Comment by arcturus17 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by arcturus17 | Hacker News Reader

Yea I don’t have kids but I’ve seen it with all kids in my extended family.

I like Youtube, there is content of tremendous value, for knowledge and entertainment.

However, one thing I’ve personally observed is that too much of it can destroy your focus and motivation. There is some science in there about brain chemistry and reward systems, in line with what some pop scientists with Cal Newport and Andrew Huberman are preaching.

I don’t know the details of said science, and I don’t feel like I need to, because my own experience and observations have cemented a strong belief that an excessive usage of the proverbial bottomless digital wells (be it Youtube or other usual suspects) have deleterious effects on focus, motivation, and happiness.

I can only imagine the effects on the developing brain. But again, I don’t know the science so maybe the answer is “a kid’s brain is so malleable that there is nothing to worry about”. Wouldn’t that be convenient for big tech?

Well I for one, am not going to take risks. If I ever have kids I am not going to deprive them of watching a bit of Youtube or playing Mario. But there are going to be some serious authoritarian vibes around time limits and sequencing (ie, only after you’ve fulfilled your obligations)

I've never admitted this online but screw it.

I've been a drug user for about 2/3 my live. Battled with prescription pills the longest.. managed to kick the habit with meth.

YouTube is as addictive as anything i just mentioned. More so if you're in a group testing future services in return for an "ad free" experience (you know the ones which claim to"improve Google services").

Everything else everyone has said is true. I've managed to leave social media, my friends, most of my family, several jobs, but you know who i can't get rid of? Can't even use a damn mobile phone without agreeing to let it continue. FML it sucks and it's never going to get better for any one given the ineffective laws get made which constantly favor everything about that business model.

ublock blocks YouTube ads.

One way I manage the addictive problem with YouTube is to heavily use the do not recommend channel feature when I find something garbage or unproductive.

Here in Australia the govt forces YouTube to surface local (read: Murdoch) news channels in the home page despite them all being mostly hated and consistently downvoted by me (no way any recommendation system would continue to recommend me their stuff).

Thankfully, you can "not recommend" those channels and the whole "news" section goes away. You can still search "news" when you want to see it but tbh I hardly ever do unless I hear something is going on that I'm concerned about.

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I'm so amazed by what ChatGPT can do these days.

I'm lucky that I've never battled with addiction to hard drugs, but I have struggled for 10 years with cigarettes and all of my adult life with weed and being online. Personally, while weed has had the most detrimental effect on my life (partly by synergizing so well with mind-numbing time-wasters), the hardest one for me to get rid of is 100% my toxic relationship with the Internet.

It's incredible to me that we all have the powerful dopamine dispensers in out pockets; trained on billions of users and well calibrated to our personal pitfalls. I find the mechanisms of addiction and the emotional loop they put you in to be virtually the same between the 3, despite them being so different in how they are "ingested" and affect your brain.

Thanks for that comparison. I have never truly experienced addiction without losing self control for whatever reason. I can start and stop smoking, drugs never took a hold. I feel the pull for sure, but am able to stop.

But I lose several hours a day to YouTube. Ever since Shorts made their way into my life, I start and end most days with an hour of watching bullshit I don't even like. And before I open it I tell myself "don't.. this is that moment" and do it anyway. I usually stop a session due to real life commitments or battery life.

Deleted the app but use browser. I've considered getting a dumb phone. I've never hated something that my body loves so much

I was in the same exact boat as you. If you have uBlock origin, you can add these custom filters to remove shorts: https://ronangelo.com/how-to-hide-shorts-videos-on-youtube/

I have not missed them one bit, nor had any desire to unblock them. Like you, I would mindlessly watch them in between tasks at work, and felt duller and worse for it every time my little binge ended. I also got a dumbphone, which I honestly love.

Good luck to you and kudos for caring about your health!

Thanks. Good tip for desktop, will install. But the main vector for me is my phone. Which dumbphone did you pick up?

You can use ublock origin on firefox mobile, which will let you use those filters.

I ended up grabbing the light phone 2. I really have been enjoying it!

I started using bottomless digital wells at 9 years old and it has led to compulsive browsing behavior with severely negative long-term consequences for my life.

> it has led to compulsive browsing behavior with severely negative long-term consequences for my life

If I can offer practical advice that has worked for me in pulling me back from bad browsing habits:

1. Meditate ~10min every morning

2. Start a reading habit, even if it's modest (start with 10 pages a day)

3. Create physical barriers between you and devices:

3.1. Do not sleep with a device in the room (if you use it as an alarm clock buy an analog one)

3.2. Physically remove non-indispensable devices (TV, console, any extra screens) from around you, if only temporarily (put them in storage, give them to a friend for keeping)

4. Write a to-do list with objectives for the next day in the evenings, then revise it in the mornings after waking up

5. Pick up some exercise, preferrably with a social obligation (ie, an instructor, a group). The latter may be important because as an experienced weightlifter I can say that it's way too easy to do solo sessions where you're constantly slacking around and looking at your phone.

6. Quit other vices (eg, drinking) temporarily

Many of these have nothing to do with browsing, but that's precisely what does it for me. Artificially limiting browsing (by using apps, timeboxing, etc.) does not work at all for me and I need to work on adjacent goals to build my chemistry back up.

A really important addition there is to make sure you get your sleep routine in order. If you don't sleep well then sticking to any of the other habits is going to be incredibly hard. Decide on a sleep schedule that gives you between 7 and 8 hours in bed with no distractions, lights out. Even if you can't fall asleep easily just disciplining yourself to stick to this schedule will help. I can't stress how important it is to not use your phone in bed, no books either. If you're going to read before bed then do it before your scheduled bed time and make sure you have a reminder set to tell you when you need to drop what you're doing and go to bed. Set an alarm to wake yourself up and try to stick to it even if you didn't get much sleep. You'll be tired but that should make it easier to fall asleep the next night. If you can get this routine locked in then the rest of the habits will be much easier to stick to.

Good sleep hygiene really is a prerequisite for this stuff.

I would recommend removing the phone from the bedroom entirely. If you want to use your phones alarm clock, make sure that no other notifications can come through during your scheduled sleep time and put it on the other side of the room (this also forces you to stand up in the morning because you can't turn off your alarm otherwise).

You say 'no books either', and I agree with it, a bedtime routine works best if the bed is only used for sleeping, but I had great success with first replacing my phone with my ereader and allowing myself to read as much as I want. And then later on I removed the ereader. That was much easier than just removing the phone at once.

Nicholas Carr's book "The shallows - What the internet is doing to out brains" is a little old (2011), but an eye-opening read.

"One thing is very clear: if, knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the Internet. It’s not just that we tend to use the Net regularly, even obsessively. It’s that the Net delivers precisely the kind of sensory and cognitive stimuli—repetitive, intensive, interactive, addictive—that have been shown to result in strong and rapid alterations in brain circuits and functions. With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use. At the very least, it’s the most powerful that has come along since the book."

He's railing about the internet being a designed distraction machine, rather than youtube specifically.

I'd think a kid's brain's malleability is reason to limit bottomless pits even more strictly.

As a father of three I know it's not always convenient. But kids usually find something else to do at some point. It's just really grating to wait that long.

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