Internet addiction is something that I've struggled with for well over a decade now. Innumerable days, weeks, probably years, lost to aimless scrolling with no goal in particular. My interests are more "intellectual" than the average social media addict who only looks at TikTok and Instagram, so perhaps my habits are more defensible in that regard, but I think it's still had a significant negative impact on my life and has prevented me from spending more time on things that I actually care about.
I wanted to see if anyone struggles with the same issues, and also share some of my recent thoughts on the nature of internet addiction.
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First, it has to be recognized that the internet can be both a force for great good and a force for great evil. Unlike hard drugs, total abstinence is neither possible nor desirable. The internet made me the person I am today, and gave me so many wonderful, unforgettable experiences. I can't just repudiate it entirely - rather I have to learn to live with it, and take better control of my relationship with it.
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I don't support the use of strategies like apps that automatically cut off your access during certain times of the day. Nietzsche once said something to the effect of, "only the weak man wants to pluck out his eyes to avoid looking at lustful things". It's a sentiment I agree with. Any solution that "forces" you to reduce browsing time is just putting a band-aid over the problem. The goal is to fundamentally reconfigure your desires and dispositions so they're more naturally aligned with your actual goals.
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A key factor in understanding internet addiction is understanding the need to accept boredom. Before smartphones, people used to get bored way more often. Sometimes you'd just have to sit there with literally nothing to do, not even anything to think - you won't always want to read a book, or entertain yourself with your own thoughts. Smartphones permanently cured boredom - scrolling the web is infinitely entertaining, and takes zero effort. It's like a liquid that seeps in through the cracks furnished by boredom and gradually fills up all available space, taking over every second of time that you have. I think that one of the biggest keys to reconfiguring my relationship with the internet, for me anyway, is accepting and embracing that there will simply be times where I am bored and I just sit there doing literally, absolutely nothing. But that's not an excuse to resort to web browsing in those cases.
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I'm currently trying to take an organic approach where I accept that the internet is extremely fun and beneficial, and I will browse it multiple times a day, but I try to consciously remind myself to limit it and make time for other things as well. For example, making short-term plans like "I won't look at my phone until I'm back from my morning walk, at which points I will check websites X Y and Z, and then I won't look at my phone again until after lunch". We'll see how it goes. The unfortunate thing about addiction isn't that any one mitigation strategy is difficult to implement and stick to, but rather that I seem to have little control over exactly what person I'm going to be next week. I always seem to wind up back in a place where, on a meta-level, I simply no longer have a desire to control my web browsing at all and I no longer see it as a problem, so I ditch any prevention strategy and I just go back to unrestricted scrolling. I'd really like to fundamentally reconfigure myself so that doesn't happen anymore. But I don't know how to do that.
I view this as a societal problem, not just an individual problem with me. I saw a family of three at a restaurant the other day, mom and dad and a young boy, and all three of them were glued to their phones, ignoring each other. That made me very sad. I hope that more will be done in the future to raise consciousness of internet addiction, and smartphone addiction in particular.
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Internet companies spend billions building systems to hijack your attention. If you want to succeed, you need to re-shape your environment to combat their tactics, because you aren't going to be making purely rational, well thought out decisions on a moment to moment basis.
I occasionally go through phases where I limit my technology use in various ways in order to "reset" what I'm acclimatized to. Here are some things I've found effective.
Password lock screen on phone AND full information in notifications on lock screen: I can see my messages don't need an immediate reply, and opening my phone to use it is slightly annoying. This means a random email that dings me won't lead to me instinctively opening reddit.
Uninstalling apps for specific platforms: If I'm trying to take a break from reddit, I'll uninstall the app and only visit the site on my computer. That leads to significantly less use, and when I do use reddit I am more likely to engage with text-based content.
Read-Logging: I've done this for a few months at a time a few years ago. I logged every article I read with a short summary, from 1 to five sentences. Maybe more if I really liked it. This dramatically improved the value I got back while reducing the skimming I did, but I found it mentally draining.
Background music: I often take short breaks. If I navigate to a website, that short break has a tendency to become a long one. Instead, I keep background music playing and I try to enjoy the background music during my short break. My work stays on screen and I am much more likely to return to it sooner.
I have done similar thing but only briefly. But I regret I did not continue it. My memory is probably worse then average, so writing something about an article makes me remember it better. But it is indeed mentally draining. That should theoretically incentivise me to read only that which is worth the effort. But that is sadly only known after I have already read it. So in practice I stopped.
But I will try to go back to writing short summaries as well as responding more on the Motte. Not only do I remember things better. But writing things down is a little different than just thinking the ideas in your head. And my in turn improve/change my thinking.
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