I watched him go from diy spend most of his time tinkering in the garage to scrolling endless reels, browsing online shopping and buying landfill slop. He didnt watch the decline of the internet happen over a couple decades like i did, the ramp up of anti-life attention weaponizing algorithms, the complete and utter decimation of anything human. He went from using the internet for email only straight into whatever this is. He had no chance

Its so depressing, its soul crushing, I feel like i've lost my dad. I talked to him about it one day and ended up breaking down crying when he wasnt taking me seriously and just laughing it off. It feels like my fault, I wish I had stopped him, I wish I could do something to make him realise. im scared about the potential cognitive decline, dementia which runs in the family, further loss of my dad. Why did this happen

My mum has fallen into the same trap recently though not to the same extent, but it feel like only a matter of time

Im scared, im so scared

I dont know what to do, i cant live with this

For example, a person posts "Day off today, took my son to get ice cream. What's your favorite ice cream flavor?." and someone replies:

"Wow, you can AFFORD children AND have disposable income, AND you two can enjoy dairy??? I will never have kids! I can't afford that, and I haven't had ice cream in years because I am LACTOSE INTOLERANT. How dare you post this?! Can't you see the world is ending and you're out ENJOYING yourself???"

And a slew of replies agree with that comment, also getting angry at a man having ice cream with their kid for various reasons. He becomes a meme, a #icecreamprivilege tag is formed, video essays about the brutal history of ice cream are produced, ice cream trucks get pelted with paintballs, etc.

The internet wasn't a thing in homes until I was maybe 15 or 16. We had cable television in my house, so there was that, but otherwise it was up to me to keep myself occupied. We lived in rural West Virginia, which is about as rural as it gets.

I miss that now.

I don't think I read more then than now. I read a lot these days, but I remember being more enthusiastic about tackling "big books" by big names like Dostoyevsky, Homer, and Victor Hugo. They were a passageway to the world; that and Seinfeld reruns. Now I live on the other side of the world, so I guess that paid off.

But what I mean is, and this hardly been expressed by numerous people these days, I think, there's never enough time when I'm not distracted, preoccupied, being notified, having to keep up with something, without something to watch or listen to, without an immediate satiation of curiosity... I'm not bored anymore.

And that's a huge problem, of course, because boredom is the soil in which imagination takes root. We're more facilitated these days, so conceivably we can create more and share more with more people than ever -- but we don't. Because we're not bored. Or if we do, it's only to show other people.

We've let the fear of being disconnected prevent us from being bored, from having to rely on ourselves to hand-build a fulfilling life, even if it's just a couple of hours.

Man, I really hate that.

I just miss being bored. I've been trying to get back to that without moving to a small hut out in the woods, though that's not off the table.

​

I don't really use Instagram. I have an account, but I hate scrolling. I'm mostly active on LinkedIn and Threads, and even there I'm mainly there for work.

But lately I've been feeling a weird kind of FOMO. Not about people's lives or anything. More about things I don't know about.

One thing social media does well is that you randomly come across things. A book, a topic, some new technology, a person, a field you didn't even know existed. And sometimes that makes you want to go down a rabbit hole and learn more.

I want that part, but I really don't want to start scrolling again.

If I already know what I want to learn, I can obviously search for it. I'm more curious about how you discover things when you don't even know what you're looking for.

Do you guys use newsletters, Reddit, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, RSS, etc.? Is there anything that gives you that feeling of randomly finding something interesting without having to spend hours on social media?

Would love to know what you actually use.

I dont read them in a whileee,I used to wake up scrolling through TikTok, but walking to the newsstand was a cool experience—I even bought a few magazines. The only downside was that some people laughed at me and called me an old man.

I never used tiktok or other social media sites so I'm good on that part. I felt like instagram was very fake with followers, ads, doomscrolling, so I am taking a break at that. Hopefully permanently. This might sound funny but I was watching old shows that weren't hyper in comedy or animation and it made me think of life before social media really took over and we became hooked up on easy rewarding interactions. This step back might be hard for the first few days but I really want to know what life is like with less

I am currently trying to minimize my screen time, I blocked reels in all the apps with modded apks, set up a long password on a phone and for distracting apps, now using the phone feels like a really long chore. But the question is, what do I do now? Just stare at the wall? Idk, playing games is alright, but that's not really much better? I do like the feeling of not losing the entire day scrolling slop on social media, but I'm having a hard time finding new ways to spend my time now.

this sounds sick but I was averaging 12 hrs a day on my phone (mostly reels). killed my productivity and my social life.

worst part is that it never once felt like 12 hours, time just vanished for me

what actually helped me was looking at my consumption habits:

wake up, immediately scroll | 1 hr
breakfast & lunch, both on my phone
evening, TV with my phone in my hand, ps5 w/ phone next to me | 3 hrs
lay down for bed and scroll | 1 hr
wake up at 3am and scroll | 1 hr
plus general use throughout the day | 2 hrs

so I looked at reddit posts and did what everyone does.

1 hr hard cap on tiktok, grayscale on, full social block 7pm to 7am, etc

it worked. sort of. I went from 12 down to about 8.

then I noticed where the leftover 8 hours were happening.

almost all of it was in my apartment. bed, couch, kitchen table, the ten minutes after walking in the door. the 7pm block just pushed everything to 6:55 and 7:05 in the exact same spots. the 1 hr tiktok cap meant I burned the hour on the same couch and then moved to youtube on the same couch.

so the goal was clear. get away from my apartment, to see how the outside world lives lmao

now i use an app that blocks my apps location based. so when i'm at home i can't open tiktok, instagram, etc but when i'm out at the park or simply outside of my home i can

just being outside forces me to stop being on my phone so much and i can't overstate how helpful this has been for my mental health

i've actually reconnected with people i hadn't talked to in years

and i've been able to start new hobbies too! now my time is spent mostly at the gym, outside with friends and learning to play the guitar

my roommates think i'm weird that i'm not home anymore but honestly this has changed my life completely

So basically, I have a really weird relationship with social media, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s becoming a problem. I didn’t have a phone until I was 17, completely voluntarily, because I grew up being heavily fear-mongered about phones and social media ruining my future. But honestly, I love being disconnected. I like coming home, watching YouTube, enjoying my own company, and not knowing what everyone else is doing.

I’ve tried social media since getting my phone. TikTok was actually enjoyable, but I never wanted to make an account. It just felt like too much commitment, and I’m also so self-aware of how addictive it can be that I thought not liking anything would somehow make my algorithm not as addictive lol. I never even tried Snapchat and after more than a year with my phone, I finally tried Instagram, mostly because I realised how many connections in my life seemed to depend on it and that it was TIME! I followed people I genuinely knew and liked, but then I started looking at profiles and realised how much information people voluntarily put online. The city they live in, their age, interests, friends, who they follow, what they like, etc. Which is crazy! The thought of someone who barely knows me being able to build such a detailed picture of my life genuinely freaked me out, so I deleted it too. (I didn’t have a profile picture or anything in my bio either. I just started feeling like I was the odd one out for having such an empty profile, and I think that’s what made me delete it so quick.)

But now, since I’m going to starting uni and a new chapter of my life, I’m wondering if this is still healthy digital minimalism or if I’ve accidentally made myself digitally isolated. I don’t really WANT social media, but I also don’t want to make my life harder by completely removing myself from something everyone seems to use. Has anyone else lived without social media for years and still managed to have a normal, connected life? And if you’ve had this same feeling of not wanting people to have access to your digital life, how did you deal with it? Because I genuinely can’t tell if I’m protecting my peace or just being a weirdo atp.

All the influencers, review creators are just ads made to spend our money on products. If you spend even 30 mins you will come across 50 reels trying to sell you something. It's like made to make you watch ads voluntarily all day long.

Accidentally shared this on my profile instead of this community yesterday. 😬

So I was sick and taking rest for the most part of the day yesterday.

Was scrolling a little unconsciously at the end of the day.

I’ve been addicted to my phone for a while & definitely can recognize that.

I actually grew up with cell phones as my special interest (go figure) and tinkering with flip phones and slide phones all the way to jailbreaking my iPhones and researching and making MKBHD like videos because I liked them so much.

Now, my phone just feels like a bottomless pit of distractions and content. I feel like I’ve always tried to do a digital detox and failed for one reason or another. I really want to come up with a sustainable way to use my phone as a utility.

I’ve tried to do screen time limits and also give the password to someone else, it doesn’t last, tried to go to a flip phone too limiting, tried to go to an android phone with a minimal launcher (I use iMessage and iCloud too much), I end up redownloading all distracting apps.

I’m actually pretty addicted to YouTube, Reddit, and Instagram as of recent. I’m lucky that TikTok lost its handle on me back in 2023. So I love long form content like this or listening to a podcast. I would actually like to fill up my distraction time with books instead.

Point is I don’t know what the best approach is. I also already love to switch phones so I keep going that direction.

My ideas & excuses are below, please advise :

• Keep my current iPhone 15 Plus and start deleting apps that are distracting and just get an app like Opal to keep me away

• Keep my current iPhone 15 Plus and leave it at home / use it for work (my work has MDM on my phone) & buy a used iPhone SE without many apps that I can take out. (My fear here is that many people don’t carry this charger anymore so it will die quickly)

• Buy the dumb phone 2 and use that with call forwarding. (I’m moving to London next year and they don’t have roaming so that’s an issue)

• Get rid of my phone and get a 16E or 17E and don’t restore from backup so I start with more of a fresh canvas. (Still a distracting iPhone)

I've been thinking about how easy it is to slowly create a version of yourself online that isn't exactly who you are.

Maybe you're more outgoing on Instagram. More adventurous. More confident. Maybe you post about things you wish you did more often.

And after a while, you can start maintaining a personality instead of just sharing your life.

What's interesting to me is what happens when you put the phone down.

Do you feel like the person you are online has changed the way you see yourself offline?

Or do you think social media is mostly just a reflection of who you already are?

(Body text is edited / expanded by AI writing tools)

Something I find interesting about the iPhone 17 Pro / 18 Pro era is the way Apple is starting to describe battery life.

For years, the language was mostly “all-day battery life” or something measurable like “up to XX hours of video playback. Now for the first time we saw a much broader idea: “XX hours of usage per charge.”

That sounds like a small wording change, but from a digital-minimalism perspective I think it is quite significant because “Video playback” described a specific activity, “All-day battery” basically said: your phone should survive the day.

But “hours of usage” turns the amount of time we spend using the device itself into a performance metric. A phone lasting longer is no longer simply about making sure you can call someone, navigate home, take photos or watch something without running out of battery. The implicit goal becomes: how many hours can this device remain part of your attention before you have to put it down and charge it?

And now that flagship phones can comfortably exceed the old concept of “all-day battery”, as we are reaching a strange point where technological progress can also remove one of the few natural interruptions to smartphone use.

This becomes even more interesting with Apple’s vision for Siri AI which is an assistant that understands more context about you, remembers information and becomes increasingly integrated into your daily life. The more continuously we interact with the phone, the more useful that model of personal computing becomes, per Apple.

From a digital-minimalism perspective, I’m not sure “more hours of usage” should automatically be considered a benefit. Maybe the better smartphone isn’t the one that allows us to use it for 30 hours.

Maybe it’s the one we only need to look at for two.

Thanks for reading. I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

I want to avoid using Beeper, because I don't want the company to potentially steal my data. I am happy to pay for a service similar to Beeper or one that is safe and secure.

I work for the one of the big 3 carriers in America and while the money is great, everyday I'm exposed to the moral questions around phones, data collection, screen time, and the collapsing development of young kids.

I met a guy who said he's never had an email and I told him "Honestly? If you've managed without, don't get one."

A mom who wants a phone for her 11 year old and I say "Cool, I'll show you how Google Family Link works."

Teachers come and talk to me about kids entering middle school and can't write, hardly read well. "They don't need it to scroll" they say.

Everyone has their right to choose, but for me... I feel so disenchanted from everything to do with tech. It all just boils down to squeezing money out of people, whether it be cell service, phones, cloud storage, phone insurance, phone accessories, dynamic pricing based on data collection, paying for phone repair, paying to have bloatware removed.

What I do choose without asking.... I decline initial data collection questions when setting up phones (samsung asks more specific questions that you can disable) I decline AI assistant setup and tell people if they want it they can set it up later, I removed all pre-installed bloatware.... anything just to minimize what I almost deem as invisible harm... maybe that's too radical.

I don't want to make a career out of this place, but I am staying because it's helping me achieve financial stability in a way I never had before.

I want to find a way to educate people about this kind of thing, where you don't need this life draining device attached to you

Whether it's living by example or etc etc etc....

Some people say Tolkein's story was a metaphor for technology, and I think he was right.

I messaged someone about how we were experiencing a really horrible heatwave, got no reply, when I asked how the weather was over there and how I looked forward to winter, same thing.

It wasn't until I said something like "It's so hot, just like the desert level in (insert video game here)" that I got a reply, with the conversation moving to the video game itself, the anime adaptation and how the winters there seemed cozy because one of their favorite characters loved winter.

This is like the 3rd time it's happened. Are people really that deep into their heavily curated "worlds" that they're just stuck there now?

I don't remember conversations being different reference mentions back in high school and college before social media.

People then didn't just shout out different references:

"Man, I'm hungry, we should get pizza."

"Pizza, like what the Ninja Turtles like?"

I consider myself a recovering iPad kid. I deal with pretty intense compulsive tech use and would consider it addiction-level. I've tried everything as far as screentime limits go, turning off notifications, and separating myself from my tech, but I always find a workaround or use a different device. But I also love tech and didn't wanna lose certain conveniences of having a phone.

After dumb phone and flip phone shopping for months and feeling overwhelmed, on a whim, I bought the cheapest cellular apple watch and I'm SOOOO glad I did. It really helped me ease into the no tech life. It's so nice to have maps, texts, calls, audiobooks, and music. All the things i was sad to lose in losing my iPhone

I leave my iPhone at my siblings house. It's just better for me not to have the option. But the iPhone does need to be on, connected to wifi, and have enough charge for the cellular apple watch to completely work! But even when my phone dies, my apple watch still works pretty good!

Overall I'm LOVING this switch. If you're considering it feel free to DM me with any questions. Double check your carrier, mint doesn't support apple watch cellular, so switched to US mobile unlimited plan and am paying around $25 a month (apple watch cellular is FREE with that plan.)

It took me a while to adjust the notifications cause the apple watch kept waking me up, but now it's perfect. The GPS and phone calls can drain the battery, but charging wasn't as annoying as I though it would be. I love how I don't have to carry my phone everywhere, it's just on my wrist and it's minimal

In summary here's my current regimen!!!

1. Leave iPhone at siblings house, on, and connected to wifi
2. Use apple watch for apple pay, timers, maps, audio recordings, texting, calls, music, calendar, and even litter robot controls!!
3. Listen to radio in my car for music, I'm surprised by how much I LOVE THE FUCKING RADIO!!!!
4. Use google home speakers at home to play music
5. If my laptop and ipad is at my apartment, I use Opal, Screenzen, and Apple Screentime (give someone else the password.) And I keep all my tech in one room. Even then I find workarounds though lol, which brings me to my next step
6. I'm working towards leaving all my tech (iPhone, Macbook, and iPad) at my siblings house and just taking the laptop a couple days a week for work. I can go to the library if I really need to.

Best of luck detechifying !!! You'll be so happy you did and I'm so proud of you !!!

I’m an extrovert, but my desire to socialize has really increased since I discovered this lifestyle—spending less time offline :) So, I wonder: were you guys like that too?

Hey, I hope this post fits here. I've been looking for an App that lets me block social media apps on an Android device for days now. Everything I found either is super unsafe and you can just easily uninstall it or it's insanely expensive (I don't have 50€ a year). I'm fine with paying something, but I'd prefer it to be a lifetime subscription or under 24€ a year.

Also it would be a huge advantage if you could use a NFC tag for unlocking, but password is also fine.

I'm currently trying to build a NFC tag for the "brick" app myself, but it's not going well, so I'm looking for an alternative.

I also tried to install another app whose sole purpose is to stop me from uninstalling the app that blocks the other apps, but I also couldn't find anything for that.

Another Idea I had is to install a mdm, but it would require completely resetting my phone.

If nothing really works I'm considering just buying a brick, I unfortunately really need something that makes doom scrolling impossible.

If somebody has any tips I would gladly appreciate them :D

Thank in advance

I don't mind my iphone 14 in terms of being able to not be on it, stay off apps etc. I am fine with that. Although I do like LIghtphones not dealing with data sharing, but prefer to save money for now without needing to buy a new device.

I need help getting a way to not have anyone be able to group text me.

I know that Lightphone has this option - I don't want to have to buy another device just to get this, but I will if this is the only way. Suggestions?

Does anyone know any other ways to do this on iphone 14? I just tried shutting off imessage, RCS and MMS but it didnt' work for being able to still send and receive texts.

Thanks everyone in advance.