I have seen people on here say that they stopped listening to music as a part of their nosurf journey. Music is healthy so I don't understand why people would do this. I would find it hard to just get addicted to spotify to the point where you scroll for 6 hours a day or something. Someone help me to understand.

Mmm? Aaaaaaaaaa I couldn’t do my planed thighs this year

People have been doing this for centuries, millenniums: Chroniclize your life to keep track of events and situations that happened to you.

I wouldn't call this a 'nosurf' habit since before the age of the internet there wasn't a thing called 'nosurf', though here, this habit makes you a 'nosurfer', so I share this.

I (27M) have noticed that I waste so much time on my phone every day, especially when I should be doing more productive things. It’s become a real problem, and a big part of it is due to my porn addiction. I’ll start out just scrolling through social media, and before I know it, I’m caught up in looking at porn for hours. It’s affecting my work, my relationships, and even my mental health, and I know I need to make a change.

I want to stop relying on my phone as a way to escape boredom or stress, but I’m not sure how to start. What have you guys done to cut down on your phone usage, especially if porn was a part of the problem? Any tips or advice on how to break these habits would be really helpful. I’m ready to take control of my life again.

holy fuck when i used twitter i could swear to christ that most of "blue check" people are just shills or grifters or bots , nothing in between

and the consumer fucks and commenters that are not bots are idiots who are eating it up , simply put.

you think that liberal or white supermacist or pro israel or pro palestine or videos sharer is actually genuine ? nope , he just found the niche to make money off . fuck this shit i miss 2010 internet .but for some reason im also unable to resist any of it despite being aware that teyre just trying to make money off idiots like me

Update to my last post. I made it another 7 days without watching any youtube. Here's to another 2 weeks.

Replacements: 1. Reading (finished another book and halfway through the next. Had no idea I still had it in me to read this fast.) 2. Spending time with family (Thanksgiving did make it easier this week.) 3. Christmas decorating.

The only "social media" of any kind that I really struggle with is YouTube. I have deleted all other social apps & such from my phone and have cultivated my hobbies enough that I am pretty successful at avoiding mindless scrolling during my free time.

However, when I am doing a mindless admin task at work, doing housework, etc, I justify putting YouTube on in the background since it's not the main thing I'm doing anyway. I also seriously rely on it to fall asleep. I have tried podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, and music in place of YouTube for mindless work and falling asleep, but nothing ever seems to hit quite the same button.

My issue here becomes that watching YouTube tends to consume more time after the mindless task (just finished the dishes, I'll watch the last 5 minutes of this video before moving onto my next activity). I have no trouble motivating myself to cut down on the internet during my free time since I'd much rather take part in my hobbies, but I struggle to cut out YouTube because that 5 minutes saved is not motivating enough to do chores and admin work in silence.

Was curious if anyone had similar experiences with this kind of scenario specifically. I actually have no personal issue with consuming YouTube if combined with another task, but have not found a real way to cut down on the overflow time, time spent scrolling to select a video, etc. other than completely cutting out YouTube (which I don't think is sustainable long term because of the sleeping issue). Do you see any downsides to engaging with the internet while completing a mindless task? Have you cut out internet usage during mindless tasks, and if so, what benefits have you experienced? If you engage with the internet while performing a mindless task, how do you reduce "overflow time"?

Since I can easily uninstall any blocker app using >!safe mode!< I came up with the idea that I could prove to my friend every day that I dint uninstall it. Anyway to check when an app was last installed or something?

Im kinda desperate ngl

Hi all, I wanted to share something I did today that really helped me avoid stress-scrolling Reddit instead of working.

I wrote "number of times I DIDN'T open reddit or Youtube today: " on a piece of paper by my desk in blue marker. Each time I got stresed and reached to open Reddit I stopped myself and added a tally to the list instead.

I did have to open Reddit to post this though. I hope this helps :) -Devon

Thank you :)

Have you ever felt like you're broken in some way? Is the person you want to be and the person you actually are two completely different people? There's a good chance you have ADHD. Here's why:

• About 20% of young adults with ADHD have an internet addiction.
• Having severe ADHD is linked to higher odds of being addicted to the internet.
• Symptoms of internet addiction are similar to ADHD symptoms.
• Youngsters with ADHD may become addicted to the internet because it satisfies their need for speed, immediate gratification, and new and stimulating situations.

I used to choose Reddit over assignments, even when I knew I really needed to get working I would literally be stressed out the whole time I was watching youtube because I knew I had deadlines coming up. I would stay up late to do assignments because I spent the whole day playing games instead. I could only rely on external blockers to cut down my time online and never my own internal willpower.

I used to think I either wasn't capable of or interested in education, since of course I must not want it badly enough if I can't stay focused or even get started with it.

So what do you think? Ever felt "broken" like you're missing something that other people seem able to possess with ease? Ever feel like if you would just work harder you could achieve your goals, despite the fact you've never worked hard enough for your own liking in the past?

Seek the answers. Take a test. It's up to you.

I just happened upon my Reddit achievements page.

I have a 150 day streak. Without even trying.

That's not something to be proud of.

I am thinking about quitting social media, and I spent last 6 month analysing what keeps me there and what drives me. Now I am reading Anxious generation as a part of the journey. Internet addiction for me is interconnected with my views on work - I always criticise myself and therefore not having enough enjoyment from it - with my social habits and with immigration experience. I am a software developer and spent 10 years of my life learning about ux, testing, design, exploitive technologies of social media. I am 29, so my childhood was less connected to the internet, I had a lot of offline friends and I don't have that much of attachment to my social accounts. I wasn't ever popular online, my life in school hasn't ever depended on my virtual life, so overall, quite different stuff than what younger people now have to deal with.

I understood that I use smartphone as a thing to calm down, as a tool to work and write texts on the go. I understood that I treated my time too harsh and that it is only humanly to slow down and allow myself to not reach these imaginary KPIs. I understood that I should look on real people more and compare myself to them, because outside of internet bubble, their life is not as flashy as it seems. They are usual people, and I am a usual person. That was a humbling experience and I wasn't ready for it.

I needed to address how I avoid people and to start reaching out more. I also start noticing how younger people, my friends, people from my uni and work, feel lonely and anxious, because of the pressure of social media, and I understood how to behave in real life to let them relax a bit. I needed to face that there are thousands of things in social skills where I am incompetent. I co-hosted the event with my friend and I was terrified, and it failed. It is all OK. Now I even DMed in DnD, so I overcame that.

So honestly, if digital detoxing and mindful practices have opened you up to your insecurities, I am glad to share this experience with you, so it be better. All nice things to all of you.

Is anybody here using screenzen. I just want to ask is that why there are still trigger pause alternative even when i use quick unlock. Thanks

There is a popular hivemind right now that has biased, naive, monithic views of girls and women "these days".

Stuff like this:

.Modern white women are nasty and unloyal

."Modern western women do not like anyone but they only prefer 8ft tall men who cheat on them, rape them, unhygienic, (or any other crime, even fgm)"

."Modern western women are backstabbers and all cheaters"

They even use these naive thoughts to justify why rape is very high in western countries like the US. Because these guys think that "women today like getting raped" apparently. Of course this isn't always true. Hybristopillia is a thing, but it isn't 100% of all "these women".

This really makes no sense.

You know, as a guy, I kinda get why some people ignore men's feelings of problems. Because on any community online that actually is supposed to have suppport (like being a victim.of abuse) mainly ends up into becoming a bigoted incel echochamber, rather than actually needing ethical support. This isnt to say that misandry is justified. It is a shame because there are alot of men and guys who subject to misandry and they genuinely want to be helped as much as women, but as the vast majority of these "support men" communities are just bigoted manosphere echochambers, no support gets given to them.

And shockingly every once a month, I get these types of shorts on my home feed when I click not interested.

^(And how you can do it until the end of the year)

After dealing with procrastination and dealing with bad habits for years, I came across a framework that helped me eliminate bad habits and build good ones.

In my previous posts, I wrote about the Why, What, How Method, where:

1- Why?

You ask yourself why you need to switch the bad habit or in what ways this bad habit is destroying your life. This step is crucial because, in tough moments, you need to keep in mind why you’re doing this.

Most people fail at this step because they outsource their motives.

It shouldn’t just be: “ I want to change it because someone said so.”

You need to truly ask yourself why you should even consider changing this habit.

2- What?

This step is where you start working on the main issue. Most of the resources out there only focus on the external side, which results in superficial solutions. The real change happens inside us.

The idea here is to ask yourself, “ What is causing me to do this? What is the trigger of the trigger?

You may find interesting causes that you never imagined

I found a few tools that can help you work on these root problems, such as journaling, contemplating, and meditation.

The idea is to go into the roots of your addiction and work on it.

3- How?

After mastering why and what, you can start thinking of ways to eliminate your bad habits based on your current situation

There are multiple ways of doing this, so you should focus on things that are already in your range.

This step depends on your current schedule and what works for you. Don’t make the mistake of copying what works for others. Test and see what best describes your needs.

Now, I'll discuss how to develop habits that last and, at the same time, eliminate the bad ones.

To develop any good habit, you only need three things: intention, replacement, and time.

Intention

This is where you consciously decide what habit you want to build, but it needs to be something you want to, and that is important for you; otherwise, you’ll fail. You need to have a strong reason why you want to build it.

Replacement

Every new habit replaces an older one. If you want to quit your phone addiction, you need to find a healthy replacement for that. If you don't replace it, two things will happen:

1- You go back to your bad habits

2- You'll end up building one worse than the previous

For example, I quit eating chocolate, but sometimes I feel the urge to eat something sweet, so I eat fruits or a “healthy” sweet.

Time

We still struggle to develop good habits because we’re programmed to think that we should have instant results for every change. But one thing that I noticed is that real change takes time to happen because it is the only one that aims at the root causes. It does not matter what you’re dealing with. If you want to truly change, you need to be patient and let the time do its part.

If you have the first two things aligned, time will do the rest for you.

Feel free to ask me anything in the comments or dm

I want to be a teenager in 2008-2011. This was the very last time teenagers didn't own phones. They had face to face conversations and socialised outside by shopping, going to clubs and cinemas. Teens that time were ambitious and had good goals.

Teens since 2020 refuse conversation and lack manners.

I was born in the wrong generation.

(n.) Supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.

They go into it further here. The term actually has a long history and first appeared in Thoreau's Walden.

The Internet is convenient, but

My mental health deteriorated after seeing hate and bullying on social networking sites.

It's been about 2 years since I started thinking about putting an end to this situation.

For the past three months or so, I have been thinking about selling my cell phone and stopping using the internet.

However, this plight has not gotten any better, so I decided to sell my cell phone tomorrow.

It is the ultimate digital detox. I decided to make my life a little better.

Honestly, nosurf is full of the nicest and nicest people on the internet!

Apparently I can't delete my account because I haven't created a password, but it won't send me a password creation email. I've been trying for the past week and have tried everything but I just can't

What would happen if I were to stack these in a closet and lock them up for a month or so? What results should I expect? I have dozens of books on my bookshelf I haven't read yet, will this motivate to read more? All I do on my phone is watch Netflix.

Did anyone try?

No ifs and no buts I cannot download streaming services or games ever again.

I tried to 'take a break/detox' and come back with a view that I would be more aware and yet I simply cannot do that.

Like an alcoholic, I can't just have one more drink or one more show. I have to practice abenstance. It's the only way, long term, to cut my screen time down.

Also, putting my phone not near my bed to charge at night has help a lot with the night time binge.

Hello,
Is there a way to track individual website usage on Android (eg: Google.com, etc)?
I have been looking for this for a while.
It can be using an app or a browser extension (on any browser).
I want to understand which websites I use the most to block them using Leechblock.
Thanks!

I don't use social media a ton in general. Years ago I was chronically online and happened upon this subreddit and it actually helped me to drastically cut down on my time online. (unTrap for YouTube and ublock origin have been extremely beneficial to me)

But every once in a while I use reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. Instagram and Facebook are just time wasters, entertaining but empty.

But goddamn, if reddit isn't the most pessimistic, horrible shit I've ever seen. Every single post is just people venting about how horrible the world is.

I get it, the world isn't amazing right now. But people are acting like there is nothing good and everything is bad and there is zero hope.

Jesus fucking Christ this cannot be healthy for people to be reading day in, day out. This website is fucking horrible. Truly.

And it seems like it's most subreddits. At least the popular ones. College subreddits, specific degree subreddits, political subreddits, city/state/country subreddits, employment subreddits, specific job subreddits, it's all SO NEGATIVE. Very few posts do I see that have anything positive to say. Negativity thrives on this website it seems like.

Some examples include going into a place of business and setting a phone down and dancing in front of it, in public without shame. Or yelling into a phone's camera while in public because of 'vlog recording'.

Immediately whipping out the camera whenever any small transgression occurs: food order wrong, someone didn't say hello nicely, etc.

My biggest gripe: People not being aware of their surroundings because of smartphone usage, earbuds - you have to make your away around people who are lost in their virtual world. Like it's perfectly acceptable it seems for a person to pause in the middle of a walkway and just scroll and everyone has to go around them.

What other things can you all think about... that you wish weren't acceptable...?

It's 100% a disease that’s slowly killing Western countries. We’ve lost so much, our traditions, our social lives, even the simple joy of talking to strangers, which is now seen as creepy and weird. I grew up playing outside like a normal human being and now I feel sad when kids nowadays are growing up more depressed, friendless, and even dumber because of how much time they spend glued to screens. People don’t even realize how bad it’s gotten because everything seems so fine when you are on that phone, it gives you an illustration of socializing with people. Ever heard about the Bystander Effect? It's the exact same thing but online. Instead of connecting people, it's doing the opposite. I feel like the more connected people become, the further apart they drift away from one another. It has ruined what once gave life meaning, which is why many people feel lost today, questioning what's the point of living anymore

Edit: Comments proved my point

Edit: It's so funny lol lmao rofl

Just now, I was reading off a BBC news article about two women who are making friends in person. The article was basically talking about the two women with the "I was born in the wrong generation" ideology.

The article was saying how 0% of people in this generation do not want to go out anymore, well, yes they do, but due to what is happening right now, such as cost of living, the state of the previous government, as well as the pandemic, there is less people (especially the ones born 2006-present) who go out, but its still significant. But these two women generalised and said that no one in the entire generation z wants to hang out. But didn't they hang out as teens because they are early generation z?

The fact that news articles are now making reports on people with naive ideologies like "I was born in the wrong generation" and making it seem as if its 100% true, even though significant unforeseen factors had triggered only the late half.

These days, the news is just about: The wars in the Middle East, reports on random naive stuff, and incidents that only have 3 sentences written.

Here is the link to the I was born in the wrong generation article If you want to read

Hey, long time lurker first time poster. Can’t sleep and scrolling and feeling like SHIT for it. I have spent the last year trying to employ harm reduction or just entirely quit the internet, at least the social internet. It feels like I’ve tried everything short of nuclear options in the hopes that these things could be a part of my life still. For each platform, I have had a long list of reasons why I needed to have it in my life, just to a lesser extent than my status quo of chronic use.

Examples: I use instagram as a diary, all social media is to connect with people I care about, it feels like I will miss out on culture, there is too much knowledge and art on TikTok to throw it out.

I’ve known the entire time that these are not good enough reasons to throw my life away, yet I let them be the reason I repeatedly attempt to find a level of moderation with social media instead of abstain entirely.

I place the screen limits, I buy the tech that can lock it, I delete the apps. Within a week I undo anything that I placed to limit me, binge on scrolling for hours on end, and then feel so much shame that I place the limits again.

This cycle has been so frustrating, even more than that actually. It brings me to tears. It is obvious to me now that I just am not the type of person that can engage with these constant feeds of dopamine in a moderate way. I yearn to “get my life back.”

Except, today I realized that I’ve been using social media to an alarming extent for half my life. I’m 22, I got tumblr and instagram when I was 11. So in reality, I’m not even trying to “get my life back” because that life has never existed, at least it hasn’t yet. The last time I have not spent hours a day on a social media platform was when I was a child.

Through this, I see the overarching reason I have behind staying online is that it has been a fundamental part of my identity for so long. And I don’t know what a life like that even looks like. Long term that is, I catch glimpses on my good days when the screen limits work and I am able to get all my work done, socialize with friends, enjoy my hobbies, spend quality time with my boyfriend, ect. Only even then there is the cloud of what happens every other day, which is hours of scrolling. I constantly bring up TikToks I see like it’s a compulsion. It’s so ingrained into me even when I’m not actively doing it.

This summer I read How To Do Nothing and it made me yearn for that life more than I ever had. I know exactly why I want it, but I still have a hard time letting go of all the good the internet brought me (because it did bring me some. I’ve met dear friends and learned amazing things from it.)

A week ago I made the first nuclear choice and deactivated my Twitter. I still reach for it, but less and less each day. Out of my big 4 problem platforms right now, it is certainly the least, but it did take up enormous amounts of my time still. I hope to get there soon with Reddit, then Instagram, then finally TikTok. It is scary to think of deleting those accounts, but I think it’s finally time.

This is just kind of a rant, but I’m also curious to hear from anyone that has also had this progression of approaches. Especially if you feel like the internet was/isa big part of who you were/are. What helps deliver us into a life without when we cannot see it? When there is no past to base it on? I’d love to hear any insight.

P.S. I teach kindergarten and among the many aspects of our world I feel sick in passing on to my students, chief among them is this experience. People my age struggle when most of us got on this in tween or teen years. I can’t imagine what it would be like if it was my whole life instead of half my life, but I have students who are already starting to be addicted to the internet. This motivates me to live a life without it more. Us first few batches of digital natives have to light the way for everyone that comes after us, they have it so much harder.

I'm taking a three-part approach to surfing less.

The first part is the mechanics of surfing less: how to set up my phone, strategies, etc.

The second part is what I do instead of surfing: better hobbies, more relationships, etc.

The third part that's been helping is HOW I do what I'm doing instead. For this one, focusing on being wholehearted is helping a lot.

Wholehearted doesn't mean I do some big thing necessarily, and it definitely doesn't mean perfection. It just means throwing myself into whatever I'm doing. Gently giving it my all just for the sake of it.

This is an antidote to the kind of numb, nothing type of feeling that comes from surfing. It's been really beneficial so I thought I'd share.

Especially the reading....I have trouble concentrating when I read, but I have like twenty unread books sitting on the shelf in my closet so I want to make more time to read. I have had plenty of time this evening but just sitting on my ass.

I also want to get more into gaming. I normally play sports games but looking to branch out so I have bought a few different games lately, like silent hill 2 and cyberpunk 2077.

I know gaming is still screen time so I don't wanna go crazy but I don't find it super addictive like scrolling and scrolling always makes me feel like shit after.