Ask HN: Examples of "good/healthy" internet addictions | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Examples of "good/healthy" internet addictions

18 pointsgitgud8 comments

It seems the most addictive websites can be the most harmful to people, is that the specific type of website? Or the addiction itself that's harmful?

Are there any good/heathly addictions on the internet?

It's subjective but I'm interested in what people come up with. I would say Hacker News is addictive and good for you, but that's debatable...

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I made a habit of daily contributing to OpenStreetMap [1]. If you're based outside Europe you'll have plenty things to map (like shops, other POIs, buildings, cycling infrastructure and so on...). There's a webpage which shows, among other stats, a GitHub-like activity tiles graph. [2]

[1] http://osm.org [2] http://hdyc.neis-one.org

"Good" addictions you could have online:

* Contributing to Wikipedia. (Check out Citation Hunt: https://tools.wmflabs.org/citationhunt/)

* Being an active member of insightful online communities.

* When you encounter an interesting piece of information, archive them with archive.org.

* Reporting harmful content.

Be active on forums where discussions are being held on future developments that could have an impact on humanity or society. Your input and everyone's input is super important to keep potential developers mindful of different perspectives.

I tend to look at it a bit broader in terms of just using technology. I think an overall active/creative use of technology can be positive, whether it is creating software, music, art; studying a new subject or simply participating in games and puzzles is somewhat less important I think.

I think mostly passive consumption of technology is where it tends to turn more negative if done excessively. I've never seen much good coming out of excessive consumption of sites like youtube, reddit, news media or anything else of that sort.

I don't consider commenting or liking posts on any media platform to be an active participation btw.

My mother switched from playing freecell to completing chess puzzles online. I'm really curious how this has impacted her ability to play chess

If you're addicted to learning, reading papers!

Well... The word "addiction" in itself connotes something negative. Maybe "passion" would be.. softer.

Good/healthy? Well... There's almost nothing good or healthy on the internet that doesn't have a not-so-good side. You could go down a new career path by learning on MOOCs websites, like cybrary.it or Coursera.org: you can pick up a whole new skill by watching YouTube videos.

For me, I think the addiction itself is the bane. Not the websites in themselves.

Yeah, even being addicted to otherwise good things (such as exercise) is unhealthy.

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