How do you avoid dopamine addiction on social media?

I did two things recently cause I've wasted just about half my life on reddit:

- Blocked reddit at a dns level across my entire network via pihole (I run a personal vlan so the rest of the house network wasn't affected).

- Disable my internet completely on this vlan after working hours via a schedule in pfsense.

I get around the reddit block sometimes by enabling a VPN, which is only a few button clicks. But since this work around causes me extra steps, it makes me pause to think 'do I really want to aimlessly browse reddit?' which the answer is usually no, so I usually stop in my tracks there and get back to work/whatever.

The entire internet being cut was more about configuring a sleep schedule instead of blocking dopamine.

The big take away: make it hard to access the content. The extra step makes you mindful of your time.

There are no cool tricks to improving yourself. If you want to stop eating sugar then stop eating it. If you want to stop drinking alcohol stop drinking it. If you want to get fit start exercising. If you want to stop being addicted to social media then delete it. You can make all the excuses about how you need it to stay in contact with friends, or deals on the local market, or find events in groups but in the end if you delete it you'll continue living and everything will be fine. If you think it's affecting you negatively, get rid of it, and do the myriad of other things that exist in this world.

> A complete deletion is not really an option since I enjoy Twitter, Reddit, HN to stay up-to-date with the tech world :)

For me, there are two primary negative aspects of social media and two "cancellations" (at least partial) to address them:

- The time lost to not even slightly productive content like memes and anime fanart. The solution for me was to cut Reddit out entirely since I was primarily subscribed to such content there. Most of the time that was spent on Reddit is now spent reading books (which at least improve my vocabulary) or watching educational YouTube videos about maths, science, electronics or CNC machining. I consider this problem mostly solved.

- The stress, frustration and hopelessness of participating in online discussions. My solution has been to try and reduce the frequency with which I interact with people on HN and other platforms. When I do interact, I try (not always successfully) to avoid controversial topics and to engage in such a way that the chances of conflict are minimal. For example instead of saying "you should use X", I'd say something like "I'm surprised you're not using X, how come you decided to use Y instead?". This has mostly addressed the problem, when I have issues now it's usually because I made the mistake of commenting on something somewhat controversial (e.g. touching anything to do with COVID).

Giving up or blocking social media is much less interesting than being self-aware and looking for ways to get your social media dopamine from things that feel genuinely constructive or interesting. I found “Against Waldenponding” (https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/against-waldenponding) to be, if not 100% correct and credible, at least a very novel and persuasive argument that you probably owe it to yourself to be on social media more, not less, and its up to you to not be stupid about it.

My personal guidelines (not rules) for Being Online have evolved to something like this:

1. Make things, and talk about the things you make.

2. Contribute ideas that, as far as you can see, would be missing from the world if you specifically didn’t offer them.

3. Spend a lot of time reading other people.

4. Throw points at people you agree with. Upvotes and twitter likes are free. Use dollars, too.

5. If you can’t think of anything to say, go make something tangible worth talking about.

6. Keep your feed weighted towards people who seem to follow these guidelines.

7. Be aware that, absent any truly original ideas, anything you would post with the motive of “being right online” is usually basic and shitty. Filter outbound material with prejudice.

I uninstalled all the apps from all social media platforms and only use the web version. This takes out a lot of the usability (and trackability). Making the whole experience slightly worse helps me reduce the time I spend on them.

I also removed Facebook and its other brands from the equation, and since those websites are unusable when unlogged, it's even easier to remove the temptation to dwell on them.

For Twitter, I also went to the settings of each person I follow and deactivated the displaying of their retweets, so my timeline (in the chronological mode) consists exclusively of content written by the people I follow.

I use ideas taken from behavioral psychology book, Nudge, but in reverse.

For instance, I use an extension that adds a 2 second delay to every Facebook page load. The added friction is small but it very quickly gets me frustrated and I just stop.

If I find that I'm doing too much A and I don't want to give up on it entirely I look for ways to make A less convenient. That may mean deleting an app (instead using a possibly clunkier website), not having candy in the house (I have to go to the store to get my fix), etc.

It's an extension of some typical advice to create healthy habits: make doing the right thing easier and the wrong thing harder.

I try to be opinionated about which patterns of usage are both fun and productive, e.g. noticing how /r/all is full of unsatisfying material produces a conscious countervailing force to any subconscious desire to go there. I still use reddit a lot, but I do so by going to specific subreddits, e.g. by typing in programming.reddit.com instead of going to the generic entrypoint and allowing reddit's ranking and recommendation infrastructure do its thing. Sure, I'm still susceptible to it w.r.t ranking within subreddits and ranking within comments, but many of my subreddits of choice are smaller and so I end up seeing most of the recent content anyway.

Twitter and Facebook are too recommendation-intensive for me to use them on a daily basis. I follow a pretty small set of people on Twitter and my feed is still full of "people my followers interact with" and "things I might like". Facebook groups are usually too big for even the group-internal ranking to be very honest, although increasingly I find that going to Facebook for specific groups (similarly to going to reddit for specific subreddits) can be effective (at surfacing memes about new urbanism or Brian Eno).

I went on a big “social media diet” over the past couple years and it’s been amazing.

One trick I used successfully was, remove the apps from your Home Screen so you don’t see them.

Turn off emails, notifications, badge counts, etc so it isn’t constantly reminding you of its existence and is easier to forget.

Don’t leave the tabs open on your computer. There’s probably plug-ins that can shut the tabs after x amount of time.

For mobile, there are app time limit settings (iOS I think has this in the Settings page), intended for parental controls but hey you can use them too.

You don’t have to follow everybody or anybody. When you notice an app, a channel or a certain account is bothering you, consider muting or unfollowing them.

Consider finding other things like games, work, or books that you can absorb your full attention.

Remember, you are the boss. You can use it on your terms. You’ll realize very fast that FOMO does not really exist for these, when you stop using them constantly.

You can do this. You’re gonna feel a lot better on the other side, I guarantee it.

I wrote a "social media contract" for myself that specifies when and how I am allowed to use social media (HN once a day; YouTube only on weekends; Twitter only to post — never to browse, etc.). I have a simple spreadsheet where I track my daily compliance. My reward for fulfilling my contract is a green check mark in the spreadsheet.

This technique has worked surprisingly well. For myself, the key has been to flip the goal from a negative ("don't check Instagram") to a positive ("get that green check mark").

I'm now off Reddit and Facebook completely. (The fact that I still checked Facebook is baffling, it really was just a reflex to type the URL in the browser.) YouTube and Instagram have been more challenging, but I've made a lot of progress there (went a whole month without checking Instagram). Twitter has been the hardest.

Oh, and definitely don't have any of the apps on your phone.

Delete the apps. I think out of sight, out of mind, is a good tactic. Isolate social media to one computer/tablet and then just keep limiting your time until you're using it less, and less. Getting the apps out of reach was a big first step for me.

I read strange papers instead.

It's a pain in the ass, but...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4425246/

I've started moving my reading of "social" media more toward the "Fediverse" and distributed/decentralized types of networks (like Mastodon and Peertube for example). Also RSS feeds in a feed reader, Hacker News/Ycombinator, and other more easily controlled sources that aren't driven by the "Evil Algorithms™" used by the "social" media giants.

I also curate and engage in a list of other "hobbies" that can easily distract me from the various (anti-)social networks. I'm teaching myself Python coding (by writing tools to organize and consume my various information and data sources in healthier ways, and Blender 3D (because I've always been fascinated by 3D graphics in games, movies, and TV), and Godot game engine (because it goes nicely hand-in-hand with Blender 3D when I want to bring some "life" and interactivity to my 3D models (more than achieved by simple linear animation can provide). When I catch myself on any of my informational feeds, I tend to start to naturally gravitate toward information about those hobbies which tends to lead me inevitably back into those tools to experiment with some newly found knowledge on the topic. This allows me to more easily and frequently ignore things that tend to lean more toward the "wasted time" side of the equation.

Isn't "dopamine addiction" (as well as "dopamine fasting") a scientifically-debunked myth?

Also why would I block a website if reading it is what I enjoy? Won't this just make me less happy?

I personally am blessed to have zero interest in Facebook and Instagram but I procrastinate a huge lot (seemingly way more than I should) by reading HN. But this also is my primary channel through which I get useful knowledge (more than half of which, picked by my attention, is unrelated or loosely related to IT) and most of the idea about what's going on outside of my home and office. Should I block HN?

So this ruined the fun of most social media for me and took the dopamine out of it:

- Facebook: I realized everything I posted got maybe 1 or 2 likes. Either no one was looking at my stuff or the algorithm wasn't propagating it. At the time I had 150 friends, so I would have expected more response out of most of my posts than that. Thus I was just giving Facebook info about myself and that it really was a waste of my time.

- Most social media apps: It's so easy to get caught up in the hope that your stuff goes viral, but understanding the above and really thinking about how things go viral (essentially purely random or so plugged into a developing zeitgeist that you stumble upon it), the chance of that happening is so small that your efforts are honestly better spent elsewhere. Even if it does happen, what's the reward. What's the true value of merely being Internet famous? Is it worth posting multiple times daily and being consumed with the reactions? Most worthwhile Internet famous people have lives and value beyond their social media posts.

After really realizing this social media became mostly pointless to me and I wasn't doing social media instead of more important things in my life.

If you are getting a lot of meaningful engagement with your posts, then maybe it's a value-add and you shouldn't stop. Otherwise maybe taking a 1-week break and seeing if anything significant in your life changes will put it into proper perspective.

I deleted the mobile apps and instead use various browser apps for this purpose. I took the browser apps and hid them in folders on various remote screens (on iOS you can now remove them from all pages, forcing you to flip all the way to the end, where all apps are listed). After each session, log out and don’t save your password. The idea is to create a few seconds of time between the urge and the payoff, during which time you can reconsider whether you actually want to access the app.

Here's what works for me:

1. Only permit important notifications

2. Avoid mobile apps like a plague

3. Avoid apps that have dark patterns like deep scrolling

4. Use simple alternatives when available. I use NewPipe instead of YouTube and i.reddit.com in place of reddit.com

5. I know that my time and attention are valuable. There's no reason I should give it to these companies.

6. Use app specific hacks. For example, it's not possible for me to avoid LinkedIn as I am looking for jobs. But instead of routinely browsing it I can just configure daily alerts.

I mostly don't use Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit. I have reason to log into my Facebook account a few times a year. The only reason I log into Twitter is when I get a link to a Twitter thread, same with Reddit. I'm no paragon of restraint, I had to delete Universal Paperclip from my phone to quit playing it. I guess the easiest way to deal with any addiction is not to become addicted in the first place. Not great advice for people who are already addicted. . .

Make your password very long and impossible to remember without a password manager. Keep the password in a very difficult to use or annoying password manager, like maybe a local instance of keypass on a single device. Log out of the service on all your devices. Now every time you want to use the service you have to go through an annoying process to log in and have time to question, do I really need to do this right now?

Make it hard to login to social media. For example, setup 2FA via a hardware key, keep the key at home (or other place that’s hard to access throughout the day) and then logout of the site when you feel you’ve reached your “dose” for the day.

That ways you can’t just log in every time you crave a hit for a day.

Think of this like an alcoholic who always carries a flask — getting rid of the flask could be a good first-step in controlling the addiction.

If you delete an app, you'll forget all about it. You won't miss it at all.

If you don't delete the app, really really cut back on your subscriptions/follows to just the essentials. The less content, the less time you spend doomscrolling.

Also, on platforms like Twitter, I turn of retweets. I only see tweets directly tweeted by people I follow.

Install an extension like News Feed Eradicator https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat...

For Instagram here’s what I do: - delete the app - use mobile web only, set my browser to delete all cookies so I have to log in every time I open it

Between those two things, my Instagram usage is down from 1+ hours a day to ~10m.

Part of that is because the ig webapp is pretty terrible, so it won’t work for hn.

Avoid social media.

Get lots of sleep, meditate, and eat well, as this helps.

See also the Huberman lab podcast on dopamine for more ideas.

I feel everyone here is fighting symptoms instead of the underlying cause. When I find myself refreshing the replies on some HN comment, I'm usually tired and exhausted, perhaps tasked with some job I lack the energy or the discipline for. Unless of course it's a particularly insightful comment that I'm just dying to hear your opinion on ;).

Anyway, my response to your question would be to forget all the tech. Just figure out how to manage your energy. Maybe plan mental breaks from your work, maybe check your sleep hygiene. And finally, and maybe this is just me trying to justify my own behavior, it could be that the refreshing is just the kind of dumb activity your brain needs to catch a break and regain some energy.

Speaking specifically about android mobile I've found minimalist phone to be a really nice tool to cut down on jumping from app to app for hours. First, I just like the aesthetics of it as a launcher and second the built in nag warnings for timing specific app usage make you conscious of your consumption which I think is critical. Having that metric works a lot like tracking calories, it's hard to realize just how much you are consuming without some sort of tracking - at least it is for me.

The fact that it has no icons also helps, it makes it far more arduous to open apps that you might not use a ton or that you don't have a shortcut for in your home screen menu so you tend to start ignoring a lot of little time sinks.

Every time I check my HN karma count it reminds me of this passage from Awareness by Anthony de Mello:

> Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts - generally somebody else's - mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions.

> Do you want to see how mechanical you really are? "My, that's a lovely shirt you're wearing". You feel good hearing that. For a shirt, for heaven's sake! You feel proud of yourself when you hear that.

> Normally the way it goes, I press a button and you're up; I press another button and you're down.

On social media we let others push the up/down buttons - and we feel happy, sad, proud, ashamed from that

Habit change is no small thing. Delete the apps, schedule or ration usage. My noticing the difference quitting social media made in my emotional health helped reinforce the change — reflection writing was a good routine that supported that noticing.

I don’t allow myself to have my phone in my pocket at home. I keep it with my keys. Reduces the urge to glance at it a million times. I can still hear if I get a call or text. It makes me more present with my family. So far it’s working.

Making myself use the API for access. I'm very interested in the dynamics of social media, sometimes to a much greater degree than the actual content. Things like identifying trolling behavior or which way a split forum is trending can be studied without getting caught up in the particular words or personal exchanges. When I'm looking at those phenomena it can still be helpful to look at the content, but I build a craptacular-but-sufficient front end instead of using the platform offering.

I don't do this for HN, but for a couple of the bigger platforms where I'm fascinated by the activity but get cranky if I participate too much.

That reminds me, it's time for my ~monthly Reddit account deletion to avoid karma cravings.

I wish HN would do account deletion the same way Reddit does. They argue it would harm the flow of conversations, but I'd argue the conversations here aren't a sacred as they make them out to be.

Just denying myself access to the account isn't the same, I tried it and had to ask support to give it back. I don't like to have 11 years of content sitting out there that's tied to me that I can't control in anyway (account used to be my real name, but support changed it after a minor stalking incident, but there's enough data for figuring it out).

I removed all my friends from FB, so now I just use it for very specific information needs with Groups.

I blocked myself from checking any news sites or social media from my phone, only desktop. That way I don't get stuck in bed or delay wind down.

I've recently read "Dopamine Nation" by Anna Lembke, and most of the stuff in the book resonated well with me. I really don't spend too much time on social media, but my addiction has been online gaming for awhile. The book does a great job of describing the chemical imbalance caused by immediate access to dopamine we all have with the internet.

The key takeaway from the book for me was that abstinence is necessary and withdrawal is part of getting better. I have tried all kinds of tools and tricks to avoid gaming before, but learning "why" it's happening has been the key to actually succeed.

Have two fixed time slots in a day and check all the apps during that time. Ignore/ Clear any notifications during all other time. Requires some self discipline but limits the usage considerably.

Much like eating healthily, this seems to be something where it takes a while to detox, but once you do, you have less and less interest in the junk.

I stopped using any "Meta" products, turned off notifications on my phone for anything else, and have screen time limits (though Apple's screen time is much less effective than Android, for some reason). I keep my phone in another room at night.

I find now that once I spend a small amount of time on social media (even HN) I start noticing a kind of gross, anxious feeling that leads me to pause.

I hung a pihole with everything blocked (https://pi-hole.net/) directly off my router, and I (probably somewhat redundantly) also use a hosts blocker (https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts) on my non-phone machines. It's annoying for the first day or two, but you get used to it really quickly.

Books, always having several books available on my Kindle so I can grab it and continue reading instead of consuming social media on my phone. I read 3-4 books at once and don't put pressure on myself to continue reading or finish any book. If I get bored with one just switch to another one.

There is no shortage of book recommendations. I usually get them from people interviewed on podcasts.

The book atomic habits has some good points that can help. It is not that long and can be read relatively fast.

I've been training myself to log out when I decide that it's not best for me and to have a mini meditation session before logging back in, that way I know I'm in a calm state of mind when I make the decision.

Also, kindle is my go-to Twitter replacement.

I really wish someone made a browser extension that simulates a slow connection when you visit a social media website. I have a feeling the addiction would go away if you were subjected to a random 1-5 second wait after each click on Twitter.

If self moderation is not working, plain old avoidance/abstinence is the way to go.

I am not capable of moderate game playing, so I have no games installed on any device of mine.

A complete removal from cocaine from my life is not really an option since it gives me more energy to be productive.

I unfollow everyone on social media except close family. The trick is to remove the potency of your social media.

DNS level blocking worked quite well for me. It’s about making it hard enough to start the bad habit again.

Follow 0 pages/people, sounds impossibile. But atleast try to stop followers aggregator accounts

treat your future self like a friend or client and set him up for the activities and habits you want. in the moment you’ll never make a good decision. but if you make commitments to be more social and active it will take up the time wasted on social media

No Facebook apps on my phone. Because, you know, I don't trust that company at all.

This "story" reads as just a conveniently embellished - if not outright faked tale - acting as a sell piece of the authors latest book. Ironically, it is not worth my attention. The article is doing the very thing which it posits.

Stop using it, it's only output is dopamine