Thread 1539640

Dunno if this is the right board for it, but have any of you managed to overcome phone/social media addiction and if so just /r/ing help on and methods you used to do it. I'm realizing my phone is both making me a worse person and taking away a ton of my life, but we still need one to operate in today's society and therein lies the conundrum and trap.

Try making the same thread in /adv/, they might be more helpful there

Most towns have community centers of some kind that provide various services. Check yours out and see if you can't pick up a new hobby or meet new friends.

The problem isn't your phone or social media, the problem isn't "screen time" like a lot of people say, the problem is the internet.

>>1539642
>the problem is the internet.

Exactly that. The problem is a phone makes it infinitely easier to get hooked in and browse for hours upon hours at a time and suddenly all your time is gone. Realistically you can't just not have internet in the times we are in, but I know its a genuine problem for me. I'll throw up the thread on /adv/ tomorrow evening if this ones a bust.

>>1539640 (OP)
You don't even need a hobby. Things like I will learn whistling, pen spinning or sling shooting anything simple works no matter how dumb or useless.

>>1539650
I draw quite a bit (pic related) and I do a lot of digital art, again, issue being it's on the computer so it's far too easy to just quickly hit brave and start browsing.

What I'm legit thinking about doing is building a old school animation table and start shifting to traditional methods of everything. I'm also looking into those various phone limiters that lock you out of everything but calls after a certain amount of time. Time to work backwards I think.

Use the extended dns here, which blocks social media.

https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls

>>1539640 (OP)
Other than youtube & email, I don't have anything social/social media/browsing on my phone. Everything is done via browser at a computer like it's 2005 still.

I have an old twitter that I don't even post on anymore, I still check in once or twice a day. I used to post on reddit a lot but after my 4th or 5th account there I haven't been back there since. Obviously I still lurk and post here on 4chan but I spend a fraction of my time that I used to spend here.

That's all of it, no snapchat no discord no tik tok no instagram, have an old facebook account I deactivated like 10 years ago.

So now that all social media is isolated to my deskstop, it ranks even lower in terms of fun/priorities because there's a bunch of other things I'd rather be doing at my computer other than getting mad at politics or looking at current pictures of my old exs.

>>1539640 (OP)
uninstall any social media apps you may have, and silence notifications/keep your phone in manner mode as much as possible.

also, try doing a reset on your dopamine receptors. Saw the idea in a video yesterday and it seems good; Basically you do a few things: Any given task, only do one at a time (ie. if eating, do nothing else but eating until done). Take breaks from work/etc. by doing something incredibly boring rather than something stimulating (literally staring at a wall is a good example). Doing things like this slowly takes your dopamine needs down and helps make less addicting behaviors feel more rewarding again.

It may be tough, but when home/etc. leave your phone in another room. I mentioned manner mode, I usually keep my phone in that, and have a few contacts starred so that if they message or call, I get the notice anyway. 99% of notifications are bullshit; Treat them like spam email and mute/unsub as many as possible.

look up any and all ADHD helping software for phones. I use several of these on websites that are otherwise obnoxiously distracting. For example, use noscript and ublock origin and you can disable a ton of bad ads that distract you. For youtube there is this addon that blocks the home screen and replaces it with a photograph. I can't recall what it is as its not on this machine, but you can also go to youtube using youtube.com/adpidjfdf or any other gibberish, and it will take you to a 404 page that only has a search bar. It's way better than trying to use the default youtube homepage which inevitably is nothing but clickbait bullshit.

I'd also say just leave your phone at home more often. You may find that you don't actually need it as much as you think you do.

>>1539730
Great advice all around. Gonna try to implement a lot of this tomorrow, especially the dopamine receptors as even though I don't use TikTok, almost every bit of social media now works the same. You scroll the same way, get the same hits of dopamine over and over, and eventually it just burns you out on every day tasks and the mundane until, like I said above, your day is over and you've legit done nothing all day but save pics and watch videos. Its genuinely horrible. I'll try and find some of those apps/add-ons as well as using >>1539693 .

The age of the internet has been a massive trap for those of us with ADD and ADHD, so minimizing and de-incentivizing the distractions is going to be huge. That tip with the youtube home screen is a particularly great idea too.

>>1539709
I worded it badly initially and >>1539642 hit closer to the truth of it. In general I want to just cut back on the internet as a whole but it is an extremely difficult thing to do in this particular era as it's so intertwined with everything. Still, seeing my projected years wasted browsing on a phone was a real eye opener... not to mention that it inspires me to backslide into a lot of old habits. Don't wanna get to the end of my life with nothing accomplished except the amount of entertainment I consumed.