thoughts on online addiction
I’ve been an avid user of anything that makes me use tech less. I love trying it out and seeing the effects. I think I was most into it in 2016-2018 when I had read The Shallows and other books criticizing addictive effects in the devices we use. I’ve used TimeGuard, various browser extensions, ScreenTime, Cold Turkey, onesec…
I’ve mellowed out a bit since. I need less friction between me and my devices or specific websites now - both because of the websites being boring/annoying to me now, and an internal shift where I am just not as interested into online stuff nowadays. Maybe I am aging out of it, maybe I am not the target group anymore. And of course friction helps when you want to spend less time on some feed, but it sucks when you just want to edit the grocery list or respond to an email.
That’s one gripe I have with many tools targeting online addiction or reducing time sink: the ones that let you limit it to specific apps are good, but the blanket solutions also discourage useful and non-harmful device use. The casual uses such as journaling on it, grocery lists, pictures, calculator, maps etc. don’t need to be punished and could help reduce the screen time you perceive as negative.
It reminds me of parts of dog training: It can be easier to teach your dog to grab a toy when the doorbell rings to give it something to do and focus on, than it is to completely cease barking at the doorbell. Instead of going cold turkey telling yourself you won’t touch it, redirect it to something else instead, like the notes app. Let your mind become used to this being the useful-stuff-device, not the 8-hours-per-day-entertainment-device.
In my experience, the more you punish the casual use as well, the likelier you are to deinstall the blocker or whatever it is. If you’re getting asked by an app why you’re unlocking the phone every time you do it, that’s gonna get old very quick. You’re scanning a QR code or taking a picture, you’re starting a timer or you need navigation… and now you’re justifying yourself to this thing - for what? It also assumes that any phone use is inherently bad, instead of recognizing that it’s the user who loaded their phone full of crap like a news widget, the X app or a ton of mobile games.
One aspect that’s interesting to me is that it’s probably the first time we’ve been so invested in limiting our use of an entertainment device. People often say “Well, this isn’t new; people were talking about TV addiction as well! Look at this image of everyone reading the newspaper on the train, it wasn’t ever different! People have called out books for the same thing!” and they’re not entirely wrong; TV’s did have unlock codes, I know our family TV did.
But did/do you have a safe to lock your TV or books into? Do you add controls to your TV that it would shut off and not turn on after a set amount of time? Do you buy books that are intentionally hard or difficult to read so you’d put it down? Did you, long after color TV, start only consuming black and white TV content to be less hooked? Did you think about selling your satellite so you wouldn’t watch TV at home? Probably none of these, but we do that with phones. Kind of funny to think about. I wonder if we will react to new tech this way again, or if this will remain a time we look back on and go: What the fuck? Why would anyone do this?
I wonder what made us do it. Was and is the addiction so widespread and intense that it called for these measures, or are we living in an age of holding ourselves more accountable than before? Does the culture of being your best self and reaching your fullest potential have anything to do with it? Was the habit of more intense self-scrutiny and self-surveillance introduced by social media also responsible for making us more aware of how and what we consume? Or was the ability of social media and news to blow anything up to be the worst thing ever also at play here, on top of self help authors interested in portraying it as super bad to be able to latch on to it with courses and books?
I think there’s one thing we got wrong so far. I noticed it on myself too, over the years: there isn’t just a pull into the online by addictive design, there is nothing keeping you offline. Offline might even push you into it further. When I had a fulfilling offline life, I forgot I even had a phone most of the time. Meanwhile, if my offline life sucked, my screen time would skyrocket. The same apps and addictive design, but different outside circumstances. We shouldn’t just ask outselves what’s pulling us and blocking it, we should ask ourselves what’s pushing us.
Is it loneliness? Is it a bad and unsafe area? Is it living with abusive family? Is it physical or mental pain? Is it having no third places outside to meet people in? Is it having no money for doing anything offline? Is it because no one can take you anywhere? Is it for numbing very intense emotions? Just the most common reasons I can think of.
And that may be controversial, but sometimes it’s better to be phone addicted and spend hours on some feeds than the alternative. I think I only survived my teens because I was constantly on my computer in my room. It was easier to navigate a bad home I couldn’t otherwise escape and physical illness that way.
Also nowadays, there’s something else I changed my mind on: I think it is often borderline unethical to tell people to quit cold turkey on this stuff. If outside circumstances look bleak or a very intense bout of being extremely online made you neglect your offline life and you already feel like shit, blocking the stuff and seeing what is left of your life can seriously take you over the edge. Before you do this, you need to build up something - like a new hobby, a class, a friend, another habit, some goals. Otherwise, you’ll just block yourself off from your only source of socializing and entertainment and this isn’t good for anyone, much less something that will last. You’ll be more successful being offline if you have something that is worth being offline for.
And sometimes, you can’t build up anything and your offline life is currently too bad, and that’s okay for now. Your time will come. You blocking Instagram will not suddenly give you offline opportunities. When I was very sick in bed and struggling to hold a glass of water, no one would have shamed me for being on the phone lots of hours to distract myself instead of doing other things you can technically do while sick, like reading a physical book (hard to hold or focus on with that level of pain) or embroidering something (hard to do if your fingers are stiff and hurtful), so you shouldn’t shame yourself for comparable situations either.
I’ve seen people take drastic measures because they were obsessed and also in a lot of pain. They felt out of control, so they had to control everything. They zeroed in on one aspect of their life, in this case their online use, and it was the root of all evil. And it might have been for some (I don’t know their life), but certainly not all. It was a way to have an easy-seeming solution (“just stop scrolling”) and the chance to dream of a you that was suddenly very social, very successful, fit, smart, energized and so on with this one simple trick. You could tell it was mental illness by the fact it had to be so drastic, or specific numbers (only x hours, y amount of apps, etc.) and fixed rituals giving safety. I saw people cancel their home internet and get rid of their laptop and phone to only browse the net at the local library. That was pre-Covid. I wonder what they did during lockdowns. It’s the perfect example for me that you have to learn how to live with your vices, since avoiding them isn’t always in your control. If everything moves to your home and you have to have home WiFi again, what will you do?
Edit: Read Artemis’ reply too!
Published 29 Nov, 2024