Constant craving: how digital media turned us all into dopamine addicts

theguardian.com

51 points·giuliomagnifico··8 comments

I am addicted to information, but mostly junk. I often check the news, HN, less frequently reddit. I'm pretty sure it's a major contributor to my brain fog. I don't know how to deal with it other than get a dumb phone.

You might consider reading the article then.

One thing that has improved my life in this regard is to make dedicated time without a laptop or smartphone routine. Once a week, I will sit in a coffee shop or park, read through a book, and then write about whatever I feel like writing about.

It's made me more aware that I don't need to constantly check Reddit or hackernews.

maybe also check out this one https://www.meta-nomad.net/avoiding-the-global-lobotomy/ then. Hope it helps you.

Replacing it with exercise and stretching has helped me a bit.

The internet is worthless with respect to classical probability - the number of good outcomes divided by the total number of outcomes. How many interesting facts do you learn per hour, per day, per week; some constant factor? Divide that by the terabytes and exabytes of the ever-growing web. That tends to zero as time tends to infinity.

If a problem ever arises, there's a 0.00...1% chance at any moment that the internet is the correct solution, by rough estimates.

This all reminds me of the Joybooths in the Infocom game "A Mind Forever Voyaging." [1] Today, the game seems so prescient.

[1] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/AMindForeve...

Social media, news media, and virtually all entertainment driven mobile/web applications are responsible for this. I think that engagement could be the cigarette of our era. I think it won't be common to realize just how bad it is until it gets worse.

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