Comment by boppo1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boppo1 | Hacker News Reader

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I spend on average[1] 4+ hours a day here, reddit or 4chan. I wish I had spent the time on other pursuits that I have consistently found more enjoyable and rewarding. 4chan in particular usually leaves me feeling some subtle mixture of mentally nauseous and despondent, although I laugh a lot and find interesting things I don't elsewhere. My over-browsing habit is absolutely an unhealthy and compulsive behavior.

I'm 30 now and started on SomethingAwful and StumbleUpon and videogame/software enthusiast forums I think when I was about 9 or 10. I wonder if I'm sort of like a person who started smoking cigarettes at that age. My relationship with compulsive browsing seems to be rooted in experiencing it differently than normal people[2]. They seem to lose interest after a period of time. I can (and do) browse for 9+ hours about 2-3x a month. Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max.

[1] The 'wellness' screentime monitors have been a godsend. Assembling histograms of my usage stopped me regarding myself as entirely pathetic and got me to think that maybe I have a problem along the lines of nicotine, perhaps something not well understood by psychology yet. Still pathetic, but maybe less so.

[2]It seems that the issue I have is increasingly present in others, especially younger people who had connected devices even younger than I.

> Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max.

Oh wow, interesting that you mention it because I experience the same. Can and do spend hours a day looking at random stuff on various forums / youtube / hn. But once I'm out traveling the need disappears and it just doesn't seem to grip as much anymore.

I believe the almost obsessive browsing is some kind of escape or avoidance mechanism. An escape from being somewhere doing something that you don't want to be doing. It is an easy of taking the mind of whatever is going on in reality. Not that it helps much.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty explores this. I recommend everyone to watch it.

Same here.

I’ve been thinking it’s a sort of “escape from the void”. When there’s nothing that particularly needs focus, there’s a feeling of wanting to escape from the discomfort of the silence. When I truly have no plans, I find myself seeking out lots of cheap fillers - HN, reddit, snacks.

As Blaise Pascal said, “ All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”.

The question is why? Why is it so hard to sit quietly in a room alone? What exactly is it that we’re trying to escape?

Same here. My theory is that when travelling you are not bored, thus you have nothing to "escape" from.

The only problem with my theory is that this effect (ie. not wasting time) lasts a couple of days after returning from a trip. This should not happen because you are in the same context as when you were liberally wasting time.

I also move countries a lot. The first 1-2 months at a new country I am wasting time significantly less compared to when I have settled.

>The only problem with my theory is that this effect (ie. not wasting time) lasts a couple of days after returning from a trip. This should not happen because you are in the same context as when you were liberally wasting time.

When you return back home, home is somewhat a different experience from the day to day drudgery. I think it's just that our brains hate boring routines and modern capitalism has made your life extremely Specialized and routine.

As somebody who found it far easier to give up nicotine than 4chan, I empathize.

It's incredible. I was dependent on prescription stimulants to be functional and I managed to give those up. But 4chan? I've tried 4 times and made it to a month, max.

As someone bouncing from different addictions of sorts through my life (gambling, some recreational drugs, overwork, compulsive browsing, video games, etc.) - I’ve found that breaking that compulsive browsing habit was fairly easy with good blockers. A lot of it was just kind of a learned habit. I’m bored or tired for a nanosecond, better pull up a stimulating website and get a hit. When I get a boring error page instead I snap out of the craving. I also started on genmay and SA and kept going until this year when I realized I have a problem

Anecdotal experience, but I am 5 years younger than you and recently bought myself a Titan Pocket, a small phone with a square screen and a keyboard, so that my phone would no longer be as exciting to use. So it's a very unusual device and whenever somebody I know sees it they ask me why I bought it. When I explain my reasoning most of the people my age seemed to understand my reasoning and also said that that they spend too much time on their phones. Out of the people few years older most of them did not express having that much of a problem with their internet habits.

I definitely think that unhealthy usage of internet is a problem of which the extend in society is not yet fully understood. Especially due the problems that come along with it such as depression and sleep problems. (Atleast in my experience.)

And I also agree on the traveling part, my usage was even more extreme with >8 hours almost every day since the age of 17/18, but whenever I travelled I did not have any desire to spend that much time on the internet. Probably due to the "quality" of feelings that one has when travelling and the ability to spend lots of time with a friend or loved one. (When not travelling alone)

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