Ask HN: How to Quit Social Media? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Quit Social Media?

I want to quit social media, I waste so much time scrolling and scrolling forever. Whenever I delete my accounts, one month later I end coming back to it and I get stuck in this unhealthy loop.

Effective tips are appreciated!

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Replace, don't leave a void: have specific things to do in the window you'd doom scroll

Change passwords to values not in your online keystore and don't save in browser so the entry cost is mechanistically higher.

Reward goals achieved, even something as trivial as a movie, or some chocolate or a meal out with your SO at the end of a weekly goal window achievement unlocked will feed the positive emotional state of not doing the thing.

Don't obsess about occasional backsliding

Put an interval between writing any responses online, and hitting send, social or not. Retrain your mind to take time to engage, and send less overall

Use email or a physical notebook more and require long form communication skills. Probably? Make this the main replacement or displacement activity

Tell others you're hitting pause on social: it makes a social contract which is a binding effect, it stops them worrying when you are less or un responsive and it helps grow the tide of disconnect by metoo.

The main question you need to ask yourself is "Why do I keep coming back to social media?" Once you've answered that, then maybe you can carve a route away from it.

As someone mentioned in the comments here, have a replacement. It doesn't need to be online, either. Find something else to do at those times when you feel the need to continuously scroll. You don't have to do something productive. Just something, anything that keeps you away from those sites.

Tell other people that you care about your intentions to quit social media. Might give you some motivation to not end up doing what you said you wouldn't do.

Since it's HN, here's a technical solution. Make it a bit difficult to access social media, enough for it to be a pain in the ass.

Use a PiHole and block the domains on your network, and in your hosts files. AdGuard Home ships with a toggle dashboard for dozens of social media sites, too. Go a step further and either use a DNS blocker on your phone, or VPN into a network with a PiHole.

There are apps for Android and iOS that let you do this, as well, and there are plugins for desktop browsers. Mobile browsers also have similar plugins, and I think you can block specific websites if you dig around the OS or browser settings, too. You can further block the domains with browser ad blockers like uMatrix or NoScript.

Also use 2-factor authentication via an authenticator app on an old phone or tablet, and put it somewhere inconvenient.

If you want to go on Facebook, you'll have to disable your browser blocking settings, disable your ad blocker, then edit your hosts file, and then log into your DNS server and change its settings, etc.

If you end up actually going on it, log in with a private browser window so you can't rely on cookies to get you back in easily.

I've effectively been off social media for over 6 months now. Here is the method I used to break the cycle. The first day is hardest, then next few days and so on, but focusing on the first day is the only thing that matters to get the momentum. Do not worry about the other days, just the first day.

Day 1, took a blank piece of paper and drew 2 lines horizontally, then split that bar up into 10ish slices with vertical lines. I wrote the number of the current hour in the first box, and next hour in the next box etc.

That is it, I just sliced the day up into hours. Then I stopped using social with the help of the Hide Feed (.com) extension, I ended up paying for it, such a priceless investment for me. And I shaded in part of the hour for the first few hours or so, or even days later when it was harder. And so I had this gamification chart and just filled it in. I would usually write another one the next day etc, but eventually drew out a couple week grid and had like 30 days or so. That doesn't matter until you get past the first day though, just use daily sheets for now. I call them XogoCharts (gamification charts, xogo == game in Galacian (https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=xogo&op=tra...). I used to do them up on a computer and make pie charts etc for book chapters etc, but found them to be more effective if I just draw them up in real time with pencil and eraser, the tech was a distraction.

I still visit HN on occasion (it is useful for my career), but I've been social/news _feed_ consumption free for well over 6 months now. It was the feeds that really exhausted me.

Get a mechanical hand counter. Every time you resist the urge, tick yourself a point. Every time you cave in, reset it to zero. Keep it visible on your desk to remind you of your progress (or failure).

If the issue is places like Facebook, watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix. That may sufficiently scare you away.

When you quit, you can't just quit... you need to have something to fill that time that also scratches that same itch you were getting from social media.

+1 to the second suggestion. It's easier to replace a habit with a different habit than to eliminate it completely. Find something online that you find constructive or educational, and do that instead. For me it's been learning languages with Duolingo and brushing up on various subjects in Khan Academy. A nice advantage of these is that they are fairly gamified, so they tend to be sticky. With Anki or other similar systems there's plenty of content to fill your time with instead of mindless scrolling.

Subscribe to newsletters and podcasts, get their RSS feeds plug to Feedly.

Jordan Peterson had a really good point when asked by a fustrated mother what to do about her son, who was addicted to illegal drugs: the real question isn't why is he addicted, by why isn't everybody? Drugs make you feel amazing.

His answer was that people don't do drugs because they have something else they consider important enough to not do them. Young people who like to drink drink over the weekend, not because they don't want to drink and party more, but that it would hurt their school/job performance too much.

My point is, like ggm, you are not going to have much success replacing social media - you must find something else to do instead.

Post but don't read.

google Fediverse

Fediverse is just social media for people who couldn't hack it on Twitter. Then again, spending a year or so there cured me of any lingering desire to use socials myself.

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