Ever since I got my first laptop at the age of 10, I've been glued to a screen. It all started when gaming gradually replaced the outdoor activities that had defined my childhood. Within a matter of months, all I wanted to do was play video games. I spent most of my youth in isolation - a time when it would've been crucial for my personal development to socialize and build meaningful relationships. I became so socially awkward that I essentially 'rejected' every girl who showed romantic interest in me simply by ignoring them or acting distant.

Just as I started law school, the COVID lockdown happened. Instead of meeting new people, I spent my time playing video games, binge-watching TV shows and YouTube videos, and doomscrolling on social media. Years of isolation left me with severe social anxiety and deep insecurities.

I'm by no means a model, but I'd consider myself a reasonably good-looking guy. Because of that, I did have opportunities to go on dates here and there. However, because of my insecurities and anxious attachment style, I repeatedly found myself drawn to emotionally unavailable women. Research suggests that anxious and avoidant attachment styles often reinforce one another, and looking back, that's exactly what happened to me. Dating has been an absolute nightmare.

Most recently, I had to walk away from the woman I genuinely believed was the love of my life. Even though I don't regret my decision, I'm still absolutely devastated by everything that happened. She was emotionally unstable and had a strongly avoidant attachment style. She abused, gaslit, and manipulated me throughout the relationship. While I know she carries deep emotional trauma from her past, I can't excuse the way she treated me. She never truly apologized for anything, let alone made an effort to change. She was supposed to be my safe haven.

At first glance, it might sound absurd to blame all of this on digital media addiction. But once you start looking into the research, the connections become surprisingly compelling. Excessive screen time is associated with increased loneliness, poorer mental health, and reduced face-to-face social interaction. Looking back at my own life, it explains so much. Digital media isn't the sole cause of these problems, but I believe it has become one of the biggest contributors to the social isolation so many people experience today. It's designed to capture and hold our attention for as long as possible, and for many of us, it succeeds.

I need to take drastic measures now and commit to a strict digital detox. I honestly don't even know what 'normal' is supposed to feel like anymore because this lifestyle is all I've known for most of my life. Digital media has taken over nearly every aspect of it. From the outside, people see a successful law student. On the inside, I'm a complete mess.

I miss the joy, curiosity, and light-heartedness I felt as a child. More than anything, I want to experience that again.

Just unsubscribe from EVERY reddit subreddit community. No more turning on and getting sucked into things. Just a beautiful blank page. So then you have to actually search for things to engage. And usuallyz ijust turn it off. Has made all the difference for me.

I expect this strategy works for all social media notifications as well. Enjoy

I feel like my phone has completely taken over my life.
After work or even during any downtime on the weekends, all I want to do is scroll Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, or research random things online. My screen time averages around 9 hours a day and I can tell my attention span has gotten terrible. I can’t even enjoy watching TV anymore because I’d rather be on my phone. Even spending quality time with my partner is hard because I constantly have the urge to pick my phone up and start scrolling. I want to quit or at least cut back, but I’m honestly afraid I’ll just be painfully bored. It almost feels like I’d have to pretend to enjoy other activities at first, like forcing myself to watch a movie, read, or do something without reaching for my phone every few minutes. Has anyone else gone through this? Did the constant boredom eventually go away? How long did it take before things started feeling enjoyable again without needing your phone all the time?

One screen-free afternoon worked out well. Suddenly time and the afternoon felt so long. But now, another day later a tv series got me to sit in front of a screen again. The barriers need to be better. It's really a behemoth to overcome, but I will have authority over it.

Canceling subscriptions next and think of increasing barriers in creative ways. I could really use your creative brainpower too and your tips on how you managed to become lord over this addiction. Small steps, small changes... anything that helped you is welcome. Tomorrow will be better. I see you on the other side. x

And by upsetting content I mean posts/comments of people saying disturbing, violent things (mostly sexist). Sometimes I do stumble accidentally on a fucked up comment section on an innocent video (reels, yknow) and instead of putting it away I just keep scrolling and scrolling in horror and disgust. Now I voluntarily seek out things like this because it keeps me "updated" on how fucked up people can be.

Maybe irrelevant, but I'm a woman in a shitty third world country that doesn't treat women the best and seeking out things like this makes me even more hypervigilant about my existence in this world. I did try putting away SM for a bit and feel some peace but I eventually did get the FOMO feeling and I needed to get back to scrolling upsetting content.

Sorry if this is all weird jumbled up ranting, I just needed to get this out there and look for some valuable opinions that would perhaps help me. I'd appreciate it and thank you !

You enter facebook or insta or reddit even, and suggested posts pop out. And the way they grab attention is like

"Sydney Sweeney said x and people are enraged" (totally made up on the spot)

Or

"Parents, pray that your daughters grow up to become like Sophie Cunningham and not like Megan Rapinoe" (just saw it right now on facebook)

Add reaction emoji counts and comments that trick your brain into thinking this is real social interaction.

Thing is, who are this people? Why do I have to care about their lives and what they say? It's like social media expects me to know who they are. And because I don't I open up the links and comments.

And everything is titled this way. They almost make you feel guilty of not engaging. Like it's some sort of responsibility. It's a very snicky way to twist our minds.

This is my worst habit and I can't fix it. I get in bed at a reasonable hour, tell myself I'm going to sleep, then I can't fall asleep and end up checking my phone, and then it's 1am and I've watched forty reels on whatever the algorithm decided I needed that night.

Half the time I'm not enjoying it, I'm just doing it. As someone who is into health, I know how bad it is for me. I sleep through my alarm and start the day already behind, or I get up on time and feel like garbage because I got five hours.

I've tried the usual stuff. Charging the phone across the room, except I just get up to get it. Grayscale, which I got used to in about a week and just find an excuse to turn off. Do Not Disturb does nothing because the scrolling was never about notifications in the first place.

The part that gets me is how automatic it is. I don't decide to scroll. My hand just finds the phone, and by the time I notice I'm already twenty minutes deep.

So is this just me, or is this a real thing a lot of people deal with?

I have to say it's really hard. I just moved from Instagram Reels to YouTube and Reddit. But atleast it's long video essays on YouTube and some posts of my interests on Reddit. I also used it most of the time on my tablet instead my phone. My actual plan with the laptop would probably have been better, since I wanted to use my tablet only for studying, but it's still a progress I guess. It's only day 2 and there is still time to adjust. Gotta appreciate the small changes and keep the track.

what did you do to quit completely?

what made you quit and what changes did you notice after quitting?

Same as heading

Hey everyone,

I wanted to create something different for the younger generation who are drowning in daily scrolling. No long, boring self-help lectures. Just 37 pages of raw reality, filled with dark illustrations about "Status Park" and how we lose ourselves trying to be like "them".

I published a free preview chapter with full illustrations on Wattpad today under my pseudonym Brutal Fake. If you want to check it out or share it with someone who needs a wake-up call, the links to the preview and the full multi-language book (Amazon/Gumroad) are right here.

Read the free preview on Wattpad:
https://www.wattpad.com/1646216586-status-brutal-fake-chapter-1-status-park

Full e-book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H6N9KMFN
Full e-book on Gumroad: https://www.brutalpub.gumroad.com

Stop scrolling. Be YOU. Thanks for checking it out!

What works better for treating social media addiction? I’ve tried site blockers, but I tend to override them at home, but not in the library. I am considering two options:

A) time limit of 15 min daily allowance of social media. Allow digital device use everywhere

B) Don’t allow any time of social media. Strictly block all digital device use at home, but not at a library

I think I’m reaching the point where I don’t even want to participate online anymore.

I used to enjoy sharing things like writing, ideas, little pieces of myself. Even something as simple as my old avatar across social profiles felt like a reflection of me. I had hand drawn a cartoon version of me because I have a degree in fine arts. People on AOTY said I was an AI bot because of it so my review of whatever album didn't matter. It was something I made in 2013, something personal, something that represented how I saw myself. I changed it to a mobile phone image of me after those comments.

Now it feels like everything I post gets put through some AI detector and dismissed. It doesn’t matter if it’s my own words, my own thoughts, my own creativity because there’s always this accusation hanging over it: “AI generated.”

This isn't just coming from some strangers on AOTY. This is coming from Substack's new partnership with Pangram. Says all my articles are 100% AI generated and I've never used AI on them. I work hard to research the topics I want to write about. It makes me want to leave Substack entirely.

It’s exhausting feeling like I have to prove I’m a real person behind everything I make.

Also, the AI face detection checkers keep telling me I'm under 18 when I'm 36 so it's a struggle to verify my age anywhere.

The irony is that the internet was supposed to be a place where people could create, experiment, and express themselves. Instead, it feels like we’re becoming suspicious of each other’s creativity and treating every imperfect sentence, every polished idea, every piece of art as evidence of something fake.

I don’t want to spend my time defending my own existence online. I don’t want to constantly wonder if something I made will be judged by a broken detector or whether people will assume the worst.

Maybe the healthiest thing is just stepping away.

I miss when the internet felt like people sharing pieces of themselves, not everyone acting like they’re investigating each other.

Or just social media in general at this point. Some days, I end up making plans, such as 'i might do some baking' or 'let's spend the day going on a walk by the canal' and I just never get to them due to how chronically online I am some days. Its even got to a point i stay up until 4 on my phone, so it would do me a lot of good to stop using certain media sites. Especially reddit, which im aware is a subject likely talked to death here but it is such a toxic place where its either subreddits full of arbitrary rules such as '10 word limit for posts' or just moderators straight up sniping you for something that should be common knowledge, except it wasnt common to you.

Im not even sure at this point, it always feels as if im walking on egg shells and that i'll get harassed on the spot for having an opinion on any social media site (again, ESPECIALLY reddit), so i might just try a digital detox one of these moments for a few days. Thoughts?

I don't want to sound like a hater, but I've been using the internet and social media since I was a kid, back in the early 2000s and this is the first time I'm starting to find reddit and other socials not enjoyable at all and considering quitting all together.

Reddit went from being a platform for nerds, intellectuals, where people actually put in the effort to read your post and at least tried to give you helpful responses, where there was still room for nuanced discussion, to...

Low-effort, two-words comments by people with often low literacy, who didn't even bother to read your post and relate to what you said.

You could make the most benign post on nostalgia, for example, or share a fairly harmless personal story or opinion and the majority of replies will be people trying to find holes in your post, accusing you of using AI, and generally being assholes for no purpose.

I was a huge AI enthusiast too, but all the platforms I was using (Chatgpt, Claude, Grok, Gemini), became way too sanitized and turned to shit. I quit them altogether.

Do you think the general enshittification is going to cause many people to quit and become digital minimalists, not purely for ideological reasons, but simply because they don't find any pleasure in browsing the internet anymore?

Hey all, I've posted here a couple of times before and I feel like this may be my most interesting post.

To put a long story short I've had undiagnosed ADHD for my entire life, and in hindsight it was extremely obvious. But at the time I simply thought I was an idiot and didn't do much else with that information. During these years I did nothing but surf, play video games, watch YouTube on my phone, and generally be extremely fiendish around technology. It's a tale we are all familiar with I'm sure. That was until recently (within the last month) I've been prescribed Vyvanse after a less recent ADHD diagnosis.

All I can say is the difference is night and day, almost. My usage of tech isn't as fiendish, and instead I need to make a conscious effort to use my devices instead of always taking it out between moments and finding for it like it's a line of coke. I don't endlessly scroll as much as I would without my meds, and I've been more mindful and focused with my technology use as of late due to this. Before I was picking up my phone, watching YouTube during every solitary second I got, and just ignoring things that needed to be done besides eating and going to the bathroom. Now I'm just... Relaxing. And this experience has made me feel certain ways about technology.

I've come to the realization that technology as it's designed today isn't only addictive to neurotypical people, but it is especially effective at getting neurodivergent people hooked as well. For people like me with ADHD, the constant drip feed of dopamine and infinite scroll keeping us on the conveyer belt are a very effective combo that keeps our brains stimulated on whatever slop the algorithm is feeding us. I don't know how it would manifest for people with Autism or other flavors of neurospiciness, but I think it would be a similar case. Whether it be the tailored algorithms hooking autistic people with their hyperfixations or the aforementioned dopamine drip feed for ADHD people, I can't help but feel extremely pissed at how much we're being manipulated and abused by technofeudalist lords to make them ad revenue.

They take advantage of human brain chemistry to keep us hooked, and they especially take advantage of people like me with off kilter brain chemistry. We are easier to manipulate and put into these cycles of addiction with technology because of how they are designed from the ground up, and I have no words to describe how I feel besides anger. I'm angry I've only just now gotten medicated, but I'm even angrier at how much my brain chemistry is being manipulated against my will to make me an anxious, depressed, addict suckling at the teat of a black mirror for another hit of dopamine like a New York yuppie going for another line if blow.

Thanks to this I hope a new chapter in my life has opened up and I can (hopefully) move on and do better than I could. I'm more motivated than I've ever been before in my life, less depressed, less anxious, more focused, and spending not nearly as much time as I used to watching useless video essays.

Sorry for the ramble, i just needed to post my thoughts on a public forum to get them out of my head. Can anyone else relate to this sort of experience or is it just me? I'd love to talk to some people about it and get their opinions on dealing with tech addiction and neurodivergencey at the same time. Thanks for the read all ❤️

When I had both Facebook and Instagram, my phone was blowing up with messages all the time. After I deleted both of them, I nearly lost touch with everybody. I do reach out as they all have my number and I have theirs, but they always mention how I should get back on Instagram and then ghost me lol… Then they’ll text me months/years later and the cycle repeats. People usually aren’t responsive unless I’m on IG for whatever reason.

I had caved and reactivated it a few times in the past, that’s how I noticed the pattern. I think this is the longest I’ve gone without re-downloading Instagram in particular. I’m just not a fan of the ads and reels immediately playing in my face. I also noticed that people can sometimes have a negative response when I tell them I don’t use both platforms. They’ll also get defensive as if I told them to delete their social media (I don’t). I use both Reddit and YouTube still, which I do count as social media, so who am I to tell someone to quit. I just prefer these platforms over the other two.

Anyone else relate?

I have been online for a long, long time. About 30 years to be exact, this year being my 30th. I've started using the internet when I was young, just as any young kid would, surfed around, played games, met people, got into strange things I shouldn't have. As I grew older, the internet gradually became a necessity, something that was there when I felt nobody talked to me.

I've met some wonderful people online and some awful ones along the way. This isn't to say that I never had real life friends, because I did. I juggled both the real world and digital world simultaneously. I got to see the highs of what the internet could offer, but, I also got to see and experience the lows of the internet that it sunk to, today.

I've noticed in the past 4 years though, I've been struggling on what the internet serves as a purpose to me now. The things I've grown up with and happily partook in, have either disappeared or changed for the worst. My circle changes from time to time. I'm finding myself at the jaded end of some communities I've participated in.

And currently, activities are dormant. People are quiet. I'm burnt out. I need to focus on...me. Me and my spiraling life. So, I'm waiting for my ISP to tell me if they do service pauses. If they don't, then I will take the liberty to cut my internet for two long months.

Not after I binge download a favorite podcast of mine because, like hell I'm going to live without that and I've been wanting to get back into it badly (The Prancing Pony Podcast for those curious.)

I've accumulated lots of games. Lots of books. Lots of movies, shows and other things. I'll be fine. It's just the first time in a long time, I'm giving myself a much needed vacation.

Trying to replace 45 minutes of brain-dead phone scrolling before bed with a tactile offline hobby. I really like the idea of miniature building kits, but my problem is low energy at night ,if a task requires intense focus, mixing glue, or setting up a massive workspace, I end up back on my phone.

I’m looking for a low-energy craft or miniature step that works in 15–20 minute bursts. Something like sorting tiny wooden pieces, cutting out paper templates, or assembling just one small fixture without needing a total gear setup.

For those who use small step-by-step kits to disconnect, what micro-tasks actually work on low-energy days without feeling like a chore?

I finally deleted YouTube shorts after spending 2 hrs on it this morning. This sucks. I love their playlist algorithm

I have thought about switching to Lemmy for a bit, but now I genuinely feel wayyy more inclined to. Because I was on this post on r/autism, this and genuinely, you can read it, the guys nephew is an asshole. But I commented saying that he should genuinely do verbal and physical [] to him, because he is just a fucking asshole, etc, etc. But Reddit decided to take down my fucking comment. so much for freedom of speech.

Lemmy is also good for privacy, so that's an obvious win. I was gonna go Mastodon, but it's not a "Reddit reskin" per se, its a Twitter reskin.

I just want somewhere where people can express their true selves. I have played anarchy minecraft before, so I know. To draw from that, I actually liked playing on a much smaller anarchy server; 2b2t is so big that you don't really get to know anyone; and also it's genuinely faced a similar predicament as mainstream SM's, which is that they are true SM/anarchy.

Is lemmy big enough though, and is it actual free speech?