Internet Addiction

It's only when I have extra-curricular computer work to do -- like musical projects -- where the temptation to fart around on the net gets me.

last few days w/o internet was nice, would try again

I heard Internet Addiction IAD was added to the DSM-V.

I definitely have this

In China, Stern Treatment For Young Internet 'Addicts'
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 22, 2007; A01

DAXING, China -- Sun Jiting spends his days locked behind metal bars in this military-run installation, put there by his parents. The 17-year-old high school student is not allowed to communicate with friends back home, and his only companions are psychologists, nurses and other patients. Each morning at 6:30, he is jolted awake by a soldier in fatigues shouting, "This is for your own good!"

Sun's offense: Internet addiction.

Alarmed by a survey that found that nearly 14 percent of teens in China are vulnerable to becoming addicted to the Internet, the Chinese government has launched a nationwide campaign to stamp out what the Communist Youth League calls "a grave social problem" that threatens the nation.

Few countries have been as effective historically in fighting drug and alcohol addiction as China, which has been lauded for its successes, as well as criticized for harsh techniques.

Now the country is turning its attention to fighting another, supposed addiction -- one that has been blamed in the state-run media for a murder over virtual property earned in an online game, for a string of suicides and for the failure of youths in their studies.

The Chinese government in recent months has joined South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam in taking measures to try to limit the time teens spend online. It has passed regulations banning youths from Internet cafes and has implemented control programs that kick teens off networked games after five hours.

There's a global controversy over whether heavy Internet use should be defined as a mental disorder, with some psychologists, including a handful in the United States, arguing that it should be. Backers of the notion say the addiction can be crippling, leading people to neglect work, school and social lives.

But no country has gone quite as far as China in embracing the theory and mounting a public crusade against Internet addiction. To skeptics, the campaign dovetails a bit too nicely with China's broader effort to control what its citizens can see on the Internet. The Communist government runs a massive program that limits Web access, censors sites and seeks to control online political dissent. Internet companies like Google have come under heavy criticism abroad for going along with China's demands.

In the Internet-addiction campaign, the government is helping to fund eight in-patient rehabilitation clinics across the country.

The clinic in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing, the capital, is the oldest and largest, with 60 patients on a normal day and as many as 280 during peak periods. Few of the patients, who range in age from 12 to 24, are here willingly. Most have been forced to come by their parents, who are paying upward of $1,300 a month -- about 10 times the average salary in China -- for the treatment.

Led by Tao Ran, a military researcher who built his career by treating heroin addicts, the clinic uses a tough-love approach that includes counseling, military discipline, drugs, hypnosis and mild electric shocks.

Tao said the clinic is based on the idea that there are many similarities between his current patients and those he had in the past.

In terms of withdrawal: "If you let someone go online and then he can't go online, you may see a physical reaction, just like someone coming off drugs." And in terms of resistance: "Today you go half an hour, and the next day you need 45 minutes. It's like starting with drinking one glass and then needing half a bottle to feel the same way."

Located on an army training base, the Internet-addiction clinic is distinct from the other buildings on campus because of the metal grates and padlocks on every door and the bars on every window.

On the first level are 10 locked treatment rooms geared toward treating teen patients suffering from disturbed sleep, lack of motivation, aggression, depression and other problems. Unlike the rest of the building, which is painted in blues and grays and kept cold to keep the teens alert, these rooms are sunny and warm.

Inside Room No. 8 are toys and other figurines that the teens can play with while psychologists watch. Room 10 contains rows of fake machine guns that the patients use for role-play scenarios that are supposed to bridge the virtual world with the real one.

Room No. 4 is made up to look like home, with rattan furniture and fake flowers, to provide a comfortable place for counselors to talk to the teens. The staff tries to blend into the artificial environment. Before meeting with a patient, one counselor swapped her olive military uniform for a motherly cardigan and plaid skirt.

Among the milder cases are those of Yu Bo, 21, from Inner Mongolia, and Li Yanjiang, 15, from Hebei province. Both said that they used to spend four to five hours a week online and their daily lives weren't affected but that their parents wanted them to cut their computer usage to zero so they could study. Yu said he agreed to come because he wanted to train himself. Li said it was because he just wanted to "get away from my parents."

Perceived as a more serious case is that of He Fang, 22, a college student from the western region of Xinjiang. The business administration major said his grades tanked when he started playing online games several hours a night. The clinic "has mainly helped me change the way I think," he said. "It's not about getting away from pressure but facing it and dealing with it."

Before Sun, the 17-year-old, who is from the city of Cangzhou, checked into the clinic about a month ago, he said, he was sometimes online playing games for 15 hours nonstop. "My life was not routine -- day and night I was messed up," he said.

In December, he concluded that school just "wasn't interesting" and stopped attending. His parents were furious and complained that he didn't have a goal. Exasperated, they eventually checked him into the clinic.

Since he's been there, Sun said, he's decided to finish high school, attend college and then work at a private company, perhaps becoming an "authority figure" one day. With the help of a counselor, he's mapped out a life plan from now until he's 84.

Sun's father and mother, Sun Fengxiang and Xu Ying, both 41 and accountants, say their son's counselors have told them he's behaving well -- playing basketball, reading books about success -- but they are unsure whether he's really been cured.

"His language shows that he has changed, but we'll see" when Sun gets home, his father said.

No one is comfortable talking about the third floor of the clinic, where serious cases -- usually two or three at a time -- are housed. Most have been addicted to the Internet for five or more years, Tao said, are severely depressed and refuse counseling. One sliced his wrists but survived. These teens are under 24-hour supervision.

Tao said he believes 70 percent of the teens, after one to three months of treatment, will go home and lead normal lives, but he's less optimistic about the third-floor patients. "Their souls are gone to the online world," he said.

Earlier this month, four teens fled their dorm rooms and jumped in a taxi. They made it to a train station before soldiers caught them, according to Li Jiali, a military guard. They were isolated and asked to write reports about why their actions were wrong.

Guo Tiejun, a school headmaster turned psychologist who runs an Internet-addiction research center in Shanghai, said the military-run clinic goes too far in treating Internet addicts like alcohol and drug addicts.

He said that he has treated several former patients of the Daxing clinic and that one mother told him it was simply "suffering for a month" that did not help her son. He advocates a softer approach. Guo said he believes that the root of the problem is loneliness and that the most effective treatment is to treat the teens "like friends."

"Our conclusion is that kids who get addicted in society have some kind of disability or weakness. They can't make friends, can't fulfill their desire of social communication, so they go online," Guo said.

Guo is especially critical of the use of medications -- which include antidepressants, antipsychotics, and a variety of other pills and intravenous drips -- for Internet addiction because, he said, that approach treats symptoms, not causes.

Tao and his team of 15 doctors and nurses defended the treatment methods. He said that while some clinics depend wholly on medications -- in one experiment conducted in Ningbo, a city south of Shanghai, suspected Internet addicts were given the same pills as drug addicts -- only one out of five patients at the Daxing clinic receive prescription drugs. Tao did agree with Guo that Internet addiction is usually an expression of deeper psychological problems.

"We use these medicines to give them happiness," Tao said, "so they no longer need to go on the Internet to be happy."

Still, for all the high-tech treatments available to Sun at the clinic, the one that he says helped him most was talking. He looks forward to returning to school and getting on with his life.

The first task on his agenda when he gets home: get online. He needs to tell his worried Internet friends where he was these past few weeks.

Staff researcher Crissie Ding contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/21/AR2007022102094.html

But, but, they have MMO child labor camps there!

Comcast, local high-speed internet monopoly, has decided it will take them a week to give us internet at our new pad. Fudge that noize! wtf? Why? Why? They could not tell me. I don't know why. I am pretty sure it is trickery. Probably not but I miss you the internet.

I have a class that is on the international network, too. I can access this network (as ascertained from its name) from any nation but not my house??? ;_;

http://www.sweetandbitter.com/inside/images/hang_in_there-thumb.jpg

sometimes it's nice to not have the internet for awhile

Yes, you will feel like you have an extra brain.

No mostly I've just been playing video games.

ABBOTT DID U KNOW YOU ARE ON THE INTERNET RITE NOW

you know you got problems when you're jonesing for a fix while getting a fix

http://i238.photobucket.com/albums/ff253/douglasbass/Charlie_Parker.jpg
This is my internet...and this is my video game

gr8080

http://msti.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/scanners-headexplode.jpg

i pretty sure youtube just got re-blocked at work for me, (after 6+ months of it being unblocked for a work-related project that only took about an hour.)

that's like 40% of my work day ;__;

Aim chatz just isn't the same without abbott

I guess it's normal to go through a phase of internet addiction, like when you get your first computer. I remember having an obsession with Gopher server! It sounds so quaint to me. My mom lives in a retirement community and I associate addiction with old people who are just beginning to use internet.

So, I'm not quitting ILX yet, but I yesterday decided to quit another message board that I felt had become a very bad habit. I made a scrambled password and C&P'd it into the new password fields so that I wouldn't be able to log in anymore.

Interestingly, I have probably already a dozen times since yesterday gone to the site and tried to poast, forgetting, momentarily, that I had quit. I think this is pretty good evidence of how compulsive the behavior is for me.

I use the net when I'm in the bath. That's pretty bad.

woah

I guess kind of predictably I've been on ILX more since quitting the other one. ILX is at least a better board and less miserable environment.

The good thing is that I'm basically locked out of the other one. Can't go back.

don't leave us ;_;

enabler! enab...sorry, ok, ok, I'll never leave you, I promise

poast!

\o/

c'mon you cant really post this anecdote without at least hinting at what the other board is

Interestingly, I have probably already a dozen times since yesterday gone to the site and tried to poast, forgetting, momentarily, that I had quit. I think this is pretty good evidence of how compulsive the behavior is for me.

I get this with ILX, one second I'm on a document I'm supposed to be working on and the next, with little conscious input, I find myself on New Answers. But then ILX is often quite edifying so I don't find it such a terrible thing. Usually.

edifying compared to the rest of the internet anyway, perhaps not competing with say Spinoza on a page-by-page basis.

Before I knew ilx, I knew not of lolcats.

c'mon you cant really post this anecdote without at least hinting at what the other board is

― 乒乓, Thursday, March 14, 2013 10:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I kind of already did ;)

by freudian slip, no less!

but that's as far as I go

lol I think I know what board youre talking about, then

i just installed blocking software on my browser so as not to waste valuable writing time waiting for social media pellets

as you can tell it really worked :P

my job tech people actually wouldn't LET ME do it

i have mixed feelings about the internet and the role it has played in my life.

i haven't been perfect about it recently, but starting last year i've been taking an "internet sabbath" on the weekends, primarily just to help me feel more present and available to my wife/son/myself during my free time. distraction on the web during work hours can still be an issue, though.

not to be a pendant but really the term "addiction" is bogus for the internet. compulsivity yes definitely but not addiction.

Having a toddler has kind of forced me to spend A LOT less time on it on the weekends. I rarely post during weekend days anymore, only when everyone goes to sleep.

and marcos don't worry, I don't think you're a pendant

when i work in offices -- which i'm not doing now but will be doing again soon with some luck -- i just have a policy of never browsing the web beyond what is called for by my job, and i try to fill down time by organizing stacks of papers or something. i just cannot trust myself... if i start reading something interesting i will become totally absorbed in it.

i wish i could stick to this policy when i have things to get done at home but it doesn't work out. maybe i'll go to the library and sit near the cow statue, imagining it is my boss looking over my shoulder. actually... i am going to do that. i'll leave in 17 minutes.

what is the name for an addiction to EN dashes and ellipses?

http://dump.fm/images/20130606/1370555494306-dumpfm-Seacrestcheadle-nlo0.gif

hey guys

I was thinking maybe the "addiction" isn't really to the internet but to the little dopamine hits that the internet is particularly good at producing (when you get a "like", an "otm" a response to your post, a new post in a thread you're really into, etc.)

anyway, this is really fucking bad lately, I just need to acknowledge that somewhere. I already locked myself out of a couple of sites I was overusing (changed my password to some C&P'd gibberish). Really not getting work done.

this is a major issue for me too. i think the internet is the "perfect drug" for people (like me) who have any sort of tendency for ADD. it is an infinite source of novelty and affirmation.

i am worried about productivity but also, more generally, about what it means to spend so much of my life caught within the cycle of high and withdrawal, always eager to check my phone.

yeah that, and also so much of my life in front of some screen, and relatedly not developing other skills/abilities/traits while doing that

It's so easy to come up with something slightly clever/funny, post it somewhere, and immediately get a lot of positive feedback and the accompanying rush (I mean, not necessarily easy on ILX bc I feel like people here are very smart and have high standards, but easy elsewhere). I used to wonder why I spent some of my best creative energy online, but that's why -- you try to really write a novel, short story, screenplay, stand-up routine, it can take weeks, months, years to even get to the stage of getting feedback, so if what you're really living for is the feedback high that's no way to get it. That sounds really really terrible when I write it out. None of this is to say I think I have a good novel or screenplay in me, just that I think there must be some more holistic and genuinely fulfilling way to use what little talent I have, and at a minimum it would be nice if I could better use it to complete my work efficiently so I could do things like take a nice long walk away from the office on a beautiful day at lunchtime, or get a full night's sleep, or even start up a new band.

(likes post)

wait no I guess that was the flag post button

I feel like maybe in 5-10 years there will be a decent amount of literature about this in terms of psychology/psychiatry, maybe even something in the DSM, but right now it seems like the older generation doesn't quite get it and the terminology and understanding haven't caught up (fwiw, I've had experiences with several therapists trying and failing to explain to them what the problem is -- they all seemed to think if I just treated some underlying anxiety it would go away, but they failed to realize how strong the pull was even when I was dealing with anxiety very well).

ppl def laugh this off too easily imo

I mean there are whole industries being built on it at this point

for real

yeah, and also I have heard people make the argument "well maybe you enjoy the internet" or "you learn lots of interesting things/talk to interesting people on the internet, so what's so bad" etc. It's not that any of it is per se bad, it's the feeling that I can't stop compulsively going back to it that's bad.

xp actually I heard on NPR some VC guy who invests in apps and such drop that "little dopamine hit" language into the conversation and it clicked for me that, yeah, this is exactly what people are building their businesses on

I met my wife on the internet. I got bored at my last job, spending hours looking at mylocaljobs.net. Then I got a job as the assistant editor of mylocaljobs.net.

I have a roomba downstairs I bought with money earned thru a short-lived tumblr. I guess I have somewhat of an addiction too, but I've really come around to just whole-hogging going all in with it.

The Christmas cards some of you send us are lovely.

I guess I'm not really about to "own" being in the office at 11pm because I couldn't get enough work done today, is what I'm saying

I mean, I guess I'd better own it in the responsibility sense, just not something I want to be cool with

I guess tho the compulsive behavior was there for me for a long time -- when I was supposed to be studying in college I'd spend like 2 hrs playing pinball or 4 hrs listening to records in the listening library.

The same here. I'm only half-joking when I say I quit school in my sophomore year to stay home and play Castle Wolfenstein.

So THAT'S what I did before the Internet.

I was also an early Prodigy/AOL adopter. You could probably say I've been an internet addict in some form for 20 years.

i identify with this a lot

i think setting a rule that i dont surf the web while my son is awake has been rly helpful. as he's gotten older, i'm not as rigid about it as i used to be, but i've def been able to curtail this a lot more.

I don't do it while I'm home with my daughter, that's sort of a rule. Ok, occasionally check fb on my phone while I'm with my daughter, but it's not the same kind of disappearing into the net behavior.

OTOH, I guess I could have been home for bedtime tonight. Fuck, this is sad. Not that I usually miss bedtime, but still.

i've been reading the internet more or less constantly since 2003, when my prep school issued me a laptop. the whole campus was hooked up to wifi. when i realized how much music was now available to me (mostly through closed filesharing networks on campus with other students) i was so happy i think i probably cried. besides music, music blogs and things like pitchfork the big problem for me at first was just reading news articles so it felt educational... in any case, i actually discovered ilx in 2007 or 2008 but didn't allow myself to really post because i knew that it would be an "issue" for me

i respond a lot to what hurting is saying about not knowing how much is the internet and how much is "me". i certainly engage in escapist behaviors of all sorts.. it's tough for me to really summon up the courage to begin a mounting task, even though once i start it's never as bad as i imagine it to be.

I started this thread a few years ago hoping it would create some discussion about controlling internet use (and other things):
The Information Diet

Lately I have a policy of not bringing my phone with me if I can get by without it. It seems to help and I've had some genuinely great experiences that would have been impossible (probably) if I had it with me.

i don't even use my phone for anything now and hardly talk to anyone on it and can't afford to use teh interweb on it anyway but when i leave the house without it, i still feel kinda, wahey, you're going out into the lonely depths of space! or a remote forest, etc.

all this totally resonates with me. my procrastination has gotten horrible, i'm noticing that i'm like resetting my standards super low. when i feel productive i get 1-2 substantial things and 3-4 insubstnatial things done in a day. now it's like if i get one big thing done a week i feel justified to blow off entire days. it sucks. totally identify with that feeling of leaving work too late because i did jack shit and then only get a little time with my son before bedtime.

like reading some really good new yorker article is fun and entertaining and informative but at the end of the day i don't feel like it improved my life more than being present and committing to my work & colleagues would have.

and a reading a whole new yorker article is like as good as it gets when i'm wasting time on the internet, at worst it's like some dumbass ilx threads and facebook and other random sites i compulsively check

feel like there's a strong tie-in here to modern american office jobs and poor allocation of time

I'm sure everyone's been in an office and had the thought or even had some they work with say "can you imagine what work would be like without the internet?" And then everyone laughs bc it sounds like some horrible dark age, like before there was running water or electricity.

But when I'm at work and just jam through it without internet (which is rare) I feel a lot better at the end of the day.

otm

since i got the internet as a middle-schooler, in the 90s, all the office jobs i've ever gotten were to work ON the internet, really. but back then the internet was kind of like a natural and appropriate counterpart to real work so checking usenet or whatever was actually kind of productive, kept the mind limber. look up coding advice, or whatever.

i think the encroachment of mind-numbing drudgery onto the internet - the use of web interfaces for office-data type work, administrative bullshit - has had something to do with the change of character of the other parts of it, or of people's non-actual-work-related uses of it. like having given up on the belief that it was primarily a good and useful counterpart to the actual world, people have also given in to the despair that is joyless dumbass social media click click clicks or whatever.

(have commenced first 'office space' rewatch in years, am feeling embittered about tps reportification of the internet)

yeah i think that's right. i'm also thinking about the concept of the 8-hour day and how during slow days i can use the internet to stretch out my work, which then becomes a bad habit on less-slow days.

But when I'm at work and just jam through it without internet (which is rare) I feel a lot better at the end of the day.

Jesus, so otm. It feels good to just stay on my tasks with my headphones on. It feels bad to poke at my tasks in between hopping over to the internet every 5 minutes. And yet I do the thing that feels bad so much more often. It's like I'm the rat who keeps nudging the pain button instead of the treat button, solely because the pain button makes me feel connected to other ppl and the treat button makes me feel alone.

tips for achieving that?

i try to remember that i've never earned an invitation to the private 77 board, and i don't deserve to be on the internet

But when I'm at work and just jam through it without internet (which is rare) I feel a lot better at the end of the day.

Did this today. Nothing like coming home to a stack of bookmarks on top of ILX.

You know how every once in awhile, some tenured regular here will disappear and someone will ask where s/he is and the answer is "Oh, they said they've got a project to get done this week. They'll be back after the first." ... ?

My first thought after hearing that is always, "And?"

yeah it's not like they're designing the space shuttle ok

How do you complete some important project without checking back every 15 minutes to see if the Eagles thread has been updated?

Whatever Microsoft guy might say about waiting and hoping, you have to go ask to get on 77 xp

been hearing this thread title all day to the tune of Amphetamine Addiction by the Zero Boys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmRA7f_EBPc

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/14/google-glass-user-treated-addiction-withdrawal-symptoms

The man had been using the technology for around 18 hours a day – removing it only to sleep and wash – and complained of feeling irritable and argumentative without the device. In the two months since he bought the device, he had also begun experiencing his dreams as if viewed through the device’s small grey window.

i've been dealing with my own internet addiction pretty well at work (helps to finally be in a job where i feel competent and comfortable with what i'm doing)

what bothers me is the amount of time i spend on the internet outside of work ... i don't watch tv but i can see my weekend / nighttime Internet use is basically just listless channel flipping born of inertia and depression

How do you complete some important project without checking back every 15 minutes to see if the Eagles thread has been updated?

― pplains, Friday, October 10, 2014 8:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A pressing deadline doesn't mean I don't NEEEEED to know if my paragraph-long analysis of hip-hop's role in white teenagerhood has been thoroughly gutted by ILM yet

fwiw, appointment with new psych this week, gonna give it another go. Posting ITT helped me reach the conclusion at least. See, the internet is good for something!

fuck, i thought i was the only one with these problems

(helps to finally be in a job where i feel competent and comfortable with what i'm doing)

Ugh... yes. This would solve all of my problems. I tend to procrastinate when I'm not confident that the task I'm supposed to be doing can be done well (by me or by anyone). I want to defer shitty, useless outputs as long as possible.

i've had intermittent problems along these lines. Not too bad right now (that i have bigger problems). Good luck Hurting.

man today has been tough because I actually got a lot of sleep, came into work rested and motivated, and WAS pretty productive for the first couple hours, felt like I could get this shit done, but then gradually fell off during the day. Still intermittently productive, better than average day overall, but here I am at the office again, still trying to finish this assignment I've been agonizing over. Guess I'm just posting this to help remind myself of my patterns, and that no, adequate sleep and motivation alone doesn't completely do the trick.

focus me is the best and most customizable internet blocker i've found. lots of specification and thorough scheduling (block ilx except for 12-1 etc) and you can make it unbreakable. ofc it costs money.

i think the scheduling is the more expensive option. was the main reason it stuck out to me. wanted to block all social stuff except for like an hour a day.

obv i haven't built up the will to start using it and never will lolololol

work computer won't let me install stuff like that. I was able to make a blocker plugin for chrome work, but it only works for chrome.

You people are (mostly) great, but I really think the Internet has been a cognitively and emotionally corrosive force for me. I tried to stop altigether and then just started going on benders, sucking up tons of content and entering into debates. I don't want to be traversing this much information per day but I crave it for some reason... also all of my work is on the computer too. How fucked is that? It's like being an alcoholic but the only jobs that exist are jobs at bars.

Does the average person think the Internet has added to the stress in their life? Am I the only one who feels this sense of pervasive unease? My rhetoric might sound over the top but really, I've been fantasizing a lot recently about moving to Walden Pond or doing something like that. Maybe this summer.

If your brain is asking for Walden Pond, then give it a break and let it have as much of Walden Pond as you can offer it. At the very least spend time in a park or outdoors every day. Even in crap weather. Walk around. Look at the sky. Stare at trees. Poke mud with a stick.

you should get a paper copy of sherry turkle to read, treezy (it's not great but you may find it somewhat reassuring to know you're not alone at all)

Treesh I feel you. And my habit has been way worse since I got the new phone. Constant microescaping.

treeship you are not alone. it certainly adds stress to my life. there are so much fewer things on it that i need than i realize. i've been painting my room this week and the hours away from electronics have been so good.

i wonder if certain personality types (maybe "type b" or introverts or those inclined to thinking/over-thinking or whatever) suffer a greater negative effect from the internet. or maybe different personality types respond to *limitless information* differently than others. like, my pre-smartphone life felt richer precisely because i was constantly starved for information which led to a deeper engagement with whatever particular book i had with me, etc.

A therapist I started seeing had a good description I thought of how things that have beginnings and ends tend to produce less anxiety (e.g., I start cleaning the kitchen, I finish cleaning the kitchen), whereas something like posting to ILX has no end, and this produces a kind of anxiety. I thought that was a good insight -- there's actually an anxiety to my need to post, to keep checking to see if anyone responded to me, is there another thread I should now respond to, did I get any OTMs, were my posts made fun of, etc.

xp i think that's likely ryan. i remember going to a panel discussion on david foster wallace -- an author i recently criticized on another thread -- where his biographer, dt max, said that dfw never used the internet because he was afraid that, for him, the internet might be a labyrinth from which he'd never emerge.

personally, i don't really have a point of comparison for a "pre-internet" life because i have had almost 24 hour access to a laptop with a wifi connection since i was 14. i remember "taking notes" in high school classes reading wikipedia and the times. i think this lack of a benchmark is part of what causes me to fantasize so often about what life would be like for me if i were born in, say, 1949 instead of 1989 and the internet came along late enough that it never became second nature for me.

also, i know, at some level, that my issues have to do with avoidance and escapism and that the internet is just the "crutch" i reach for when i feel too bored or anxious to do what i am supposed to be doing. in a different context, maybe i would reach for something more sinister like alcohol. still, i do feel that my resilience has been eroded by constant access to unlimited information. i've lost the ability to just sit with myself, evaluate my surroundings, and plan the next step without a constant, gnawing sense that i am missing something. a serious round of cognitive behavior therapy might help me reverse this.

also, hurting, that therapist sounds very otm. it reminds me of the advice to "take one thing at a time," which i've heard often from various sources, but which has always seemed unreasonably difficult to follow.

Sounds a lot like me, I'm older I think but we had stuff like Prodigy and AOL in the house by the time I was 13 or 14 -- no laptops in class yet but I was already message board posting, which is still the activity that I spend the most time doing on the internet today. Relate to the whole question of "is it really the escapism that's the problem and the internet is just the thing that fills the need?" but there is something I think that is more addictive about the internet than other escapes, maybe the combination of unpredictability, quick dopamine rewards, variety, the physical aspect of clicking/typing, the availability of it everywhere now etc. I did blow a lot of time in college on pinball and arcade games but at least there you had to spend money so it felt like there was a constraint (also you couldn't just like hang out in an arcade for eight hours pretending to do your work and eating your meals there).

yeah, the way the computer is the tool i use for both my work and avoiding my work seems dysfunctional and also unavoidable. i grade my students' papers on google docs, often a tab away from ilx and facebook and there would just be no way for me rearrange my life in a way that i wasn't spending hours in front of the screen anyway. so physically separating myself is not an option; i need to avoid doing distracting things while using the computer.

p.s. hurting, harbl, and ryan, thank you for sharing your experiences because, while i wish you didn't have these difficulties in your lives, it is good to know that people i like and respect also have issues with time management and can relate to what i am saying.

cognitive therapy probably a good way to approach this. particularly in the sense of constructing a different set of habits. I think the Internet will always be a pretty powerful pull on me but I do try to, say, reach for a novel instead of my phone when I start itching for a dopamine rush (or whatever it is). or even just sit and listen to music without doing anything else. or leave my phone at home when running a few errands. small strides.

I hadn't had internet access until a decade ago and even then there were lots of periods of it not working or not being used much. Until two years ago the internet was just a weekend thing, now it's constant and it only takes a short time for it to become a crutch. Now my life before the internet seems like some exotic fantasy I'd like to return to.

But in terms of images and music, my viewing and listening habits would be horribly restricted. A bit less choice for books too(which will probably only decrease). And losing the internet advantages for showing my art would be a really big blow.

But before my complete internet obsession, I watched godawful tv, even repeats of tv shows I didn't like the first time around. At least now I can always procrastinate by viewing topics I love. A far better quality of harmful procrastination.

yes but a procrastination activity that never gets boring is like, life-stealing kryptonite.

It's good to also sometimes take stock of your life and say "well, I AM ultimately getting the papers graded, I have this job, I'm apparently considered competent and productive enough to keep it" just to avoid the anxiety snowballing

solution: go back to dial-up modem

i've fantasized about buying a typewriter and lugging that, instead of my laptop, to the coffeeshops where i spend the majority of my hours away from school. i think more women would talk to me but maybe not for the right reasons. the only downfall is that typewriters don't do what i need them to do, which is produce word documents in .doc or .docx form and answer emails.

coffeeshops without wifi (or just ones where I have deliberately not asked the password) are very special to me. there are programs, I believe, that block the Internet, or just certain sites on your computer for a period of time.

i used to not have the internet at home, until i moved in with my partner a few years ago (in fact I was largely off of ILX in those years). she wouldn't consider getting rid of our wi-fi. but i find that i have to disconnect myself to be productive, and it's increasingly hard to find places to do that, since all my work (or nearly all of it) is on the computer.

the other problem is that i /do/ need the internet for much of my work, although i don't need it nearly as much as i use it.

i find that the computer and the internet adds all kinds of excess tasks to my life, probably because i think i have some undiagnosed mild OCD. i find myself organizing stuff on the computer all the time, things that in the scheme of things are completely useless.. mostly because they are simple tasks that can be accomplished quickly, while the /real/ work i have to do is huge and neverending. it's easier to feel "productive" when you get a million pointless little things "done" (even if they really only lead to more pointless tasks) instead of chipping away at a few huge, messy things.

i KNOW i would accomplish more of actual import if i just tossed the internet overboard and found some way of writing and researching without relying on my laptop. but that seems like such a huge move, and there's also an insidious social pressure to stay on the internet. (to pick a straightforward example, my partner gets upset whenever i suggest that i might want to kill my various social media accounts. she likes being able to interact with me that way, look at my FB wall, etc.)

anyone relate to any of this?

If you bring a typewriter to a public space you have >75% chance of becoming the subject of a piece on hipsters written by someone who doesn't know what a hipster is

Mr. Ship, I would stand over your table while you typed CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK-CHAK *BRRRRRRRRRRRRP-DING!* CHAK-CHAK-CHAK before throwing coffee on you and being led out of the cafe screaming, "It was worth it! It was worth it!"

yeah, i was gonna say, typewriters are NOISY

word processors though :)

Well, as long as you don't print anything.

i've fantasized about buying a typewriter and lugging that, instead of my laptop, to the coffeeshops where i spend the majority of my hours away from school. i think more women would talk to me but maybe not for the right reasons. the only downfall is that typewriters don't do what i need them to do, which is produce word documents in .doc or .docx form and answer emails.

― Treeship, Monday, November 24, 2014 3:33 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This actually gives me an idea -- it's probably possible (easy?) to just modify a laptop and take out the wi-fi adapter. You could run word and whatever other software you need on a cheap laptop with no wifi. Of course that would mean not getting e-mails and such during those times.

As an alternative, I wonder if one of those cold-turkey type programs has a perma-block feature, like just have a laptop where every time-wasting site is completely blocked and work on that one when you need to get shit done.

deleting FB is a a very good idea imo. if only I could delete my Twitter and RSS as well. (tho the latter I've managed to whittle down considerably.)

it's a shame ILX tends to be a bit of a time suck for me sometimes because it's one of the few places where my time and engagement are rewarded even a little bit.

i wish there were one of those "suspend the internet" apps that was a little more customizable. so for example i might need to be able to access certain library websites but don't want to be able to browse the web more generally. or perhaps i want to /always/ block certain sites (like ILX, heh) but only /sometimes/ block other ones (like email). but i've yet to find an app where you can make fine-grained adjustments like that.

of course, all of this speaks to the fact that i just need to work on exerting better self-control. but the internet is a really profound and profoundly addictive distraction esp. when half the time I can sort-of justify what I'm doing a broad sense even if practically it's distracting me from the truly important things I need to do.

there is an extension for firefox called "block site". it would be cool if there was one that was like, "block everything except _____" but i haven't seen that.

i also find that the more i browse the internet the more i find cool stuff that i "need" and spend money on things i don't really have the time to fully absorb (books/music/movies/etc.). so i could stand to benefit from getting off the 'net in several ways.

it looks like this one can block everything with exceptions: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd

I have that one, I like it a lot except it only works with Chrome, so if you have other browsers it's useless (I'm firefoxing right now bc StayFocused is blocking on Chrome). I wonder if you could deinstall all other browsers or something. I don't think I can deinstall explorer on my work computer though.

the other day i was looking at some photographs taken in new england in the 1920s and saw one of some kid using an outdoor water pump and i got a really strong urge to just disappear into the country and live off the grid for a while. for better or worse, i haven't exactly arranged my life so i can do that.

btw hot tip: if you're traveling long distances, take the train. no internet access, few distractions. i tend to get a fair bit done. but i'm also one of those people who (a) loves train travel and (b) can sleep pretty well on trains.

Have you ever tasted well water? Ugh, it's like licking the end of a Thunderbolt cable.

xp amateurist - most trains in the UK have Wifi unfortunately. Although Virgin, despite being the most expensive train co, charge for the internet.

i'm sure amtrak in the US will have wifi eventually, and may well have it on certain lines already. but not on the trains i've been on over the past few years.

this is gonna sound a little silly and old-man op ed-ish perhaps, but im starting to think that boredom, like *real* boredom, like the kind of boredom i spent most of my childhood trying to figure a way out of, doesn't exist anymore? or that the kind of boredom we experience now is qualitatively different now, more manic or repetitive boredom, refreshing websites and the like, rather than the kind that would actually get you to leave your house or go kick a tire or something. and i wonder if, on some level, you need to cultivate a little boredom to re-train or re-construct an ability to focus or even take pleasure in things that are not so immediately grasped in a short stimulus-reward cycle.

I've thought the same thing many times. Although sometimes I wonder if my life feeling "filled up" with worries might just be a function of adulthood. But then again, the sense I have of having "no relief" is probably at least in part due to spending all my free moments engaged in, as you said, "manic repetitive behaviors." This feeling of emptiness and disenchantment -- exhaustion -- is a kind of boredom, but it's not the kind that makes the says seem endless.

Yes, the boredom thing is a huge deal. I am approaching this as a parent now* because I have very little kids and this stuff is only going to get exponentially more relevant and pressing and crazy as they grow up. A lot of what I've read about raising children stresses the importance of boredom to help them develop their coping mechanisms, just like ryan said.

This shit genuinely worries me because if internet 'addiction' or pervasiveness etc affects me, an adult who is the latest of late adopters and has no particular love for tech and gadgets etc, then what chance do my teeny innocent kids have at growing up without it affecting their development? The formation of their senses of self, their habits, everything. My 3 year old is already OBSESSED with phones, tablets, computers, any type of gaming shit. And we make a conscious effort to limit it in our home. But most families we know in this area have tablets, DSes, whatever, and let their toddlers have them whenever they want. My son has, at a playground, as I ran after him while carrying my smaller son, followed and tried to get in the car with a family we'd never met before because one of their kids had an iPod and was letting my son look at it. I had to drag him out of this family's car crying. What chance do they have when these devices seem that enticing and literally everyone else is always using them, everywhere?

*although it can and does apply to my own life too

ryan: looks like there is some research confirming the phenomenon you described of people forgetting how to cope with ordinary boredom, and subsequently experiencing a more insidious, boundary-less type of boredom all the time

This aligns with research conducted earlier this year by John Eastwood and his colleagues at York University in a meta-analysis of boredom. What causes us to feel bored and, as a result, unhappy? Attention. When our attention is actively engaged, we aren’t bored; when we fail to engage, boredom sets in. As Eastwood’s work, along with recent research on media multitasking, have illustrated, the greater the number of things we have pulling at our attention, the less we are able to meaningfully engage, and the more discontented we become.

In other words, the world of constant connectivity and media, as embodied by Facebook, is the social network’s worst enemy: in every study that distinguished the two types of Facebook experiences—active versus passive—people spent, on average, far more time passively scrolling through newsfeeds than they did actively engaging with content. This may be why general studies of overall Facebook use, like Kross’s of Ann Arbor residents, so often show deleterious effects on our emotional state. Demands on our attention lead us to use Facebook more passively than actively, and passive experiences, no matter the medium, translate to feelings of disconnection and boredom.

In ongoing research, the psychologist Timothy Wilson has learned, as he put it to me, that college students start going “crazy” after just a few minutes in a room without their phones or a computer. “One would think we could spend the time mentally entertaining ourselves,” he said. “But we can’t. We’ve forgotten how.” Whenever we have downtime, the Internet is an enticing, quick solution that immediately fills the gap. We get bored, look at Facebook or Twitter, and become more bored. Getting rid of Facebook wouldn’t change the fact that our attention is, more and more frequently, forgetting the path to proper, fulfilling engagement. And in that sense, Facebook isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom.

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-facebook-makes-us-unhappy

thanks for posting that!

been trying to get back into a daily meditation practice but honestly just getting nowhere. I wonder if that's too much too fast. gonna let myself just be "bored" for 20 mins a day first.

this is good

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/fear-of-screens/

For as long as there have been social media and mobile devices, there have also been articles or books aimed at lay audiences arguing that we’re trading real life for something digital. And then come the replies from researchers who have found that the relationship is much more complicated — that people who text more often also meet face to face more; that the contemporary technologies of social isolation were, and are, the television and the automobile, not smart phones; that there’s been a recent reversal of the long post–World War II trend toward social isolation.

Her digital dualism is plain when she describes how we have “used technology to create a second nature, an artificial nature,” or when she discusses a “world of screens,” or when she laments “the pull of the online world” away from the real world of humans. “We turn to our phones instead of each other,” she says, as though our phones do not contain each other. She worries that online, “we are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be,” as if such virtuality and self-presentation hasn’t always been basic to the traditional “real” world of human bodies. Digital dualism allows Turkle to write as though she is championing humanity, conversation, and empathy when ultimately she is merely privileging geography.

There is another way we can handle our phones, one that doesn’t call for a misguided “mindfulness” that misperceives technology as inherently toxic: Don’t be rude to others, with or without your phone. Be mindful of people rather than screens. Focus less on your relationship to your device and more on your relationship to human beings. This includes not feeling entitled to someone’s attention just because they are geographically near, and it especially includes not putting forward your nonuse of a phone as proof of your superiority and others’ subhumanity.

ok but this:

“we are tempted to present ourselves as we would like to be,” as if such virtuality and self-presentation hasn’t always been basic to the traditional “real” world of human bodies."

is a bit odd. as presenting yourself in person how you want to be is inevitably limited somewhat by you being there in person, even if you are great at presenting a particularly good version of yourself. whereas presenting yourself as you would like to appear online is a hell of a lot easier.

you can't possibly have read and digested the article in that time

you must have only skimmed it

i bet you skimmed it on your phone

society is in the gutter

but yes i think the 'nothing has qualitatively changed' aspect of that particular argument is dubious

reality privileges geography

This includes not feeling entitled to someone’s attention just because they are geographically near

I'm on board with most of that quote, but not this. If I've cleared my schedule, gotten on my bike or in my car, and met you for dinner or a coffee, then yes, I have more claim on your attention than the stuff on your phone you can check any old time.

Turkle’s claims may feel commonsensical in part because they are self-flattering: They let us suspect that we are the last humans standing in a world of dehumanized phone-toting drones.

This feels like a strawman to me -- I think a lot of the people who find anti-screen arguments compelling are people who feel their own relationships harmed by them, their own ability to focus diminished, etc. Or maybe I'm projecting.

"in part"

great quote caek, thanks. gonna send the article to my mom

personally my internet addiction is different from what seems to be being described in that piece, which sounds more like a rational reaction to the extension by technology into new social spaces. my addiction is definitely irrational, in the following sense. if I have an hour to kill, at each successive individual moment I will choose to be on the Internet, thinking that 'that's ok, if I am choosing to do it this must be the thing that I most want to do'. but then invariably by the end of the hour I feel a dread and regret hour long sum-of-instants choice. happens frequently enough that I should rationally choose to not spend my spare hours on the Internet, or at least not the full hour, yet I never learn the lesson. kind of a simplified explanation because I also do love the Internet and cherish my time on it, but I thin k you get the idea. it's like a breakdown between my inter temporal choices. and smart phones, social media have aggravated that tendency (for me)

phartsmones have made it acceptable to read stuff while engaging in pedestrianism. Before, if you walked from place to place with your nose stuffed in a book or a magazine or a ream of correspondence, you were a weirdo. now it's like, hey man, I'm blowing up pigs / checking my map coordinates / fantasy balling, or maybe I am reading up on nerd shit and crushing my inbox, what's it to you? It's totally a better world.

I read this thread during a period when I was self banned from ilx and I wanted to say, at the time, that all the posters itt are people whom I have learned a huge amount from and love reading on a regular basis. so, while I hope you all success in your attempts at conquering your internet addictions, your addictions are creating some kind of positive externality that myself (and many others) are benefitting from! so I also hope you don't :-P

phartsmones have made it acceptable to read stuff while engaging in pedestrianism. Before, if you walked from place to place with your nose stuffed in a book or a magazine or a ream of correspondence, you were a weirdo. now it's like, hey man, I'm blowing up pigs / checking my map coordinates / fantasy balling, or maybe I am reading up on nerd shit and crushing my inbox, what's it to you? It's totally a better world.

yeah totally this too

social media makes it easier for shy people (hi) to meet people while travelling or when moving to a different city. never been a 'just show up at the bar alone and make friends' type

i deleted twitter on my phone, and while i can still read ILX on it i cant post because i forgot my password and so cant login. not posting = less obsessive checking to see if anyone responded to you.

both have been positive. i really miss twitter sometimes. the only time killer on my phone is, uh, instagram, which is probably the least addictive of all the social media platforms.

sometimes it occurs to me that, for surely the first time in history, to expose yourself to mere presence (ie, doing nothing) is somehow a deliberate choice only, not something you can expect to endure on a regular basis, and i wonder if pre-internet pre-smartphone civilization will appear as strange and foreign to the future as, say, pre-modern civilization does to us now.

I suppose compulsively expressing my opinion about everything is an evolutionary step forward from compulsively pumping quarters into Medieval Madness pinball in the student center.

really vehemently disagree with that (nothing directed toward you personally), sound-off culture is the worst (umm...)

What Rip Van Wanko's Post About Sound-Off Culture Gets Wrong

internet addiction isn't only about sounding off. not everyone wants to use it to broadcast their opinions publicly. in fact i suspect most do not and it's just a loud dumb minority who give it the impression of a vox populi. that stat where like .01% of twitter users are responsible for 99.99% of the tweets. i was deeply addicted before ever reading forums, before social media. msn messenger, chat rooms, just reading stuff. the smartphone stuff just let's you do that everywhere anytime

i like to read

i miss the good internet so much

i miss the earth so much, i miss my wife

downloaded stayfocused plug-in for chrome and had the most productive monday morning at work in months

that looks like something I need

yea i could use that too

i need a meta stayfocusd plug-in that forces me to downlaod stayfocusd and use it

how are you gonna download the plug-in for the plug-in though huh

stay what now?

i need a meta stayfocusd plug-in that forces me to downlaod stayfocusd and use it

― Karl Malone, Monday, March 7, 2016 11:41 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTMFM. Just like I need a planner to remind me to use and check a planner.

I need a brain that functions properly, is what I'm saying here.

i need someone to tell me to work, to make sure that my work-enhancing plug-ins are downloaded and operational, and also to do my work for me

I need someone who will do my work and perform all of my daily non-work routines for me and also continually tell me that my inability to do all of the things they're doing for me doesn't make me a bad person.

So that I can spend all day on the internet.

i wonder if the womb has wi-fi

I like stayfocused but the problems is I also have explorer on my work computer

LOL @ how hard i rocked it at work today, i truly just thought i was an inherently unproductive person before today. also how many times i mindlessly typed ilxor.com, twitter.com or facebook.com into my browser only to be shut out

us elections feed my internet addiction like nothing else and the high suspense of the GOP primaries + leftist infighting (a guilty pleasure of mine) caused by sanders running in the dem primary have just been destroying my work ethic

willpower to install/turn it on is negligible. you can also customize it to give you a maximum of say, 15 or 30 daily minutes across all banned sites. also part of the problem for me is not just the act of procrastinating, but procrastinating from procrastinating? like, i frequently open some relatively longformish article, skim the first paragraph, feel bored and agitated, then go back to twitter/ilx. i used my fifteen minutes on social media to open a nice wax poetics piece on Ron Hardy and some election stuff that i then actually read pretty thoroughly

you need willpower to stay off other browsers but that's easier than you'd think. the shame of stupidity of sneaking past a trap you set yourself worked well for day one at least

elections are a great example of the anxiety thing I talked about upthread -- it feels like it's this PROBLEM that you need to SOLVE. But you can't!

the anxiety about open-ended stuff without goals or resolutions I mean.

anyone tried just not using the internet for anything outside of work for an extended period of time, if so how did it work out

worked out pretty great but eventually i got bored. :(

increasingly i am feeling like i wasn't built for this. there is an open-endedness to browsing the internet that makes it feel different than reading books or whatever and way more addictive.

yeah you should definitely take a break if you can. just try to keep yourself intellectually stimulated- that's always the challenge for me.

i think a good goal would be to learn how to live with boredom. it shouldn't feel so intolerable to sit with myself without stimulation... idk.

i tried looking up testimonials from people who have tried living without the internet but i can't find all that much. makes sense, i guess.. people who unplugged wouldn't by definition be on the internet... but i was still surprised. i would think more people would be interested in the idea of unplugging.

embracing boredom is key. you are a smart guy, imagine the interesting thoughts you'll have once you get past that initial boredom.

the weird irony of constant connectivity is that while it promises to maximize productivity (which is bad enough) never in history has there been something so good at entrapping you into wasting time.

i like to sit outside or in nice spaces without a book or any other "deliberate" entertainment and tune into my own head there, it might be a good starter step because being outside creates its own stimulation?

Been feeling deeply unwell about my Internet usage lately, and in retrospect, going back several years. I need to make a lifestyle change.

the sense of needing constant stimulation goes away after a couple days. it's not really a big issue. the long-term issue for me is that quitting the internet doesn't tend to actually make my life better. when i compulsively use the internet it's to avoid stuff i don't want to deal with, and not using the internet has still left me with stuff i don't want to deal with.

boredom is not really that bad either. i read that dfw book and he gets boredom completely wrong in it. what he describes as boredom is actually acute anxiety. boredom is just... boredom. i mean, honestly being on the internet is a pretty boring thing to do.

going for walks is nice. i recommend going for walks.

people in general are pretty good at figuring out ways to avoid boredom so yeah you might surprise yourself once the easy outlet of the Internet is gone.

and yeah walks are pretty great.

have "unplugged" completely a couple times within the last five years (very easy to do if you, say, lose electricity and neglect to turn it back on, or if your internet-browser-machine dies and you just don't replace it for awhile) and it was fine, these days I browse sometimes on an old smartphone at home, but I honestly don't know where to go on the internet anymore, what else is there to do besides lurk around ilx?

cosign on walks though, hikes too if you can get out to one, walking at night is brilliant if you can find a safe place to do it (or bring a friend!)

treeship do you play any instruments? I managed to get pretty good at ukulele by candlelight over the course of a few months, and they're just so small you can take em anywhere, take em on a walk even

Think in most ways regarding the internet, kids today have the advantage that the "internet" isn't an alien entity, not something hi-tech sci-if dreamlike Jetsons thing that became reality out of nowhere during our lifetime. It's not something that exists next to "real life", it's simply part of life. Today's 5 year olds have many aberrations or daunty aspects of the Internet to worry about, no doubt, but they probably won't be addicted to "the Internet" like I used to be. I fought my parents over phone bills from dialing in to bbs's, but for today's generation the Internet is just there, part of life.

Youth today grows up with the Internet as an intrinsic part of life, rather than some novelty thing that shapes your life in massive ways. I think being addicted to "the Internet" will soon become something of the past. Getting lost in certain corners of the digital, sure, that will still happen. But I also see the advantage of kids growing up in an Internet world, accustomed to its quiditties and agonies, knowing way better where to go or what to ignore. There's a casualness to how kids us the Internet that I am envious of quite honestly.

oh i feel almost the opposite of that. i have had high speed internet access all the time since i was 14 or so and i think it's warped me in ways i can't even recognize. i'm pretty sure it's made me more antisocial and allowed me to develop bad habits, especially related to "escapism" or not dealing with problems.

i've described this anxiety to my parents and they can't relate at all. they use smartphones and facebook and whatever but it's not enough a part of their lives to have become seductive or dysfunctional. they're just tools that they use, not environments they get lost in.

I think our generation is caught in the middle. Your parents - like mine - use the Internet like a tool set. For people born today "the Internet" probably won't be an "environment" to get lost in because it's so engrained in life.

We're screwed, basically.

whenever i find myself with no internet access i wonder how i'm going to pass the time, then i have a great time reading and listening to records and otherwise doing low-key worthwhile and productive things, and feel that i should certainly do this more often, and then as soon as i have internet access again it's back to endless twitter and fb and ilx

"Think in most ways regarding the internet, kids today have the advantage that the "internet" isn't an alien entity"

think the internet is probably better off as an alien entity tbh

whenever i find myself with no internet access i wonder how i'm going to pass the time, then i have a great time reading and listening to records and otherwise doing low-key worthwhile and productive things, and feel that i should certainly do this more often, and then as soon as i have internet access again it's back to endless twitter and fb and ilx

rueful otm

Btw my stayfocused experiment lasted a good week then i started slipping into incognito to avoid it -_-

I think it's going to be very interesting to see what the children of today will do with the internet. They'll be the first generation that didn't have the opportunity to be straight up blindsided by this unbelievable technology; as has been said upthread, it was always there. My two year old cannot quite read or type yet but she has no problem browsing youtube on a touchscreen, finding content I didn't even know about (look at the view counter for videos containing "play doh surprise eggs"!)

i'm of same generation as treeship and (i think) bateau and i wouldn't describe myself as having been 'blindsided' by the internet and it never felt like 'something hi-tech sci-if dreamlike Jetsons thing that became reality out of nowhere during our lifetime'. started watching flash cartoons, going on chatrooms and aim around fourth grade but i was aware of its existence even before then. i think kids today are just as fucked as us. my cousin age 13 is addicted to the internet, first via minecraft (including watching videos of other people playing minecraft) but now she even like goes to buzzfeed dot com and reads lists

the internet getting shittier and noisier has probably been the best thing for breaking my internet habit. once i disconnect i don't feel much compulsion to constantly check in on it any more. turning twitter etc off just feels like sweet relief now.

when i compulsively use the internet it's to avoid stuff i don't want to deal with, and not using the internet has still left me with stuff i don't want to deal with.

haha otm. the ridiculous endless rounds of clicking i engage in when i procrastinate don't have anything to do with the internet per se, they're to do with procrastination and if the internet isn't there i just find even more pointless ways of procrastinating.

i took a lot of time out from the internet. now i engage with it at work, then switchg off when i leave the office, but sometimes this is harder than i hoped. its also why i hate streaming services. i cant watch online TV without thinking about looking at something else.

the main prob ive found with the net is the same one as before, theres so much to read, once you see it all, you feel like youre missing out/losing out/getting out of touch by not reading it. but now i just print out pieces i want to read and read them later. i cant read anything properly at work, shuttling between actual work and websites.

https://twitter.com/noz/status/725194524750958592

i hope future generations will think of the internet and social media the way we do smoking today

i think a better reference point would be television. i think most people would think it was a problem if they spent many hours a day channel surfing but it's considered more acceptable to do that on the web.

I don't do much internet browsing these days. Most of the internetting I do is fairly utilitarian aside from ILX-ing and some news trawling (almost all of which I do during work hours). Extracting myself from social media and the WWW equivalent of channel flipping was nothing but helpful. Still use the damn thing too much, though.

have there been any songs about net addiction?

waiting for michael franti to record an update of 'television... the drug of the nation'.

I was thinking back the other day to a time when I used to write like a machine every day and wondering what happened to make me break that habit and, oh yeah, of course it was before I owned a laptop and a smartphone and a tablet.

ILX is the only place on the internet I really like, and serves as a decent filter for the rest. I'd be overwhelmed as a Twitter user. But even this is mainly procrastination, and I ought to be doing work or reading books instead.

I think my biggest problem stems from the fact that my job heavily uses the internet and browser-based subscription sources. Over the years, I have grown deeply bored and dissatisfied with my job and I spend more and more of the day browsing message boards and going down rabbit-holes on the net. If I don't find a way to change, I imagine eventually I'll probably get fired or something. I still manage to live up to the requirements of my job for now though. But it feels worse all the time.

in an old apartment i purposely didn't have wifi, just a desktop with a make-shift standing desk--all designed to minimize the time i spent on the internet. i would often end up laying on the couch staring at my phone instead.

for people like myself who have trouble distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information (and this was a severe handicap for me as a scholar, i'd spend months researching things with only the most tenuous relationship to my own writing "just in case") the internet is an incredible mechanism for capturing attention. that "always on" quality tends to give it prominence over any other other media--the internet is happening now in a way that other mediums cannot match. this makes the information there seem more important to us even when it isn't.

not even live television can match the information stream of twitter. i sometimes read twitter during live sports and i honestly think i barely watch the game sometimes for all the commentary im reading on it. (or think about how getting a text when doing something else almost automatically gives that text message prominence over whatever it was you were doing before, even socializing with a live person!)

the only possible way to react to this situation--other than through sheer will power and self-denial--is to somehow achieve a relationship to the internet in which the informational content doesn't somehow automatically achieve that prominence. how do you push the internet--which automatically tends to foreground itself--into a background which can then be the object of selective attention?

I'm able to do my job on almost complete autopilot these days, it's great. Except it's not great and I hate it. But it allows me to post here constantly without compromising my work one iota, so everybody wins. Except I'm totally not winning. Help me.

Ryan otm

uh some people obviously need to consult a doctor in this thread

have read addiction is really a mental illness but ill leave that to the experts to diagnose

anyway wrt the web

had it since the early 90s

back then 'noise' wasn't pushed in front of you
you had to find it but it was definitely there
and there was a lot of it

there are plugins that will kick you out of a site
or block you from it after an amount of time that you set to your liking

if you feel the web is interfering from your daily life
practise some self discipline

Around 2008 I got rid of my pc and home internet connection, went through university without, sometimes borrowing a computer for writing assignments, mostly using the ones at the uni library. I did it because I couldn't control time spent online and felt much of my browsing was a waste of time. Not having a pc (or smartphone) never stopped me from using the net though, it was always available at the libraries, used it a lot since I ran a music blog, later got a full time job as tech supporter which is when I discovered ilx.

It did cause some hassle to not have pc/internet - no music streaming, warez - but I also found it rewarding.

Gave in last year when I bought a laptop and now have high speed fiber connection, considering getting a smartphone too. It's been less of a change than I'd expected but I've had to install leechlock - perhaps recommended itt? - in browser to help me stay productive/focused when working on digital projects (writing and music).

Ilx makes up abt 99% of my browsing.

there are plugins that will kick you out of a site
or block you from it after an amount of time that you set to your liking

Used one of these last year. I liked it a lot, but ultimately just overrode the controls and unblocked everything. I'll try setting it up again, or looking for another one.

if you feel something is interfering from your daily life, why not practise some self discipline?

Congratulations, you just solved addiction. Your Nobel Prize is in the mail.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but, if there's a steady stream of good writing on the internet, I think I want that? What are y'all reading on the internet? Used to follow thefeature.net, but updates seem few and far between lately...

Also, I am 31, and while I certainly didn't feel blindsided when I found it at age 12 or so (quite the opposite) I do believe that certainly I was, and we all still presently are, absolutely boondoggled by this unbelievable high tech space age Jetsons level jump in communications technology, the ramifications of which we will continue to process for many years to come

point is if its so unimportant you seek advice from nondoctors you should just handle it yourself

if youre taking it serious get out of this board and talk to a doctor

xxp

Treeship- I haven't watched it but here's a video about quitting the internet for a while
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trVzyG4zFMU

I really miss my life before the internet became a daily thing. It became a daily thing because I needed to find a job and then needed to wash away the hideous taste of jobsearching, and internet browsing became an addictive way to do that.

as a person who likes sensation and gets bored easily i feel like my internet habit is fine, maybe even a good thing, given that the rest of my life is and always has been fucking turgid and every other addiction i've flirted with and repudiated is way more actively harmful.

xxp oh cool just what we need itt the internet addiction police

its not policing

treeship posted he shouldnt always crave stimulation and posts in the internet addiction thread

sounds mild to me but i dont know the details

so im saying if its that serious he shd seek professional help instead of talking about it on a board that is mostly used for pub banter/trolling

yes, because the only appropriate place to ever talk about your personal problems is with a fully credentialed professional!

god we have threads here where people talk about wanting to kill themselves, go complain to them if it matters that much to you.

lol

xp interest video robert, thanks.

∞, the reason i posted about this here is because i thought this might be an issue of wide interest/relevance. also smart people post here and i value their insights. therapists i've seen in the past have had good advice for some things but not for this -- i kind of think my generation's relationship to technology is unique. it's not like other compulsions bc "the internet" isn't something that's walled off from everything else, that you can isolate and "quit" like drinking or even compulsive television watching.

today treeship tries to confront his excessive internet usage by thinking about excessive interent usage, what excessive internet usage might mean, what—if anything—'internet addiction' might mean, and how this is imbricated in a constellation of complex sociocultural and historical processes, via the medium of an internet forum where he is a valued and prolific poster

it's how i deal with everything tbh

so im saying if its that serious he shd seek professional help instead of talking about it on a board that is mostly used for pub banter/trolling

― F♯ A♯ (∞), Thursday, June 23, 2016 2:08 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude you do know there are a range of problems that impact lives that don't necessitate going to a doctor?

anyways i think procrastination is a bigger problem for me than the internet itself, the internet just makes procrastinating even easier

not really sure i think it's an "addiction," compulsive behavior sure but i don't think anything we have difficulty maintaining self-control over is necessarily an addiction

and lol i guess i said the exact same thing 3 years ago

not to be a pendant but really the term "addiction" is bogus for the internet. compulsivity yes definitely but not addiction.

― marcos, Monday, July 1, 2013 11:42 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have to say too that it's bogus to say "digital natives" (whatever you think of palfrey's term lol) don't have as big of a problem with compulsive internet use than those of us who experienced it's explosion at an older age

i think it can be an addiction. probably quite closely related to how gambling addiction works.

^^

if you feel something is interfering from your daily life, why not practise some self discipline?

― ogmor, Thursday, June 23, 2016 2:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mind is rly roaming trying to get to grips w what wd motivate anyone to post this in this thread - so richly unhelpful - it is otherwise so interesting + edifying to read everyone talk abt internet colliding w just basic routines of domestication itt. there is this great pt in zadie smith's conversation w chris ware at nypl where she says-

I went to dinner at Jeff Eugenides’s recently with my husband and there was a poet there, a great poet, Michael Dickman, and we were talking, having a perfectly nice dinner and then somehow accidentally, I don’t think he meant it, in the middle, he mentioned the fact that he does not have the Internet, and he got the kind of look, you know how when people used to tell you don’t have television, you’d be like, “Oh, fuck off!” (laughter) so annoying, but he didn’t mean it as a boast or anything, it was just the truth. But as we all went home to our separate lives, I could see everyone was preoccupied with, “Wow, what an extraordinary thing, not to have Internet,” and he was explaining to us, “Well, it’s not that big a deal, when I go to work, I have e-mail, and when I go home, I don’t,” and we’re like, “aaaaah, I see,” (laughter) “so I just wait the night and I answer in the morning.” “Really?” (laughter) It seemed extraordinary. I saw that as perhaps a vision of the future for people who are serious about writing that maybe you could just do without e-mailing someone at two in the morning. Maybe you could just live, do your Internet at work and have your home a space where you don’t do that.

i don't think i have as much of a binary around boredom so much as just participation. one of the things that makes the internet magnetic is its status as a terminal for the ten other things that at other times you might feasibly have been doing elsewhere; if i don't spend a couple hours at night tending to my life on the internet then i am behind - i haven't e-mailed anyone, i haven't let my friend know abt meeting up, i haven't applied for a job, i haven't posted the thing i meant to post - & then as well as this, sometimes it really very credibly is the terminal just for Reading: i'm reading the newspaper when i'm reading the internet, or having looked up words or read wikipedia articles is the foundation of my day-to-day thought. it is more that specific nowness ryan talks abt that is difficult; especially when there is news - the kind of terrible days of paris or similar - you are actively involved in what used to be delivered to you w/no time component as news in real-time, w/only anxiety & lost time to show for what you gained reading abt something unfolding instead of something summized post-fact. i can't untangle myself because for all the F5ing my e-mail i'm also very engaged & kind of alive & participatory & connected to the world when i am reading or writing someone, here; it's just that it's hard to be economical abt that & reenter yr physical body after merging brain w/screen. i know that the poet mentioned above's neat home/work split opens up the sub-problem of inviting internet too messily into what's meant to be productive time (& that there are other punctures in a no-internet-at-home arrangement, cf internet-via-phone, cf waiting for the passing train to trail Free AmTrak Wi-Fi past yr phone for long enough to let it at least periodically do its check-ups), but it seems like as good a system as any other right now.

if you feel the web is interfering from your daily life
practise some self discipline
― F♯ A♯ (∞), Thursday, 23 June 2016 15:47 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

excuse me !, pls redirect my bile accordingly

Great post schlump!

Been trying to restrict internet usage to 4 days a week, with the hope of eventually getting it down to 3 days a week. It's not going well but it is really satisfying when I manage a day without the internet, it feels like the good old days.

This might be a plan

Impressive. Does that include smartphone use?

I'm always content when I can manage one day a week without the internet (usually Sundays). It does feel very good.

When you are looking at the internet is that with phone, tablet or computer

I never use internet on phone, that alone seems a big part of any battle won. I use the computer all day for work so I'm a heavy internet user but don't feel addicted

I've just started using Spaces on Mac, and wish I had before. Now I have multiple desktop spaces split out eg

1) terminal, 2) vscode, 3) work browser, 4) twitter, 5) slack/skype, 6) non-work browser, 7) mail, etc. Thinking could add a pomodoro or time/alarm to each desktop, eg non-work browser has say 20 mins as soon as you go there.

I have an ipad and plan was to use that more for reading but ive lost the charging cable and havent got round to getting another

If you have issues with internet addiction i think focusing on the means rather than the source is better, try taking the phone out of the equation, that kills off a lot of the autopilot use

I just have a kindle and laptop. The idea of a phone with internet is extremely offputting and I don't think I'll ever get one.

I try to be goal orientated with the internet and do things quickly as I can and keep everything within a limited time frame.

My phone is like almost a decade old, which makes using it for the internet a huge pain in the ass. I'm trying to see how long I can make that piece of crap last. The other internet-enabled devices I generally have on my person are Wi-Fi only, which limits my ability to use them for internetting.

Not taking my laptop with me on weekend vacations has proven to be a really great decision, as well.

There are also some pretty good ADD-centric apps and programs that can help. Timers that lock your internet access after a certain point, things like that.

Been trying to restrict internet usage to 4 days a week, with the hope of eventually getting it down to 3 days a week. It's not going well but it is really satisfying when I manage a day without the internet, it feels like the good old days.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, October 31, 2017 8:23 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a great idea Robert! Thanks.

I had a phone brick on me the other week, with no warning, and needed to send it out to be repaired/replaced (for free!). But there was a full work day, dawn to night, where I had no phone, and any time I was away from a computer (I generally work at home) I was literally unreachable. It was pretty interesting, actually, though in the end more anxiety inducing than refreshing. I think that's because as a parent and spouse, there is just too much timely personal information - after school club was cancelled; I forgot my lunch; I'm going to be late coming home, don't worry about dinner - I'm constantly receiving that I know I am missing important stuff. That said, when I got my phone back I didn't reinstall Facebook (which I have always distrusted) or twitter (which I only joined a few months ago), and it's nice not to have those insidious distractions with me everywhere I go. Combined with a concerted effort to check the phone less often in the car (I know ... ) I find I'm using the internet just a little less often, which does feel good. At the very least, I'm reading more books!

That said, it's hard to avoid the internet at home, though sometimes I make a point of avoiding the news for the day and that does feel good. Ignorance is bliss, etc.

Having to Un-bookmark a bunch of threads and accept that I'll be in the dark about a lot of things.

If I had always lived my ideal schedule there would be so much I didn't know. I'd probably be a bit backwards about more things and I might have no idea about Michael Gira and Larkin Grimm.

I've learned so much but I think the people who go full-on into politics and social justice stuff must sacrifice a lot to know everything they do. I was hearing a bit about how social media increases stress in a lot of people and I think it sometimes brings out bad things in decent people.

In some of my attempts to limit my internet usage I've noticed a difference in my mood when I only avoid social and news websites. Or just go to a lower pressure forum.

When I only look at art sites and shopping sites I feel pretty damn good. That was what a lot of my early experience of the internet was like.

most "news" is distorted and frequently bad for you so yeah

i don't think a lot of full-on politics people are quite as well-read as all that tho

I might try restricting my internet to 1-2 days a week. I really need to shake up my routine and find ways to cut down. Quitting outright (everything except email) has never been successful for me for more than a month or so, and it seems too extreme given that there’s value in using the internet in moderation. It just so easily becomes consuming, and I can’t do other things as effectively when it's available. I can’t focus on books in the same way, and I'd like to think books matter a lot more to me than the internet.

"addiction" i don't think is the right term but i compulsively check my phone and laptop to an unhealthy degree. i can't even take a piss these days without looking at twitter or ilx. it's bad

i'm pissing right now whoooooaaoaaaa

(not really, but that wouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities.)

"alcoholism" i don't think is the right term but i compulsively drink to an unhealthy degree. i can't even take a piss these days without having a drink. it's bad.

(think there's nowt wrong with the term addiction if it becomes all encompassing and compulsively tbh)

nah i think addiction is substantively different than compulsivity. i would never compare my compulsive reach for my phone to struggling with alcohol or drugs

You're right, it was challops on my behalf. Still think internet/being connected can really be an addiction though. Compulsive behaviour can fuck you up.

for sure

My name is hardcore dilettante and I am a straight-up internet addict. It’s ruining my physical health. Quitting fb and Twitter helped a lot with the mental health aspect.

extremely online and never gonna log off, all the way since like 1990

An addiction might be defined as what happens when your brain becomes convinced that some inessential element of your life is absolutely essential, so that supplying yourself with it comes to eclipse the importance of eating, sleeping, staying warm, or other basic necessities. There seems to be something about screen-based devices that lend themselves to addictive brain reactions.

DOPAMINE, MOTHERFUCKERS

teach yr children well

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/11/14/563767149/increased-hours-online-correlate-with-an-uptick-in-teen-depression-suicidal-thou

Recently been hearing about creators of the very biggest websites feeling guilty about their part in the creation of them.

What wasn't new to me was that people continually find reasons to keep using the internet for more minutes/hours; that it's like the websites use you. But I was still struck by this somehow, I probably hadn't considered enough the possibility that specific website and device design choices were really damaging my life. Perhaps there's some outside of internet activities I only do because it feeds into a certain internet compulsion?

I generally don't think of myself as an angry internet guy but I've increasingly noticed myself getting angry and then thinking "who or what can I mock without being too much of a jerk?"

I generally don't think of myself as an angry internet guy but I've increasingly noticed myself getting angry and then thinking "who or what can I mock without being too much of a jerk?"

I can very much relate to this. I had to get off twitter because it was fuel for this dynamic.

I decided to keep the internet to Fridays and Saturdays. Optionally Sundays when I'm doing something really time consuming.

It's genuinely troubling to think how much harder this would have been if I didn't live between my parents houses. I just leave all my internet devices at my father's house and there is no horrible struggle necessary.

This is the arrangement I used to have before 2013 and I've really been feeling the benefit from it. It does feel a lot like the good old days but maybe it'll never be the same. I still think about the internet a lot and all the things I'm going to say and do on Friday and Saturday, so there's still this gravitational pull but maybe it's no different than thinking about your next shopping trip.
The first few Fridays I was surprised at how little I enjoyed coming back to the internet and it very quickly became much clearer which websites were just time killers I'd be happier without.

I just have to accept that some internet activities are going to take a very long time to catch up on (like years of Monster Brains, 50 Watts and my youtube watchlist).

If I manage to catch up with my books I want to read more online fiction because there's so much of it these days and it's hard to imagine reading much of it in good time. Maybe I'll have to print it all off and get used to buying more ink cartridges.

My internet was down for 2 days. Struggle is real man. It's like an appendage. Good luck

Maybe I'll have to print it all off and get used to buying more ink cartridges.

if you have a kindle you can copy and paste stuff into a word document then email it to your kindle, that's what I usually do if I want to read a long-form online article (assuming that you don't count the kindle as breaking the 'no internet devices' rule)

I applaud your decision RAG, I couldn't do it. I take it you don't have work or study for which you'd need the internet? (this in itself seems like something that's non-existent nowadays)

A kindle is a good solution. As is an ipad without internet connection, to use it like a kindle, just for stuff to read.

Kindle was partly what got my internet usage out of control. It would be difficult to resist turning on the internet. And also, I want to stay away from electronic screens.

I'm not studying anything these days.

But I'm sure over the years, more and more things will require internet.

I consider having no mobile devices to be my limit. Now that i'll be jobless in 5 weeks, i need to use the web for more than bullshit.

when I am home I pretty much do not use my computer except checking email and what not. Not out of self control but genuine loathing!

This comes of using a cimputer all day at work I think

I just want to paint and go into forests and read paper things

I refuse to admit I have a problem:

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a19505007/internet-broken-brain/

glad I never created a Twitter profile

do we have any ex-ilxors who returned to ilx and can tell what life without ilx was like compared to life with ilx?

Really should be more internet - social media detox centres. Based on a recent thread here on ilm in which shit went sour, nobody ends up benefiting from the fall out. Going offline or into some sort of retreat is one option I gusss but most people don’t seem to have the ability to log off and breathe. One of the worst addictions bar none

IMO from spending a bit of time in rehab and step programs, most addictions are (at least in part) people self-medicating for anxiety, grievances and regrets, or otherwise something lacking in their lives. Internet addiction provides the illusion of conviviality, satisfying a self-perpetuated need because it prevents cultivating RL relationships.

Otm, he typed into ilx.

Yeah that’s otm for sure

Also there’s a fear of missed opportunities from not reading posts - it’s like you have to be there at all times to stand your ground which is exhausting and a waste of energy imo

Any time I’ve walked away I feel better, just me but like I always feel worse spiralling into wars with people or even just seeing someone get piled on

yeah the last couple of weeks have been a bummer

i use freedom p aggressively, it works

flopson, you mean you step away a lot

I'm really enjoying not having the internet for a chunk of the week. I still haven't quite figured out how to cram everything into two or three days but I'm working on it.

It's really sad looking at people you admire on twitter acting like they're in highschool trying to say cool things and all the stupid clique behavior.

Some really intelligent people now seem incapable of realizing when their attempts at ingratiation are appallingly gooey.

i remember when I used to care about the internet; for years really. now I fucking hate it and am only on here when I'm at work.

I'm always trying to find the right mix of sites to block and keep. I don't want to block ILX, but I think Youtube has to go. Being on the computer too much has been messing up my sleep lately.

Quite horrifying to think back to how much time I spent checking for updates and looking at things that felt important at the time but weren't at all.

I like ILX a lot and really enjoy posting here and reading everyone's posts, but I hate how much time I spend on the internet and I wish it were possible for me to find some balance. This weekend I'm anxious and feel like crap about an observation at work that didn't go well, and I have to wait until Monday to find out how badly I screwed up, so I'm unable to concentrate on anything and I just keep refreshing the same sites. I know I'm doing this as a way to numb my brain and fast-forward through the weekend, but knowing I'm doing that doesn't help me not do it.

I used to live in a cabin with no internet, where I had to drive into town to check emails, and that was great because I had internet time but it was automatically limited and my home was an internet-free space. I wish I could go back to that.

There are some ADD-centric tools that can help with that. Like apps that will shut off your internet access after a prescribed amount of time.

Cold Turkey is a good one.

I've been using one, but unfortunately I've figured out how to get around it by opening an incognito window.

Try Cold Turkey, it's wise to your schemes, including incognito mode or changing the date/time to circumvent the lock.

Oh good! That sounds great, thank you!

yeah I use cold turkey a fair bit, it does the job!

I've been thinking about this very thing today, before I saw this thread. (Irony right there, I guess.) I really do have to figure out some way to lessen my time online. Cold turkey is inconceivable. I wish I were the kind of person who could say "Your house is filled with unread books and unwatched movies and unheard music--why don't you spend most of your retirement attending to that?" and follow through, but I just don't have the mindset or discipline or whatever is needed to do that. So much of my occasional moodiness is attributable to the internet in one way or another.

It's brutal, isn't it? I'm sitting in this room filled with books, and it's like I can't even see them.

Lately I've been reading books about the attention economy and I still get distracted mid-sentence by the very mechanisms being deconstructed therein.

Disconnecting myself altogether from social media has helped immensely, both with the extent to which the internet gets its hooks in me and the extent to which the internet contributes to my feeling like shit.

Like on the extremely rare occasion that I open Facebook, I start feeling like shit within minutes and know it's time to step away again.

Trump being in power for four years made it possible for me to surgically seek content, both on his re-electability, and his approval ratings, desperate to see signs of an end.

when he left, that still left things like daily COVID statistics, news on vaccines, stimulus, etc.

when this is over....might finally be at the point where like, the internet is just 'there' again, like pre-2016.

i go on FB to say happy birthday, to msg my best friends who chat w/ me daily, and a new friend from years back that I have been chatting with. maybe see if any new friends got vaccinated.

then PM my brother to tell me the hit he thinks he got in Little League Baseball 24 years ago was actually a fielder's choice.

then I'm done for the day

At least for me, there's an underlying problem here which is that my moods/sense of self are too dependent on how I do at my job from day to day, and there's something soothing and numbing (though also inherently depressing) about the internet which makes me turn to it in a time of low self-esteem and then creates a feedback loop that makes me ultimately feel worse.

I get very little out of Facebook but can't disconnect entirely because my brother and I started a Facebook group back in college which has somehow grown to have more than 6,000 members, many of whom are lonely old people who rely on it as a major part of their day, and I'm the main moderator so I have to check it fairly routinely to make sure they haven't all started screaming at each other about politics.

Just to add to the Cold Turkey recs, I recently shelled out for a lifetime subscription to Freedom and it's been the best purchase in years.

When I've been particularly scattered I've sometimes gone and looked at a painting for fifteen minutes — it seems to effectively settle the mind, though it can yield a certain melancholy. I took up the practice after reading about a medical instructor who took his students to a gallery when they couldn't distinguish between skin lesions in this NYRB article. For me it doesn't particularly matter if the painting is by a professional or not, just so long as there's something I can dig into with my eyes.

Thanks for the heads-up, LBI. If you've experimented with Cold Turkey as well, how does it compare to Freedom? I've never tried the latter.

It's been rough for me lately as well. I try to use the Hosts file to block websites like ILX and Youtube, but somehow I’ve gotten accustomed to just mechanically opening the file and unblocking them every time I turn on my computer – all it does is add a few more steps. I should try Cold Turkey.

I think it helps to not regard internet addiction as an individual failing. Huge numbers of people are internet addicts. Our brains are not evolved to use this technology in a balanced way, especially when social media and streaming are engineered to suck up as much of our attention as possible.

I really do hope new websites come along that steal the best parts of twitter and tumblr (pillowfort and mastodon are pretty much ripoffs of tumblr and I'm curious to see if they build). Still never joined twitter but I've been looking at it a lot and it definitely makes me unhappy. Something about twitter and tumblr makes the word "doomscrolling" seem a perfect description of the feeling of using them, regardless of subject matter. There needs to be somewhere that gets content to people more efficiently, shares & spreads (retweet, reblog) well and gets rid of the trivial and shitty stuff. But I kinda would like to go back to the blogger and forum days and just accept the tradeoff that they aren't as good for sharing & spreading content.

Since my last posts above, I've moved to my father's permanently, so I don't weekend binge anymore, I try to keep it to just a couple of hours a day (I'm failing badly at that recently).

xp Yeah, it's horribly addictive, and like all addictive things it targets whatever you're already feeling bad about, briefly gives you the illusion of making it better, and ultimately makes it worse. So it's hard not to feel like it's an individual failing because the way you experience it is so personal, but it's definitely a widespread problem.

I actually got rid of my smartphone a couple years ago and it was great, about three days of feeling like a part of me had been amputated, and then this wonderful freedom, where I could leave the house, get on a bus, go to a cafe or whatever, and not have to think about the internet until I came home again. But now, with lockdown, I'm almost always in my house surrounded by computers, so not having the phone doesn't make much difference.

Internet Addiction is a thing, but refreshing the same websites during a time of stress is the new version of re-reading the same newspaper article/book and not taking any of it in.

I uninstalled all social media on my phone, it helped me more than you'd think even in lockdown - no computer in the living room. Periodically reinstall twitter to check for CenturiesOfSound's takes after watching totp.

I think the chillness of current era ILX makes it less damaging to my psyche, I still fall into the "argue angrily and then refresh the page compulsively waiting for an answer" trap every now and then but much less than I used to. Its slowness, though obviously a sign of its dwindling membership, is good for me too - no endless timeline to scroll through.

Twitter seems to serve me up angry politics stuff no matter how much I try to nudge it into other directions. Funny thing is the aggravation I feel from it isn't even about getting into yelling matches myself anymore, it's all vicarious stress from other ppl's shouting matches. That and the consciousness of just how many awful people exist out there. And the ppl I find who never post about politics are just terminally bland - endless tweets wishing dead actors a happy birthday, who cares.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/07/on-earth-4000-weeks-so-why-lose-time-online-distraction-oliver-burkeman

Check out this film on MUBI: Sweat https://mubi.com/films/sweat-2020

(x post)

This is a very silly article/book extract - it's thought deserving of a tweet or two turned into a book.

I found it useful. It's no less silly than most of the self-help pap that nonetheless hits the occasional bullseye depending on how much you need to hear it.

I read it prepared to be sceptical but ended up appreciating it, though I do usually get something out of his columns. Re: tweet v book, if you read a tweet you might think "oh yeah, bingo" then forget all about it, a book is likely to sink in deeper.

I'd prefer to see an article along the lines of if you think you have online addiction/issues that you are worried about, where are some practical things you can do....Dressing it in the context of 'omg do you guys realise you only have 4000 weeks' as if that has some great ontological significance is some sales bullshit imho..

Next week's Oliver Burkeman column: "Is the fact that the sun will one day burn out and extinguish all life on Earth preventing you from clinching that important job interview...?"

Lol

I have no idea who the author is, so I approached the piece without bias. For what it's worth, he does provide practical advice via the long anecdote about Steve Young.

Re: Steve Young - to me that was some sub-standard Malcom Gladwell approach, as someone observed here on ilx:

So basically his formula is (1) take commonsense thing that everyone already knows (2) make it sound like it actually goes against the "conventional wisdom," (3) extrapolate overbroadly from the phenomenon (4) assign pseudoscientific terms to thing (5) audience now feels both that it is smart and that it has learned something

Faced with physical distress – even of a much milder variety – most people’s instinctive reaction is to try not to pay attention to it, to attempt to focus on anything else at all. For example, if you’re mildly phobic about hypodermic syringes, like I am, you’ve probably found yourself staring very hard at the mediocre artwork in doctors’ clinics in an effort to take your mind off the jab you’re about to receive. At first, this had been Young’s instinct, too: to recoil internally from the experience of the freezing water hitting his skin by thinking about something different – or else just trying, through an act of sheer will, not to feel the cold. Common sense would seem to suggest that mentally absenting yourself from the situation would moderate the pain.

When we succumb to distraction, we’re motivated by the desire to flee something painful about our experience of the present
And yet as icy deluge followed icy deluge, Young began to understand that this was the wrong strategy. In fact, the more he concentrated on the sensations of intense cold, giving his attention over to them as completely as he could, the less agonising he found them – whereas once his “attention wandered, the suffering became unbearable”. After a few days, he began preparing for each drenching by first becoming as focused on his present experience as he possibly could so that, when the water hit, he would avoid spiralling from mere discomfort into agony. Slowly it dawned on him that this was the whole point of the ceremony. As he put it – though traditional Buddhist monks certainly would not have done so – it was a “giant biofeedback device”, designed to train him to concentrate by rewarding him (with a reduction in suffering) for as long as he could remain undistracted, and punishing him (with an increase in suffering) whenever he failed.

Th offending passage.

Cant wait until Steve Young gets a toothache.

1) 'Common sense would seem to suggest that mentally absenting yourself from the situation would moderate the pain.'

2) 'the more he concentrated on the sensations of intense cold, giving his attention over to them as completely as he could, the less agonising he found them'

Right off the bat, it doesn't quite fit the model. Unless your argument is that #2 is also 'common sense'? But that's not really true, is it? In my experience, at least, #1 is by far the most widespread approach to this problem.

Well, it's a slight Gladwellian variation:
(1) take some 'common-sense' view
2) show the opposite is 'true'

3,4,5 - apply as usual.

Oliver Burkeman is still building up his 10,000 hours (omg do you guys realise that's like 60 weeks?) to master his Gladwell abilities.

That article is better than I expected, despite the clickbait start.

It's the kind of clickbait that works on me precisely because I'm an Internet Addict.

Heh

Buzzcocks to thread!

Anyway, as far as I can tell the conclusion is not much different from what the majority of meditation instructors would tell you.

I did try meditation for once, found it alright for kicks, but I did not find out that it's a habit that sticks.

You're an ooohhhmmm-gasm addict

Whoever mentioned Discord above is right, it's really good. People keep saying it feels nice and feels like the good old days of internet but it is quite addicting (seeing that people are typing doesn't help). Thought about giving it up but I actually do find the place quite rewarding.

i really feel like the internet is dying. i grew up with web 2.0, and even six, seven years ago community felt vibrant and things were a little more free. it's like i don't even know what to do when i open a browser window now.

i have been 'addicted' to a particular 'erotic fiction' text-based chatroom since i was sixteen. it was somewhere to freely explore identity and exist anonymously. no social network. no photos - the place is trapped in 1997. that's pretty rare these days. i still keep checking in now and then for this 'old net' feeling, and i guess i get the same feeling from ILX. i'm twenty-nine now, and pretty sick of the sight of that chatroom. i wish there was a community worthwhile visiting with a similar infrastructure that isn't centred on sexuality.

sometimes i feel like reddit is almost the last bastion of a free and open net, and even there, it's narrowing, and demographic has shifted. all i see everywhere are ads/captchas/useless shit i don't need. it makes me wonder where people are hanging out these days... even the early days of FB had a community feeling... IG has no real network to it. i suppose there are particular forums given your interest but i wouldn't know where to start. it just doesn't feel 'fun' anymore...

i read a fair bit about cyberpsychology and addiction & the net a few years ago in order to figure out my feelings and complex trauma with the WWW. i've been to hell and back with long-distance relationships and online encounters and shit like that. while i believe you can be addicted to certain behaviours and compulsions within the net itself (e.g. gambling, gaming, cybersex, other virtual activities), addiction to the internet *itself* doesn't really make sense; it's simply a portal, a mirror, another mode of existing.

i want to stay online - i love the possibility and engagement with a decentralized internet... but i already feel so restricted, and tired of bureaucracy. maybe we can decentralize our way out of the noise of social media in time... i'm not sure what is next.

addendum... i have carried out this same procedure to fight compulsions in the past. heh. this was nice to read.

So, I'm not quitting ILX yet, but I yesterday decided to quit another message board that I felt had become a very bad habit. I made a scrambled password and C&P'd it into the new password fields so that I wouldn't be able to log in anymore.

Interestingly, I have probably already a dozen times since yesterday gone to the site and tried to poast, forgetting, momentarily, that I had quit. I think this is pretty good evidence of how compulsive the behavior is for me.

― space phwoar (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 13 March 2013 14:52 (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Again, what I said about Discord above but the problem is finding the groups to join, they're often hidden away or linked to on someone's social media bio

the semi-hidden nature of a lot of discord groups is probably what's keeping them healthy

Starting to dislike things about Discord. The notices at the bottom that other people are typing is likely to keep you on longer and when it's super busy with other people writing posts, it's quite unnerving and starts to feel really claustrophobic. I prefer more thought out posts and Discord sort of hurries people.

But to be honest even on a regular forum I find it unpleasant when a thread is incredibly busy

I like the idea of Discord and I know it's becoming increasingly popular, but I just can't get into it. I never think to look at it when I'm on a computer, it doesn't look appealing or feel good, and I don't want another time & attention sucking app on my phone, idk.

Since it uses invites, I feel like there's more open bitching about people who might come after you on twitter

discord is a bloated, chaotic mess of an interface and retains almost nothing fun about old chatrooms... it's also pretty spooky/awful how it retains so much in chat history.

I love Discord. Big servers can be tough to follow, though. Mute is essential.

It's good for really niche things and since it's like a cluster of different forums you can just bounce between them. Some servers I've given up trying to follow properly and accept I'll miss a lot of the conversation.

Not addiction exactly but I got the worst lump of stress in my throat I've ever felt from Pinterest, which seems like such an innocuous site but I guess it's because it's so jumbled and feels even more neverending than other sites somehow