I spent a week camping by the beach. We had internet, but the signal was so bad that loading a single post could take several minutes. That naturally limited my phone use to about 30 minutes a day. I was also busy looking after young kids most of the time, so I barely had any reason to be online.

Between being away from screens, spending time at the beach and in the forest, and actually living in the moment, it felt like my brain finally got a reset. I've been struggling with internet addiction for over a decade, so this was a pretty big deal for me.

I'm back home now, and I've already slipped into some of my old habits. But one thing I've noticed is that I can actually sit down and not immediately think about the internet. That's something I couldn't do before. Now I just need to make a real effort to protect that progress instead of falling back into the same cycle.

Pray for me.

This was quote from Juvenal, also he got another one:

"The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things: bread and circuses"

It really feels to me that when I would play games, watch p.orn, or scroll trough social media or even watching sports, I am losing energy, then I am depleted and not ready for "action" if it make sense. I am not sharp and fully present.

Now check the society right now, where in past for what is happening we would be cutting heads to be honest and nothing anywhere. Like in my country central europe.. politicians constantly steal, imho if there would be men like in Rome the warriors it would cleared in 2 weeks... Its like there was this study that testosteron in men dropped down by heavily in 50 years, and you see it in our society too.

all the consumption is like trance state, hypnosis.. Just take a screenshot how you look when you play video game or watching porn or scrolling, and dont tell me you dont look like zombie, because I do.. this is little bit of rant but its insane to observe

People always say to do what you liked to do as a kid. Sometimes I think back and realize...I was a compulsive reader. Sometimes I read 13 hours in a day. Or read late into the night because I didn't know how to listen to my body and realize I was actually sleepy. Occasionally I would finish a book, realize I had nothing else in particular to do, and so flip it over and start it again.

It was other things too. Too much TV. Too much internet, even before algorithms. Excessive daydreaming.

It makes me worry that it's not really the algorithms, it's me. Maybe I'm addicted to content? I'm not sure how bad that is necessarily.

I guess if I don't like it, the thing to do is to think back to a time when I didn't act that way and try to model my life to mimic that time. That would be difficult, but maybe it's something to think about. I'll remain hopeful.

Curious if anyone else feels like they either did or didn't have a similar tendency as a kid.

I've starting to massively cut back on screen time / smart phone / gaming etc and get back out "into the world"..

However the issue I'm noticing is that the fun, offline world that I left in 2012-2016 when smart phones really started to ramp up simply doesn't exist anymore.

Yes I can try taking up hobbies, reading, running, exercising etc but the issue is what made pre-smart phone days special was there was stuff going on offline and now days that stuff unless its pre-arranged special events just doesn't seem to exist anymore and not in the same way.

So the issue I face now is not only do I need to work out how cut down screen time but its also how to navigate this barren offline world where people only seem to visit in small doses these days.

It feels like a gaming server where people only check in / play for short periods or when they visit they are still distracted by the online world so are never fully immersed in the offline world.

I remember if I wanted to have phone in the 2010's i'd actually have to put effort in to go out and do things by my brain has been so friend by tech companies social media slot machine dopamine hits that anything outside of cyberspace just doesn't even come close to having the same magic it used to.

With other addictions before this massive societal shift that the internet has caused like being addicted to alcohol for example, when you finally got off the drug and back into society yeah your friends lives might have changed a bit and a few companies might have come and gone but you could slowly find your way back into your place in the world. However coming off of screentime addiction what I'm finding is the world has changed so much that what I'm trying to find my way back into is a world that largely no longer exists. It's not just that I've changed because of screens—the world outside has changed with them. So recovery isn't simply about putting the phone down; it's about learning how to live in a society that has also become organised around the phone.

1. English isn't my first language, so I apologize if there are any grammatical errors.
   
2. This post is NOT meant to step on anyone's toes. I do not want to offend anyone, I just want to have an open discussion and this is something I've been thinking about for some time and would like to hear others opinions on it.
   
3. I have ADHD myself and got diagnosed in my early 20s.

I am a woman born in the 90s, I grew up in a time where the internet exploded and in my mid-late teens everyone had smartphones. The content was still limited to "your friends", and your feed was filled with "content" from the people you followed/were friends with.
Through the years I've crossed paths with kids of different ages, and now I have a 14 year old stepdaughter, and with her comes the teen friends. Since I'm diagnosed with ADHD myself I am very interested in the topic of neuro divergency, and like many others I've read about all of the 'over diagnosing' of ADHD in the later years. I know that there might be wrongly diagnosed people out there, and the raise in ADHD has its reasons on both ends, of course.
But I've been thinking a lot about how the current social media and constant stimulation our brains get from staring at a screen all the time, affects us. So many kids/teens I've met in the later years who are "clearly showing signs" of ADHD (for example), and with such severity where their parents are getting them evaluated. But I wonder if they're basically affected by being glued to their screens all the time?
I don't really know how to explain why I'm getting this feeling. It's just a feeling of how many kids (and adults) today seem so distracted. Easily explained: It's one thing having trouble focusing in school because you daydream, or because your head is full of buzz all the time. And it's another thing to losing your keys and wallet several times because you're simply too distracted to keep focused because you're constantly looking at your phone.

The scary part is how addictive the screens are. There's this swedish psychiatrist and author, Anders Hansen. He wrote a book: The Attention Fix: How to Focus in a World That Wants to Distract You, which I recommend to everyone. It's very interesting. Anyways; he said that there's nothing in the world, not even drugs, that releases dopamine as our phones/screens do.

I just wonder if our screens can cause symptoms of ADHD, if so; how many of today's kids could actually be wrongly thought to have ADHD, when it's in fact just severe dopamine addiction caused by screens?

What do you think is the bigger problem that needs to be fixed - attention span / focus issues or phone addiction?

I made the act of scrolling itself extremely tedious while still being able to access Instagram and the likes. When I scroll, I need to put the effort to drag through a wave that takes up the screen overlaying the feeds. With every scroll becoming less automatic and a choice, I cut my screentime in more than half! The problem really is in the infinite feeds and scrolling mindlessly.

What the fuck should I do, seriously. I have to stop using the phone for what? 99% of the things they say require to have someone/touch the grass and I can't. Im currently (even if I stay hours and hours on the phone) doing my first puzzle (1k pieces) and making a card game. I tried drawing but I stopped 1 month ago, idk, but horror drawing were cool even if I stopped 3 months ago when I started all of a sudden doing romantic anime drawings. ts is everything I can do.

Btw: watch out of the window? There are no cars, nothing. There's just other houses so it sucks watching at a house in front of u

I used to be like that, to be honest. As an Asian person I used to lurk in Asian online communities, mostly on reddit, and learn about Asian issues and conversations and politics. In fact I used to just watch and consume political medias of all sorts of things.

Now I've managed to ground myself; tryinf to fight the anxiety of fomo, paranoia of mob mentality, detaching myself from the hyperfixation of social issues etc. It wasnt easy but compared to years ago, ive improved.

Sometimes I see redditors, mostly Asian, who would post a lot of political posts and I get sad. Nothing wrong with being political but ive been there, and you become shrouded with the idea of politics that you lose yourself. You lose your daily life, your lived experience, in the exchange of online community that doesnt even exist in the first place. And the politics that you indulge in becomes nothing more than a sensational and controversial posts where people argue and fight over who is correct. Seeing people literally selling their soul to attach themselves to something like reddit makes me so sad. Because knowing from experience, it is hell. I just wish there would be an easy way to save these people from hell that theyre trapped in. Sometimes I get angry because of how much "they ruined me" but most importantly i want them to get better. Cause this is seriouly ruining everyone.

Idk, just a sad thought ive been having these past few days. Maybe theyre not as bad as i imagine, but cant help but feel bad.

Title basically says it all. Can you recommend any documentaries or even long form YouTube videos that are research backed that helped snap you out of the scrolling addiction?

One dashboard that project all markets conditions, check it out GMDMarkets worth 24k/y by Blumberg

I have been attempting to cut down on my overall screentime. I am a person who is fairly introverted and has a lot of free time. I have a few amount of hobbies, the main ones being reading, writing, walking and drawing; i will also include my studies - specifically within a philosophy class - as a hobby as i enjoy reading up on it, and i would like to have a benefit of better schoolwork as well as lesser screentime.

I have these activities, i read, write and walk every single day as a pastime, but still i feel completely consumed by a large amount of freetime. I have volunteer work which I do and am currently looking for a part time job, even with these things, my whole life consists of it having extreme timefulness. You can sit and do nothing, which in itself is almost meditative, but its resultant is a lack of actions to perform. I want to commit myself to a little amount of screentime but feel lost in the amount of time that i've realised there is.

As I mentioned prior, I am an introverted person, I have few friends, and my greatest friend is my boyfriend... I see him twice a week typically, one is for a walk and this is great as we both get away from the internet and get to spend quality time together.

The other time I see him, it's usually with friends, on this other time it is always involving a huge amount of screentime, and i dont want to give away a good social life to remove myself from screens. I can make allowances for watching movies and things like that, but a lot of our relationship also involves playing videogames together, sometimes for multiple hours a day. I like spending this time together, I dislike that it puts me online for multiple hours and generally the videogame begins to bore me while i still want to spend time talking, leading me to feeling that i've overused the internet, but the alternative option is to lose a part of our relationship, and this expands itself to my other friendships too.

To me it seems, with lessening my screentime it will ultimately cost me some parts of my relationships, and it leaves me with a whole lot of time which i dont know how to spend. It also seems impossible to properly distance yourself from the internet as daily activities revolve around it. How do you reduce screentime without isolating yourself? How do I create a balance with my time?

In my mind and house, that's what it feels like, weird ideas, creeps, is like allowing all of them in.

I am looking for videos or creators on youtube that are actually interesting to watch/consume instead of just baiting for views and attention. I believe transitioning to this type of content first will make it easier to avoid falling into a youtube rabbit hole where I just watch random videos for hours.

I've been trying to cut my screen time, and the worst offender isn't bed or the couch, it's the bathroom. A 3 minute trip turns into 15 to 20, several times a day, completely on autopilot. I never decide to; the phone's just already in my hand.

But it's gone past "waste of time." Lately my legs go fully numb, and I've got this ache in my hips I can't place not sure if it's muscle or something else. I looked it up and apparently parking on the toilet that long is linked to hemorrhoids and circulation problems too. My body is basically sending me the bill.

And the messed-up part: I know all this, I can feel it happening, and I still sit back down and do it again tomorrow. The lack of any friction in that moment, nobody sees it, nothing interrupts it, getting up is the "hard" option makes it almost impossible to stop with willpower alone.

So, honestly:

- Is this just me, or does anyone else have the "throne scroll" wrecking them a little?

- For those who beat it, what actually worked? Leaving the phone outside? Some rule? And did the fix come from removing the phone, or from making getting up the easier choice?

F23 I'm on the phone 12/13 hours a day, doing nothing all day, scrolling through reels or watching videos or looking for useless things or playing games or whatever, and I find myself having done nothing all day.

I wake up and scroll right away for a few hours, getting up when I feel like my bladder is about to explode, then I have breakfast and scroll again.

And so it goes all day, doing nothing.

I'm tired, I can't live like this. These are my best years, when I'm young and I have to live and have fun and improve myself. Instead, I waste every second on my phone.

Now that it's summer, I'd thought about going to the gym before going back to school in September, because it's harder for me during school, but now in the summer I'm doing nothing, not dieting, not walking, not working out, nothing.

I don't like my body, and I don't comb my hair; it stays there for weeks until it gets all tangled up like a nest, and my parents force me to dress modestly.

I don't see myself as beautiful in the mirror, neither my body nor my clothes reflect me. I know I need to be independent and leave my parents' house to be more free, in fact, I'm working on it.

But now I look, I don't feel okay living like this. To go out with a boy, I have to be careful with my schedule and not stay out for more than two hours so as not to arouse suspicion, and when I go out, I'm careful to see if anyone sees me.

And I can't have social media, go out whenever I want, go out at night, have the basic freedoms that everyone has, like eating what I want since my mother closes the fridge, and let's not even talk about arguing and yelling about everything.

This summer, I'm not reviewing my studies, I'm not studying to get my driver's license, I'm not working part-time. I feel stuck, trapped, and exhausted.

I'm so tired of living like this, which I don't like at all. I don't have the mental energy to do anything, and my mother is a pain in the ass with this housework. She's never happy, and I have to do everything myself.

I feel like the little energy I had is gone. I don't have a gram left, and I find myself shaking my head and saying, "Oh well, I'm not doing anything anymore, it's fine like this," and so on. Every day, I can't do anything, not even skincare, anything. Understand?

I wish I could be transported back in time and be in the life I want to live without having to endure all this. ughff

Im on day 3 of using internet less (no youtube). So now im mostly sitting on my bed with no desire to do anything. YouTube was my main way to spend time, so now there's nothing to do and no desire to do anything. I dont want to read, create, exercise, etc.

Are some of these withdrawals? Will i eventually enjoy other things more? Nothing feels fun to do.

Over the last month, I've reduced my screen time a ton; the issue is I keep falling short of my actual goal. I go 2-3 days without devices then always end up scrolling or watching YouTube for a couple hours on the 3rd or 4th day. The intense boredom just gets to be too much and I break my "sobriety," I guess you could call it lolol. I was curious if anyone who made it past a week felt the boredom become less and less, to where they could actually handle it.

I've been seeing a lot of posts here about information overload, and I saw myself in most of them. Except for me, the problem was never "too much info." It was the feeling of never finishing. One link leads to another, leads to another. Until I hit a comment that said "it's not information, it's the algorithm." That stuck with me.

So I spent a few days (okay, way more than a few) coding something I called Saring. The idea is dead simple: you pick your own sources — a news site, a YouTube channel, a topic like "AI" or "tech" — and you get one message a day, at whatever time you want. A summary of what they published. No feed, no "suggested for you," no scrolling. Just a message that ends, like a text from a friend.

It's free by email. There's a paid version for WhatsApp with audio if you can't be bothered to read, but that's not the point here.

I know some of you will say "another RSS aggregator." Yeah, kind of. But this one is condensed, prioritized, and you're not digging through 50 headlines yourself.

Look, I'm not saying it's the silver bullet. If you're interested, I'm looking for people to actually test it and tell me straight up — will you actually read this after 3 days, or is it gonna rot in your inbox like everything else? Don't be nice about it. I'd rather know.

I am still struggling to stay off Reddit. I always have to check for new porn or for anything exciting on here in general. I was gonna try to replace reddit with bluesky but it is not as fun as reddit. I'm kinda addicted to it too. I use Reddit to fill out my 15 minute work breaks and lunch because I get bored af during those times. I have also tried limiting reddit use to my laptop at home but then I find I spend All night on my laptop and don't get anything done . Any advices ??

I also have ADHD, and right now I feel so stressed out and defeated because I really only have a couple hours a day where I feel completely in control of my actions. My already terrible self control (getting distracted easily, buying random crap, procrastination…) is only exemplified by my stupid smartphone!!

I love being smart for those hours where I can actually lock in… but it doesn’t last long. I’m in a terrible cycle and it makes me want to cry. 😭

Does anyone want to be an accountability partner?? We can share screen time and other goals