Internet Addiction

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)