and had a dream I was trapped in my apartment. All windows closed, everything was dark and only screens were my "window" to the outside because I felt I had no rights to be outside like normal humans. That soykaf made me cry when I woke up man... a part of me confessing me that it doesn't feel like it deserves the sun or to be seen. I took a shower and took my bike outside and I felt like a bird that was just released from its cage. What we are experiencing is the corporatization of the internet. They centralized the websites you can go to so they can control the content you see. Hacking your brain to keep you engaged so you see more ads, generate more data, keep feeding the machine... and this attitude has trickled down to the creators themselves who prey on your weaknesses to get you to watch their content. A win win for everyone but you. A dystopia right before our eyes.

>>91731 > All comment sections are worthless garbage. Ideally everyone has websites where they publish their writings and then people communicate through email or otherwise if they have something to say peer-2-peer. I have a personal website and I've tried joining communities of other people who have their own websites. What I found out was people with a bunch of garbage ideas in their head endlessly complaining about this or that, obsessed over the political ramifications of web ownership or trying to promote systems that are stillborn and will never be able to directly compete with corporate soykafware for massive public usage. I've been on the internet for many years and I'm starved for some genuine engagement and people putting effort into what they're writing. I'm tired of complaining and identity politics. I'm tired of people never learning from the mistakes of others, of them being envious of cancerous platforms' success and trying to hide the fact they wish they were Zuckerberg or any of those soulless husks at the top. As for my own website, I find myself afraid to post what I actually think. And I'm really conflicted about having a public facing website in the first place. I went out of my way to host it in a way where I'm not dependent on some massive platform that can easily succumb to pressure, but I still feel so fragile. Even ranting like this feels almost too vulnerable, like someone will call me out on it sometime in the future. I guess my own problem is larger that the internet because I don't know anyone in real life who I can trust to have a real honest conversation with. It feels like most people are too wrapped up in their own problems to be able to hear me.

Going back after a long time. Spent little more than an hour reading all the posts and trying to digest all the different perspectives that people have about this issue. Hell, I've even highlighted some quotes that I’ve found interesting from this whole thread. >> 92288 Is it really an addiction? The answer depends on who you are as a person and your life experiences, or so I believe. I'm a young person who has had troubles with tech addiction for a while now. And I do align a little bit towards the "tech is a real addiction" perspective because of that. At the same time, I found some truth in your way of seeing things and real value from the post. Thanks for that. I said originally that I was bound to update how my real progress with this. And now, about 4+ months since this conversation first started, I can confidently say that I'm still addicted, but a little bit less. Oh man, a lot of things have happened since then. I got a new job, moved to a new city. I'm definitely more happy about what's going on in my life. That being said, I'm nowhere near the point I want to be at. I started using dating apps (dumb, I know). And for a moment started to trend towards instant pleasure. Which I'm not particularly proud of. Apps such as this one are definitively addictive af. You're constantly worrying or thinking like a heckling Pavlov dog about when the next match or notification might pop up. Which is fuarrrked up, so I've decided to delete them. This is not bound to the main topic of discussion here anyways, but I just wanted to point it out. As for my overall internet problems. I've realized since the issue for me might not be the internet. But the cellphone. Having a computer at all times with you is scary. People are not bound to become bored when distraction is available at all times in their pockets. It's really the goddam phone. For some reason when I'm using my PC + Linux, because the interface might be a little bit clunky or less polished than paid software, I think that I'm more drawn towards acting more consciously. I do realize that the device I'm using is a computer at least once in a while. That doesn't happen that frequently when I use my phone. Where you can get "immersed" into the experience for quite a while more easily. Everything is designed with a mobile-first approach nowadays. When you use a computer, you also need to use a mouse or track-pad to navigate. You type into an actual physical keyboard. In a cellphone, none of that is present. Mobile interaction has been simplified to the actual limits. To the point all you need to do is lift your finger to see the next video. Anyways, I'll try to read and post here more often. I had this thread saved up, but I didn't expect the conversation to continue for this long to be honest. Though this would have died as of now. Which tells me that I'm not the only one that has struggled with or finds this topic of discussion interesting. Thanks for all the recommendations and input given so far, I have found valuable material here. Unfortunately, I don't have any "hard" data to show around here. I'll do my best to keep track of things from now on. Again, I'm not at the point I wish to be regarding this, I still mindlessly watch yt videos somewhat often. Before realizing the information being provided to me is actually worthless.

Youtube is also the main reason for me I can't delete my Google accounts (I have four of them, but actively use only one). Relatively speaking, it really is the only mainstream website that is still worth browsing despite all how much it has mighty fallen through years. I have that problem also of watching hours long video essays that realistically mean fuark all in practical sense, but some of them at least genuinely teach me something interesting, and can even have a tranquilising effect on my, especially the ones that talk about dark philosophy or religion. I know it's a trap but it's better than the alternative, which is porn. idk what advice to give to you, other than try watching full lectures and courses with a straight logical sequence rather than random soykaf, it does help, especially the older lectures of the 90s/early 00s when even professional lecturers still didn't act like retards in front of the camera because of the internet. My favorite example is Arthur Holmes' History of Philosophy chain of lectures. Try watching it, maybe it helps you to actually feel like you're learning a structured academic knowledge instead of arbitrary crap. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLez3PPtnpncRz0oKcZR-IxjlDL7XnjR1U&si=Lw0jlx4FvVELtaN4

>>92902 thanks for the link. i agree that this type of content is much better than random soykaf. i'm looking for more content with a straight logical sequence, no cuts every ten seconds, good for the brains, etc. here is what i've found some time ago, John Gabrieli's Introduction to Psychology chain of lectures. it's pretty good, though not much knowledge to be gained, it's more like passionate guy explaining his hobby with decent amount of entertaining facts. maybe that's how introductions are supposed to be, beats me, a ain't no student. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL44ABC9278E2EE706

>>92903 I am glad you like it, and thank you as well, I've added your link to my save ups, will watch after I finish my current playlist. Passionate guys explaining their hobby is the only real way to explore complex ideas and science topics other than reading their books imho. Another example that comes to mind is Richard Feynman's lectures on Physics which are also very good, you can try and search up for those too if you're into that, although I generally prefer history and philosophy related content because it's easier to digest as a background information flow while you're busy with other stuff or are playing games. Either way, I hope it helps you with your worries and the feeling of wasting time on useless things.