Ask HN: Most effective way to reduce excessive digital media consumption?

What about approaching it from the other direction, where instead of trying to physically inhibit the thing you don't want to be doing you aggressively fill your schedule with things you _do_ want to be doing instead?

What do you want to do instead of digital media consumption? If you do more of those you'll naturally have less time for browsing.

For me, that's been taking up the following (the specific items change with time, but when I notice myself spending more time mindlessly scrolling it is a good reminder that I need something else to keep me busy):

* Running (with race goals) - doing this 4x a week sure takes up a lot of my time.

* Physical meetups (local philosophy groups, museum events, actively scheduling coffee with friends, etc)

* Crafts (cross stitch - started when I took on an ambitious Birthday gift project for my boyfriend and now it's kind of a meditative experience)

* Studying (part-time university course where I have to read a paper and complete a study guide once a week)

Those four things, along with full time work, don't leave much time for mindless scrolling unless I intentionally want to just chill and schedule a block of that in (and I don't feel guilty about doing that anymore because with all the other stuff enriching my life I feel there's nothing wrong with some occasional browsing).

I came here to say the same thing. Find some other things/hobbies that you can look forward to doing instead.

No single tool, script, device or system will stop this.

In fact, blocking tools can actually make this worse. Using a blocking tool is tacitly saying "I can't control myself. I need to hand control to something outside of myself" This basically reinforces the belief that you cannot control your problematic consumption.

You need strategies that reinforce the opposite belief: You are in control of your usage.

I recommend looking into books like Feeling Good and Feeling Great. Get a greater understanding of your emotional state and work out how that feeds into your social media usage.

There are some tools that are useful. The first is time tracking tools. They let you look back on your day and work out how you spent your time. What are the patterns of your usage. Do you always end up struggling after lunch? Or in the evening? What are your triggers?

While I wouldn't recommend blocking sites completely, blocking the most distracting parts of sites can be useful. If you're studying from youtube videos, using a plugin that blocks comments and suggested videos is extremely useful. This means you will no longer catch a glimpse of a thumbnail of something interesting and go off task.

Overall, you have to tackle your emotions and your beliefs about yourself.

Delete Reddit account. Reddit is a cesspool of algorithmically delivered nothingness that’s just enough whatever you want without ever being enough of anything. Also delete twitch account too. You say they have useful information for programming and fitness. That is mostly besides the point. All that information is elsewhere and without the cost of endlessly scrolling that you want to stop paying.

Pick a hobby that is not connected to computers. For example I like to rebuild old bicycles.

Go for walks without a device. You don’t actually need a device with you for most of the days activities. Tell your gf you will be at the pub if she needs you. Walk to the park and sit on a bench and think your thoughts. Become comfortable with you.

Write your thoughts in a paper journal. Your thoughts don’t need to be broadcasted and they don’t need to be backed up to the cloud. But they likely need to be recorded as it helps to organise them.

Get a watch. You don’t need an 8 core 16 gb ram computer in your pocket to know the time.

Decide what you value and then make decisions based on those values.

You have to trick your mind into believing it's not a drastic change, otherwise the fomo will step in and you'll eventually get doubled down relapse episodes.

1. I uninstalled the mobile apps and turned on 'desktop site' view on my phone browser. That way I never really "quit", but the experience of scrolling comes with so much friction that I don't feel like opening it unless absolutely necessary. The added battery life is a bonus.

2. I reduced my feed with extreme prejudice. My fomo wasn't letting me unfollow pages, so I moved them to alt account/custom feeds/bookmarks. Muted the remaining ones except the handful friends I wanted to see updates from.

Finally, don't be hard on yourself. You're going against meticulously engineered data streams that have been perfected over the years with the assistance of top behavioral scientists.

App blocking does not work. Delete the apps from your phone that you do not need. That usually means "all social media but youtube". Turn off autoplay/autoplay next on Youtube. On desktop, I actually use LeechBlock to even block youtube during work hours. It has a feature that blocks any override for specific sites or sets. If I want to use youtube, I pull it up on my phone. I play the video while putting my phone propped up on the kick stand on its case, next to my laptop.

Seems counter intuitive, and a recipe for distraction. But it works. With autoplay off, you have to manually pick up your phone and select the next video.

Podcast apps are a great replacement for youtube to play in the background. I use Pocket Casts, but I am grandfathered in because I bought it before they went subscription. I can't speak for the free version. If you are Mac/iOS, Apple Podcasts is now very good. It is also available on the web for Windows/Linux. The default option on Android is Youtube Music, which is a disaster. I would recommend Pocket Casts there. The free version can't possibly be worse than this. Pocket Casts is also available on web/desktop so your listening can sync.

I understand that you think you will eventually bypass these barriers, but this belief leads to failure. And the only way to move forward is to believe you can follow through.

> The problem is that I know how to work around these things

Well I'm sure you could come up with a few ways to work around your locking container but why isn't that also a problem? I think it comes down to the level of "activation energy" it requires, which may include breaking it open and also getting a new one.

In a similar way your digital block needs to have a high enough activation energy (both in getting around it and then turning it back on) that it effectively blocks you. It doesn't need to be impossible, it doesn't even really need to be that hard since we tend to be tempted with these things when feeling at a low energy (or we would be doing something else). As an example, I have the leechblock extension where turning it off would require uninstalling it or typing in something really long, I havent touched it in years.

Think of it as an aid to will power, you'll need higher obstacles the lower your wall of will power (a limited resource)

> Another issue is that sometimes sites have valuable information.

You should try blocking the feeds and recommendeds instead. Setup some regex rules, use ublock lists, get extensions which block the home page etc. But you shouldn't block them permanently, set just enough time to catch up / remind yourself that most of the content is useless then move on

You've gotten lots of good advice for long-term improvement, and for the nuclear option; here are some short-term smaller fixes which are (much) better than nothing. The idea with these is to put up a little speedbump in the way of mindless consumption, but not so much of a barrier that you'll be tempted to remove it yourself.

- For Youtube, delete and disable watch history. This will make the "home" and "shorts" tabs blank, and make the below-video recommendations less effective. Your subscriptions and everything else will still work normally. Also uninstall the app from your phone, so you have to access it in a browser (even on Android you can "disable" it).

- For Reddit, block r/all (and maybe / (home)) in your adblocker on all your devices. (For ublock origin the rule is ||reddit.com/r/all^$document ) The block can easily be clicked through, but that means you'll leave it in place for next time. Non-r/all pages will still work. Again, uninstall any apps.

I don't have similar advice for Facebook and Twitch; maybe unfollow everyone on Twitch so you have to look up channels intentionally?

I agree with disabling history in youtube.com...

Now I only watch videos from my subscriptions as opposed to whatever the algorithm feed me.

I bought a thing as a solution for exactly same problem. Don’t want to tell a specific brand, because IDK if it’s allowed here. Essentially they send you a physical device with NFC inside. You use their app to put a phone in distraction free mode and the only way to unblock it is to tap the object. It helped me a lot with my social media addiction. Probably, the best investment I ever made.

Maybe I can first get myself addicted to using my phone instead of my desktop for entertainment media and then limit access to the phone and hopefully not rebound back to the desktop. :) Putting my desktop inside another physical device seems difficult to make work, but yes I agree this is the sort of solution I'm yearning for. I'm happy it worked for you.

atleast tell what to amazon search for

You are allowed to name the brand.

I have Brick

1. Delete your accounts, if possible. Maybe not YouTube though if you rely on Google for Android or email [1].

2. Install the LeechBlock extension [2] in the browser on all your devices. Lock out the sites you want to lose from your life. You can add a time-limited override for some, if you want. Dont feel bad or weak about yourself for doing this: these sites are largely designed with psychological input to be addictive.

3. Find something else to do. If its reading, always have a book in progress and one that you'll read next. Or cooking, exercise, sex, study, whatever.

4. Exercise anyway. Hydrate, sleep well.

[1] Don't use gmail - google are not on your side. Get a domain and use a proper email service like fastmail or protonmail. Sign up for kagi and dump google search.

[2] Available for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, etc. via the browser extension stores.

I found getting banned from Reddit to be pretty effective. Without a functioning comment system, and being upset about what I felt was unjust, was the finial nail in the coffin that got me to break the habit. I don’t want to even give them traffic anymore.

If there is a useful search result, I can still see the result without a login. AI also tends to surface the information without going there. If I do need to go to the site to see a result, the continued efforts to monetize have made the site so broken and hard to use that it has also become a deterrent.

Funny thing was I could still use the API to overwrite and delete all my comments before deleting my account. That was pretty surprising. Of course, this was before their big API lockdown.

I can’t believe you got banned entirely. I’d love to hear the story. (Email in profile if it’s too off topic for here)

The best I ever did was being banned from two or three subreddits. Some bans for just joining other subreddits!

One idea is to switch to a dumb phone or a cellular enabled smart watch. You can still text and call, but can’t check social media as easily.

You can still have a smart phone. But just leave it home.

For a time I treated my smart phone as a home phone/land line. It was always plugged into a spot on a charger, I’d force myself to go there to check on something. Relatedly it might be nice if someone could invent a smart phone that only worked when plugged in.

Some ideas.

Delete any accounts you have with these services.

When you’re home, put your phone away, don’t carry it on you.

Read the book “How to break up with your phone” by Catherine Anne Price.

Have one or two books that every time you are tempted to go to one of those services you pick up and read that book instead.

Meditate. Exercise. Do gardening.

BUT ultimately… figure out the root cause of your addiction and work on that.

Fortunately, I never became addicted to my phone because I never moved past being addicted to my desktop :) I completely forget I have my phone on me when I'm out and about, but I don't leave my house a ton and work remotely.

I unsubbed from all my subreddits a long time ago and don't really comment much. I engage with the site the same if I'm logged out. I'm pretty close to deleting my Facebook, but have at least trimmed friends down to below 100. I suppose I could at least make the transition to just using Messenger for Desktop instead of full-fledged Facebook to preserve the few contacts I message on that platform.

I'll give the book a skim and see if it has anything insightful. Thanks for the suggestion.

I agree I could be meditating more. I have a subscription for Ten Percent Happier and dabble in it, but rarely have streaks longer than a month. I agree that it's possible practicing meditation more heavily would give me a stronger ability to see my mind's desires and respond to them rather than being subject to them.

The actions just feel subconscious at this point. Like when tests/CI are running then I flick back to media on a second screen, or when I get stuck on a problem or am having trouble getting into the zone then I procrastinate by thumbing through media. These aren't really times where I feel I can get up and go do an entirely different activity that puts me away from the screen. It's more like a behavioral pattern that subtlety saps my efficiency when I'm trying to be productive, you know?

Your last paragraph is telling.

Try to read it by substituting “Sean Anderson” for “I” and critically evaluate what you think of Sean Anderson’s explanation…

Yeah, fair. My first thought was that I can get up and do something else and am just choosing not to do so.

I definitely have the same problem (I just sent a work email, and have to go back to a task that's a bit difficult, so I'm just giving advice that I don't follow to a total stranger instead).

One thing I noticed about the "hard stuff" that I procrastinate away from is that I am a very slow thinker, and usually, the reason why I don't get into it straight away is that the first idea I have is not the right one, and I kind of know that in the back of my brain, and so letting the ideas flow freely in the brain while doing something else helps the good solution cristallize in a slow way. So when that's the case, I just need to embrace that and work on something else that's simpler like small frontend stuff that gives you good satisfaction for very little thinking.

Anyways, other things that sort of works for me are : lifting small weights while waiting, or doing grip training (I am climbing, so these are things that help for that), or doing dead hangs (I work from home...). Take a short walk. Like I literally used to walk back and forth to the bathroom when I was a kid.

I think that something like a underdesk bike, that's connected to a game on your screen would be kind of nice, you'd pause it while you work, and when you build something, you'd add an extra mile to that game... I don't know, I'm just making stuff up now.

Back to work ffs.

Phone foyer method. Only use your phone but keep it somewhere plugged in. Break the habit by leaving it where you won’t want to hang out.

In general, focus on good content, cut out bad content.

I've found I just have to really try to keep myself busy and do things that will get me in a state of flow. I usually go on my phone because of boredom. I don't know if this would help you, but along with some friends we are creating an AI notification summarizing app. The whole point is to allow us to be off our phones and be fully present, without feeling like we might be missing important things. It's still in early stages, but it works! If you're interested, let me know! I can send the link and you can try it out. Hopefully it will help :)

What sort of interesting things do you think you're missing that are better served by AI summaries? Not saying it's a bad idea, but I already have ~all notifications turned off on my phone because I got tired of the attention arms race.

Feels like I should be able to just browse the top of Reddit once a week and get the gist of what's happened, or limit my YouTube to a weekly "All In" podcast to get the interesting highlights, etc.

Yeah, totally get that. I’ve tried going on dnd, and it worked pretty well for me, until I had to turn it off. Between Slack for work, big group chats, and random alerts, I'm left with all of the notifications I missed just piled up, and then I don't know where to start. This app is kind of meant as an in-between zone, so a step down from just turning off all notifications. It learns your habits and priorities, then sorts and summarizes everything, so catching up doesn’t feel so chaotic and time-consuming. Maybe I'm solving a problem too specific to me, but well see. As for news, I totally agree with you, information is just so spread throughout right now.

The solution, for sure, is not asking how to do this online. What worked for me is resolution that cheap dopamine leads to degradation.

I started getting into game development which unexpectedly reduced the amount of time I wasted on youtube.

I had this interesting talk with a close friend who is a therapist about her work with patients on all sorts of addictions. Modern gen-z millennial patients have issues with addictions across the entire gamut from video games to drugs to media to medication, you name it.

Thing about tricks of any kind, like boundaries around when you get the thing is that you don't end up really addressing the root causes of the issue. If you're just locking up your computer or fencing yourself off you're not actually mastering self-control and discipline. If you're handing control to others you're burdening them and messing with your adult relationship. Like it's not healthy imho.

I'm not advocating that you should quit cold turkey or that those methods you describe about not snacking are not worth it. Breaking a real addiction often requires drastic measures. But it's much better to do the actual work on your root emotions to understand yourself. Especially if you're an adult and we're talking about something low-stakes. A part of that involves also accepting that you can let yourself sometimes have the thing and the world won't end.

I deliberately left many social media websites, and I regularly simply uninstall Instagram, video games. But I've also accepted that they're sometimes just fine and I will sporadically hop on them for a couple days. I've noticed their addictive potential is greatly reduced. I've found that rotating and shifting between them makes them more enjoyable but also makes me more dynamic less passive.

For the online world actually participating makes a huge difference. Putting yourself out there, be it typing out a comment or making a video is a much more rewarding experience as opposed to passive consumption.

But yeeah long story short what you really want to work on is the underlying emotions and only you can do that in your mind.

FWIW asking tenants of HN for advice on this is like asking smokers how to stop smoking.

There may be need for slower digital media.

Get a Kindle or other e-reader and start reading books. Once you've started, you'll realize that books are much more interesting than any video or audio media. There's no end to all the rabbit holes you can dive into.

With an e-reader you can deliberately leave your house to read, or you can leave your other devices in another room. It's easy to bring it anywhere. You can even read between sets in the gym.

The amount of AI bot drivel online is reducing my consumption tbh. What's the point in responding to some clickbait reddit post designed to polarise people, especially when you consider who owns the platforms

Some people are saying AI slop might be what frees us.

Go outside.

Seconded. Do your groceries without your phone. Leave your phone somewhere unreachable for the weekend. Or just disappear into the woods for a couple months, you'd be surprised at how much even a week with no phone/computer/internet does in terms of rewiring your brain (ok maybe that last suggestion is a little extreme for most folks).

perseverance of mind-set. Period.

I mean, yes, I agree with you conceptually. I will myself to run ~30 miles a week, lift three times a week, meal prep all my foods after planning out my macros, quit drinking alcohol, caffeine, smoking, and have been dedicated in my work ethic to rise sufficiently high in software engineering. I'm not a stranger to the idea. I even enjoy reading about behavioral psychology.

But surely you can also agree that environmental factors play a role in determining whether willpower is effective or not. When I was quitting smoking marijuana I didn't keep paraphernalia adjacent to me all day and tell myself to just deal with it. Same with alcohol. Exercise routines were easier to establish when paired with audiobooks, pre-committing to the activity socially or at least by laying the clothes out, etc.

The digital stuff has just been really challenging. I've been on a computer basically daily for 25+ years. I've used Reddit and Facebook daily for 15+ years. My profession, and, frankly, my identity, puts me on a computer all day and thus adjacent to my digital addictions. That has made it a lot more challenging.

I'm not even looking to use the computer less. I just want to be able to focus on long-form writing, software development, and less dopamine-inducing forms of online media.

its called willpower, and you have to develop it over time if you dont have any

> My profession, and, frankly, my identity, puts me on a computer all day and thus adjacent to my digital addictions.

It would require super-human sustained restraint to abstain from dopamine treats when on the computer all day. Have you considered spending less time at the machine?

After 5 years working remote I had similar concerns and started feeling alienated from myself and other people.

My solution was to pivot to industrial automation. I get to code, but also work with other people, cool robots, and visit factories. Some of them are loud and dirty but some are super interesting. I feel a lot healthier now. I am an introverted and hyperliterate person, but the lifestyle where I was 'locked in' to digital hyperreality all day was too much.

I tried all the coping skills to preserve my sanity while continuing to earn a Cloud Capital salary. None of them solved the problem of feeling like I was timesharing my own mind to the Machine, until I gave up trying to have it both ways. I wish you the best.