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Comment by miika | Hacker News Reader

This is how I cured my social media addiction.

I turned my iPhone into pure utility device by uninstalling all the entertainment apps. I only allow music and podcasts as those don’t require my active attention.

Then I have an iPad mini at home which has all the entertainment and social media stuff installed. However I don’t have many opportunities to use that device during the day..

After maybe a week of having this arrangement I found myself being less and less interested in grabbing that iPad. It’s been few months now and I only check my socials maybe twice a week.

Also since I deleted Facebook, Instagram, Threads, YouTube and TikTok from my phone the battery life almost doubled. It was eye opening to see how much these apps drain battery even when the device is left untouched.

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Also great video regarding this topic: "You Need to Be Bored. Here's Why." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQKfIXMiA8

I now regularly force myself to "actively" do nothing for 15 minutes and just think.

All the things I put into my brain as "todo, please remember" at some point in time are coming back during these 15 minutes.

I get quite a lot of clarity with this exercise. As soon I pick up my phone afterwards and start browsing the clarity evaporates which feels bad. So wasting time on my phone becomes less and less appealing to me.

Lets see where this leads me. I so far wasted quite a bit of time with my phone.

Damn this really rings true to me, and makes me deeply wish I had my own office again. There are advantages to a cubicle environment but the noise means headphones which means distraction.

I never found a reason to buy a tablet but it seems that you have given a very good one. Moving all the distractions to another device that I can't carry around with me is a great idea and I'm going to try it! Thanks Miika!

This is what i do with the tablet i have. Its an Android tablet, but de-googled with a spoof account. That way i can play games / apps and not have any account tried to it.

>I only allow music and podcasts as those don't require my active attention.

podcasts? How do you listen and benefit without paying active attention?

I can easily listen to podcasts while doing household chores. Most podcasts aren't that information-dense anyways and while retention isn't perfect, you get an overview of a topic and can still dig deeper (or not) later. Or to flip it around: most podcasts don't give you that much benefit anyways.

I think the answer is actually the other way around: It's the chores that don't require much attention.

YMMV but I sometimes listen to a podcast or audiobook while playing mindless video games. I can't watch a show while playing video games, since I need to actually watch the screen. Since the game doesn't require mental thought, I can still pay attention to the content of the podcast.

+1 to this.

Personally, I listen to podcasts while biking or driving; I can't just sit and listen to them, I need to be physically doing something.

This is exactly what has worked for me as well. Before this, the iPad was rotting in a corner for years, because the phone was just always available and I had consumed everything on the phone already, obliterating the need for the iPad.

I deleted all social media as well, but I did keep YouTube (NewPipe, that is) with a curated list of subscriptions and no auto-suggestions/trending/shorts. I find many interesting things there.

> I only allow music and podcasts as those don’t require my active attention.

I just bought a cheap MP3 player and it has significantly reduced my smartphone usage to the point that sometimes I forgot where left it.

https://gpodder.github.io is a great app to subscribe to podcasts, download them as mp3s, and syncing them to a offline player.

I haven't had any of those apps installed for years. It's using the web versions in my browser that kills.me, because I can't get by without a browser.

Sorry basic question.

You can still access all the social media from the browser eh?

Yes but social media companies have helpfully made this experience unpleasant.

deliberately so, so as to force you to install their app that can get deeper into your device than any cookie ever could

Stay logged off in the browser, don't carry (unique, complex) password around if you have to.

But this is desperate level of proper addiction, when serious hard look at one's life is by far the best course of action. Professional help is not a bad idea neither. Life can be pretty amazing, but screens won't get you there, in contrary its cheap basic addictive 'fun' for poor.

Many years ago I removed all FB apps and messenger from my phone (due to their crappy engineering their constant snooping of user's activity was, draining batteries fast even when not using them). Have them on desktop only. Pretty amazing move, can't recommend enough.

There is something magical in 2025 to practically disconnect from all the social noise. But one can't be total piece of s*it who can't stand themselves of course.

I am experimenting with using freedom.to to block social media in the browser. It creates a VPN profile that blocks these sites in the browser (it also uses the Screen Time API to block specific apps). The downsides are that you can just go into iOS settings to disable the profile, and I am paying Freedom a subscription for something I could set up for free. The upside vs. managing it myself is that it's much easier to create a schedule (eg block during weekdays, instead of block 24/7).

This is my weakness. I really miss leechblock since changing to iPhone

I use Burnout Buddy, it can block both apps and websites, you can set up custom rules, time based, usage based or triggered by Shortcuts (for instance I have one set up to block Reddit when I enter the gym).

Just want to say I was looking for something like this the other day that didn’t feature an obscene subscription and I’m very glad you made me aware of this app. It’s lovely and free!

Woah this is nice! And pretty generous free app

You can block them on dns level. That's what I did when I wanted to stop wasting time playing 2048. (Not sure how to configure DNS on phone, I was using PC to play at the time)

This has helped me too.

I have NextDNS profiles on my phone and PC that block problematic sites, as well as the settings dashboard itself to stop me touching it unless I'm on my tablet.

+1 for NextDNS. Last week I experimented with building a Brick[0]-like solution from my Android phone, by using an old badge I had lying around acting as an NFC trigger to launch a Tasker automation that enables/disables filtering profiles in NextDNS via REST API. It's working nicely, although it takes a while to effectively enable/disable filtering, I assume because of DNS caching on the phone. Also sometimes I actually need YouTube/Reddit/Instagram/etc. to look up something, so for now I settled on the slightly less nuclear option of using ScreenZen[1] to make my app opening a tad bit more mindful. I sometimes found myself going around the restricted app opening count/time limits by using my iPad, but overall my mindless screen time is decreasing, so I don't stress it too much. I don't have any issues with notifications really as I usually set them up to only receive what I deem important from the get go when I install a new app, and I also have Do Not Disturb and Routines enabled most of the time, plus a smartwatch to take a quick glimpse at messages if needed.

[0] https://getbrick.app/ [1] https://www.screenzen.co/

On the iPhone you can use Screen Time to block social media apps, and it will also block their websites.

However since you're the account owner (rather than a child), you can always just bypass the Screen Time block... But at least it adds a barrier.

My workaround for this is to always log in from porn/incognito mode where it doesn't remember cookies. Each time I have to type password and go through 2FA.

iPhones have a website blocking feature built in. It's possible to set up separate time limits for different websites. Setting a limit to 0 effectively block the site. Ask family member or a friend to set the pin for you and you're set.

Basically using environment design to beat habit loops

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