One thing that helped me get rid of all of these time-wasting apps was deleting them from my phone, but allowing myself to use the app’s website. It only took a few days for that small bit of friction to make me want to avoid the apps altogether. I did this with all my social media apps a while ago and eventually deleted the accounts.
I recently had to do this with YouTube because YouTube Shorts were getting very addictive. I still use YouTube on my computer, but my overall usage is significantly down.
The idea of adding a bit of friction is incredibly powerful. On desktop I use the excellent "News Feed Eradicator" [1], which removes the main news feed from popular destinations, while still allowing you to browse remaining functionality (e.g. subscriptions page on YT, messages on LinkedIn/Reddit). Fully open source, and available for Chrome/Firefox.
On mobile I use "One Sec" [2], which injects a short delay before opening any apps you specify. The delay is configurable; from a few seconds, to half a minute.
It's impressive how only 3-4 seconds are enough to re-engage your prefrontal cortex and make you think -- "wait a minute, why am I opening this app again?".
I also follow the "website-only" access pattern, and I never use/installs apps except a decent calculator app and whatever horrors my bank forces upon me.
I only install apps that are tools that would benefits from being on a portable device that I bring everywhere. Kinda like a PDA. Now it’s mostly utility apps, information (wikipedia) and reading, and communication.
After seeing a post on the HN front page, I've replaced YouTube entirely with NewPipe, and it is a huge improvement.
I still subscribe to channels that I like and respect, but not being subject to the toxic injection of YouTube shorts or recommendations drastically cuts down on my dwell time in that app.
Same! Deleted the mobile apps first, then exclusively used the platforms on a private window. That added a lot of friction especially how they make it so hard to log in.
I mostly use Youtube now on the Apple TV but recommendations are so awful, I only spend about a few minutes a day.
For Reddit, Twitter, Pinterest and Imgur the website is almost unusable on mobile when not logged in. Log out, don't save your password in the autofill. Now you have to log in to get your fix, which is now a hassle.
Ditched reddit about halfway through 2023 and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I study and read actual stuff on my phone now, instead of browsing increasingly crappy content.
I do log on occasionally but it's only ever to ask a specific question or look at a game thread for one of the sport team I follow, and that is only once a week for a couple minutes. Hope I never go back to being a regular redditor.
The problem is that it actually has good content for niche interests. It constantly comes up in Google searches and about 50 - 60% of the time it either gives the answer or opens a deeper query.
I wish I could export all the knowledge from it and not have to unblock that terrible site. The smaller, focused subs aren't the problem, it's the entire frontpage and all the rest of the subreddits. It's somehow worse than junk food like I'd categorize other social media, it's like a hammer to the skull.
Somehow Stack Overflow is more a barren wasteland than Reddit, and Quora is even worse.
I was going through something similar so I installed a plugin [1] that redirects all reddit links to old.reddit.com and started using RSS feeds on Inoreader [2] to follow the subreddits I like.
I used to be on Reddit a lot. Small niche communities had a lot of great content. Then Reddit deleted my app for me and I stopped using Reddit altogether. Once in a while I end up on Reddit through a link in search results but I don’t just browse Reddit any more.
Every book I've read over the last decade+ has been on my phone. I also use my phone for language vocab practice. For large amounts of typing though, I still prefer a computer.
My wife OTOH almost fully operates on her phone. Her phone efficiency makes me feel like a smart phone luddite hah.
I usually read tech stuff that doesn't require hands on coding to understand. At most, I just read their code examples to understand the concept. If I feel exploring it hands on will be worth while, I'll go back over it on my computer at the end of the day.
However, there are tons of great content linked from this site alone that doesn't require any hands on to understand. Get a few ebooks too, and you're set. But I'm general I don't sit on my phone a lot because I have kids, this is a 5-10 mins a couple times a day thing. Not long stretches at all.
I've found 'one sec' [0] to be one of the most valuable apps on my phone.
Its concept is refreshingly simple – it uses an iOS Shortcut to introduce a customizable delay whenever you attempt to open a chosen app. In my case, I didn't even have to delete or hide the app I wanted to quit. Over time, my brain associated the extra seconds with a tad bit of boredom, naturally curbing the impulse to open it frequently and after a couple of months, I just completely forgot this app existed.
Surprisingly, 'one sec' is free, even though I remember paying for it around ~4 years ago, at some point the developer shifted to a subscription-based model, though it is entirely optional. There might be similar apps on the market too, or you can even try crafting your own iOS Shortcut. Overall, I highly recommend giving this a shot before diving in and uninstalling apps outright.
Its a serious problem. One off day and you are down the cycle again. It's the addiction of our times.
If anyone has some tips that have worked for them please share! Here are ways I've found that help on iphone:
1. Delete all time wasting app.
2. Delete all browsers on your phone (disable safari in screentime). If you "really need" some content there will be an app, or RSS feed you can tap into to get it. A light version of this would be using screentime privacy restrictions and only allowing the websites you want to view.
3. Turn off your ability to install apps in screentime so you don't install the time-wasters.
4. Have a family member/friend add the screentime passcode so you don't know it and can't turn it off when you get the first itch.
5. Put your phone in black/white mode and turn down the contrast. The apps you do have won't be as intoxicating visually so you'll spend more time in the real world.
It is, remind yourself that this is what you are doing and embracing.
I am by no means sympathetic to a straight edge perspective, but when ever you find yourself pointlessly clicking clickbait and other garbage to get your dopamine fix, remind yourself that this is what you are doing.
You are sniffing glue right now. Its not healthy and does produce long term damages. You are grilling your attention span and are hanging around with other addicts.
All the power to you if that is your goal, but it should be your goal and not something you got suckered into. Embrace it or leave it.
So, what do you say, you wanna do another line of youtube shorts? Or are you bored already and are up for some old school c̶r̶a̶c̶k̶ imageboards? You said you arent a cop, right?
If you are a mainly a desktop consumer: block them using /etc/hosts
On Windows, it is at C:\Windows\Windows32\drivers\etc\hosts
In the hosts file, you put `0.0.0.0 <site you don't want to visit>`. Now whenever you go to that site, it just doesn't exist and if you _have_ to open it, you need to go comment out the line in the hosts file.
It's frequently enough friction but you have to remember to uncomment the line after you are done.
You can do the same for mobile but it involves setting up a VPN. That is how the paid apps that do the same work.
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Also at the end of each day, do a reflection and ask yourself "What would I have done differently today?" or some variation. That frequently gives a stopgap where I resolve myself to do things different the next day.
It sucks to lose a few hours, it really sucks to lose a few days just because you fell into a rut.
I am 18 and am simply unable to function in society without mandatory screen time restrictions. All screen time schemes which you can override when you feel down are utterly useless for me. OTOH it’s embarrassing to ask people to keep your screen time password, not to mention I can manipulate people into giving me the password. And I found the restrictions need to be adjusted to my constantly changing routine/needs so it’s simply inconvenient to ask people for the password every fortnight or so. Thus as a hacker I hacked up my own solution. My screen time password is time-locked, it's only accessible after 8 hours after you start the process of opening it. This basically prevents every impulsive behavior ever. There is no point in start opening the password to doomscroll reddit if you can do so only after 8 hours. I honestly wish this was built into iOS. Here's how I achieve it (beware, iOS only):
- I wrote this program[1] to time-lock things. It time-lock encrypts data to a desired time interval. In order to access the data, you need to decrypt it on the same machine you encrypted for the set amount of time. This works because the encryption algorithm is mathematically unparallelizable one.
- I use a Bluetooth keyboard emulator[2] on my computer to enter digits for passwords without seeing them. Long passwords I can enter by hands since I won't be able to remember them but for short passwords (the SIM and Screen time password) this is necessary.
1. Create another Apple ID with a separate phone number than your normally used number. Set the Apple ID password to some random thing. Enable Recovery Key. Lock the SIM card with a random password. You aren't supposed to remember any of these passwords.
2. Put all these passwords to a file and encrypt it with a random number key. Time-lock this key.
3. When setting up screen time restrictions, set up this Apple ID as the recovery account for your Apple ID.
4. Generate a random 4-digit password and put it into a file. Use the Bluetooth keyboard emulator to enter it on your iPhone without seeing it. Time-lock this password.
Done! Now the only way to change screen time settings is to crunch numbers with your computer/VPS for 8 hours.
My restriction settings are:
- All social media apps and HN[3] are collectively limited to 25 mins/day but I will probably set it to 30mins/week as I see I miss nothing.
- Downtime set for sleeping hours.
- Necessary apps which also enable me to waste time (e.g. Safari) are time-restricted.
- New app installation disabled.
I also use a simple shell script with a systemd unit that shuts down the computer if it's being used outside allowed hours. Obviously I need to not be in sudo/wheel group for this to work, so the script gives me sudo access for certain early hours every day.
2: There are afaik no solutions that currently work on Linux except writing your own, and the ancient one I run in an Ubuntu 16.04 VM. There are many apps for mobile, recommend Bluetouch for iOS. Supposedly RPi Zero W can do it too.
3: All my friends are on social media, I’m not and I find I lose nothing. Admit it, it’s collective reciprocal FOMO about each other’s lives. Twitter and reddit are not to be used regularly, they are skinner boxes. I log in to both only when I have a question to ask to a community/someone. Regarding HN, I find high amounts of daily input even if it's high-quality discussion lead to worse memory and concentration.
For me the key to success was to accept and to internalize the following facts:
- 95% of content and posts have no value and are simply a waste of time
- Using any of the usual platforms for more than 10 minutes will damage me and make me a worse person (mental health, attention span, it makes me angry, etc...)
- Basically the only reason why I use those services is to kill time and to avoid responsibilities which I have in the real world
- All of those services have net negative effect on society and humanity and by using them I support a system which I despise
To summarize roughly: There is simply no value in using any of these platforms. Doing virtually anything else will be better for me and the world.
Once I really accepted those facts it was not really that hard to stop using them. The problem was that for a long time I told myself (at least subconsciously) that there is some value in using some of those services.
For example I told myself "I'm really exhausted now and I wouldn't be doing anything productive anyways, so I might aswell doomscroll for a bit." Or "There really is some high quality content on YouTube, it'd be a shame to miss the quality videos if I abandon the platform as a whole."
You need to get to a point where your brain immediately calls bullshit as soon as you come up with an excuse like this.
I was with you until YouTube. I would say the educational value of YouTube with channels like 3Blue1Brown, Fermilab (Don), PBS Space Time, etc. makes it an educational resource second to none.
Sure there is a lot of garbage on YouTube, but it's fairly easy to avoid the dark alleys.
If people are addicted to something then the only thing they can do to stop being addicted is to quit cold turkey.
Now in some cases that may be harder to do. If one has a food addiction or a smartphone related addiction for example. But in those cases you can certainly cold quit certain addictive foods or apps. When people “cold turkey” quit unhealthy addictive foods people often say they these people are “on a diet.” But really what is going on is that these people have “cold turkey” quit eating the bad foods and only eat healthy foods.
Do the same with the internet. Cold turkey quit the addictive unhealthy junk apps like a food dieter would cold turkey quit eating addictive unhealthy junk food. Only use the internet STRICTLY for work/school or direct 1 to 1 communication with a loved one such a friend or a family member.
That’s how you stop spending time on the addictive feed.
Some people say that they have to use Facebook for work/school or whatever. In that case just treat it like email. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Use Facebook on your laptop (NOT your phone) for 5 minutes in the morning and then for 5 minutes in the afternoon. If you do this you can still use it for whatever without being addicted to the feed.
> If people are addicted to something then the only thing they can do to stop being addicted is to quit cold turkey.
Haven't you gone on to prove yourself wrong by mentioning food diets? Many/most of which are not quitting something cold turkey?
Unless you're going to tell me that e.g. 'intermittent fasting' is quitting eating on Wednesdays or 0000-2200h cold turkey, like that was the addiction.
People on food diets quit the unhealthy foods in a “cold turkey” way.
Many of us have no issue eating the occasional nacho or chocolate cake or drinking a coke here and there. Other people do have issues controlling their intake of these junk foods. I meant that people quit the junk food “cold turkey.”
So the digital analogue is quitting the “junk apps” in a cold turkey kind of way….
You can use the same techniques that other people use for other addictive things. Try browsing through a copy of Allen Carr's "The Easy Way To Stop Smoking", and then apply those lessons to social media or whatever your addiction is.
If you have an Apple device, screen time can help. You can limit specific or type of apps, and specific websites, to a certain amount of time. I let someone else set my passcode. When my brain realized it's inaccessible, it's incredibly freeing, which is really sad.
I used to have Instagram on the first page of my phone's icons and checked it every time I had a free moment; after simply moving it to the last page I've forgotten about it completely and pop in about once a month. Out of sight, out of mind worked wonders for me.
When Snowden released his book, I couldn’t stand it any longer. And The algorithm had been exploiting us to murder rohiyingas, according to John Oliver’s YouTube video on Facebook.
I ~~deleted~~ each of my pictures from my permanent record. Facebook had become an uncomfortable place. I had to get rid of it.
> Social media apps are how we connect with people we care about.. Especially when it comes to social apps, deleting them can seem like a radical move, but it really isn't. You can always download the app again if you change your mind — your account will still be there waiting.
Sad, but fortunately not true at all. Recall that people made friends for hundreds of thousands of years before social media apps.
"Ahh, but if all your friends are on social media apps, you can't hang out with them if you aren't on social media apps too!"
Not true either. I have been off Facebook and Twitter since 2008, and never got on anything newer than that. If you count HN, then that's your choice, but I don't have an app for it, and at any rate none of my friends are here. There are no barriers stopping you and your friends from hanging out in a world without social media apps, apart from inertia and some behavior patterns that look a lot like addiction from the outside. Also, there is no difficulty in communicating with people, or scheduling activities with them either. In fact if you find literally any other shared medium of communication, you will be more in touch with them than you are now.
So, don't hide your apps, delete them, pausing only to delete your accounts first, so you can never go back to them.
For bad habits, add friction. Delete the app, block the address at your router, etc. For good habits, reduce friction. If you want to eat healthy, buy healthy food at the store so when you go looking for junk food there's only healthy stuff etc. Doesn't have to be 100%, but the idea is that you make it harder to do the bad stuff and easier to do the good stuff, and eventually that starts adding up.
On Android the most reliable method I've found is to create another Google account, set it up as your "parent", then (while logged into that account) go to familylink.google.com and set app and content limits for the "child". You can block individual apps, set daily time limits for apps, and whitelist websites for browsers.
I've found myself using the browser version of apps (as terrible as they are) in replace of deleted apps. I'm very used to the Chrome -> search bar -> "y" -> "youtube.com" series of taps now.
Same here. My solution was to use the Brave browser and setup custom filters to block the doomscrolling part of the website. I did it with Reddit and youtube, so now no video is shown in the homepage of Youtube, and no list of posts shown in Reddit.
Still, I can use the search bar of youtube, and I can access single Reddit post (from a google search for example).
To “delete” HN:
1. Open Settings > Screen Time > App Limits > Add Limit
2. Scroll to the bottom and pick “Websites”
3. Pick “news.ycombinator.com”
4. Click “Next”
5. Pick 0 hours, 1 minute
6. Click “Add”
Now you’ll be limited to one minute a day of HN. If you set 20 minutes it also gives you 5 minute warnings, and lets you extend.
The App Limiting has a nice feature were if you set a limit on multiple apps at the same time, it doesn’t matter which app/site you use, the time counts against them all. This prevents you from wasting time in one app, then rolling onto the next distraction.
Proving that we can be addicted even without any algorithm explicitly influencing us. Internet is just the best content generator over any offline sources.
That’s why I’m really thankful that sites like Reddit have made it really hard, almost impossible, to enjoy without an account and their app, because I’m literally unwilling to install an app or make an account just to read funny memes. I’m such an old curmudgeon these days that I barely even have energy to socialize with people who do things I also enjoy, let alone talk to idiots online. The one exception is for HN because I find there are more limits around commenting and I can avoid most of the political and other flammable topics.
I buy and sell stuff on Facebook marketplace. I browse some niche groups but I don’t regularly engage otherwise. Half the time I go to check/update/add to my listings, I get lured into the doom scrolling trap. It’s amazing and frustrating how they cater content to you such that the moment you open the app, there is interesting content that just calls to you like a siren in dense fog.
If the app has a mobile site, log in to it on a browser you've installed only to run webapps (rather than search queries, clicked links, etc) and don't add a PWA or bookmark. Put an anki or Duolingo or Wikipedia icon where the app used to be in your home screen. I can still go to Twitter or HN if I want to but this is enough friction that I spend my time differently.
Personally it's life-wasting in the manner that I use it as an outlet to avoid boredom, but the value I get from it cancels it out. I think it would be better for me to have a set period of time to catch up on valuable online communities, rather than opening it whenever I get bored/have free time.
I feel like I actually learn and gain valuable insights (such as posts like this) more than not. Considering there's no endless feed, I don't find it addictive in the same way reddit or twitter is with their algorithm aggressively showing you content that screams at you to engage (mostly negatively)
Checking HN once or twice a day is fine. Checking it over and over is not. Just like any other social media. Reddit isn't an issue, it's checking it over and over all day long that's the problem.
I recently had to do this with YouTube because YouTube Shorts were getting very addictive. I still use YouTube on my computer, but my overall usage is significantly down.