They're worse than any lab drug, cocaine, meth, etc... . They are available for everyone and for free. And can be used for 24 hours a day. They have worse effects on society, I would say.

I live with my dad, and he is watching shorts all day, and I have to listen to it all the damn time. It's a new stimulus every 10 seconds for him. I never used them at all, but I cannot escape them now; I have to listen to them. He is slower and incapable of watching a movie without checking out his phone; for example, sometimes I talk to him, and he is just staring at the phone and ignores me. This thing makes people zombies.

Ban the damn shorts and criminalise it like a drug. It just destroys people's brains and attention span. They don't provide any benefit to the users; only addicted people claim they are getting knowledge or something.

My son, 15 years old (which 15-24 is highly likely to be suicidal), every day keeps saying to me that the world is enshittified. He goes on the internet, enshittified (filled with slop). He goes out to the real world, also enshittified (junk food restaurants). This means he might try to die because there are only the physical world and the digital world. He is interested in tech. He is being homeschooled (yes, I can only assume the school system is also enshittified because of what he said) and is currently not having a job (there will be no point because outside of boring job (fast food, supermarket, etc because the world is just filled with shit).
Edit: He is starting TAFE (in which he would do a course for a very high-paying job that also helps deshittify the world) at the beginning of next year so also no point for a job currently.

I know this seems a little generic and a lot of people chalk this feeling as "nostalgia goggles" or "you were just young," but what I'm tapping into here is something a little deeper. With the cumulative birth of social media platforms, the standardized use of mobile phones amongst all classes of society around the year 2007, the downright fear of the end of democracy and revocation of the liberties behind it on September 11th 2001, as well as the widespread proliferation of the internet, was ultimately the beginning of the most socially regressive era for humanity that the world has ever seen, that of which we haven’t recovered from and that we’re still living in to this day. In the timespan between the year 2000 and now there have been more wars, pandemics, epidemics, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, political upheavals and social changes that have fundamentally altered the way human beings view themselves and the world around them (focusing less on personal improvement and more on feeding their narcissistic ideologically driven ego) than there has ever been over the course of human history.

There were certainly many flaws of society in previous decades, a lot of which have gotten better, but for most people the daily texture of ordinary life still felt noticeably slower and less continuously interrupted than what became normal later. The big historical shocks arrived through more discrete channels, evening news, newspapers, radio, water-cooler talk, occasional desktop internet checks, rather than as a constant personal stream. Today, you can be eating dinner, walking, or lying in bed and still be half-monitoring for the next ping or scroll. Checking “just for a second” rarely occurs as social comparison and status monitoring runs in the background. The result for many people is a baseline of mild restlessness and difficulty fully settling into the present moment without the option to escape and destress. Concepts like doom-scrolling capture pieces of this. Research links the pattern to higher depression and anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and a sense that life is more crowded and less restful even when objective free time exists.

This paradigm shift seems to only be accelerating into more levels of absurdity and I'm afraid not enough people are awake to this yet.

I posted a studio portrait I took of myself on r/pics and while I got a few friendly comments, the post itself was mass downvoted by god knows who. I even got a DM from someone saying I was arrogant and fishing for compliments. It was just a side profile portrait and I was proud it looked so professional when I got zero experience with photography.

Do I have to be hard to look at so I’m not subjected to the frustration of those fat neckbeard losers or what? These people are sick.

idk if anyone else does this but i've noticed this happening to me a lot lately.

like i'll ask ChatGPT/Cursor to do something, maybe vibe coding or some random task, and then while i'm waiting for it to finish i'm like

“eh i'll just check tiktok for a sec”

and then boom

30 mins gone.

and the funny thing is... the AI is still working in the background and i've completely forgotten what i was even doing in the first place lol.

that 10-20 mins could've been used to plan what i'm gonna do next, reply to something, read something, or literally just think for a bit.

but apparently my brain sees “waiting for AI” and immediately goes TIKTOK TIME

makes me wonder if doomscrolling isn't just about having too much free time.

maybe we've just gotten so used to filling every tiny bit of downtime with stimulation that we can't even wait 30 seconds anymore.

anyone else do this? 😭

Whenever I spend most of a day on a device, like gaming, scrolling, etc. I can blink and hours will have passed. But when you make an effort to stay off of the dopamine miners then you genuinely start to notice how long days are. 24 hours. 8 should be for sleeping (ideally), 8 for work usually, and that leaves you with 8 more hours. Imagine if you dedicated those 8 hours to learning or enhancing a skill. 8 hours daily of something like an instrument or a language would give so much noticeable improvement so fast. Sure, there’s still things like driving, eating, exercise, that will take up some of those 8 hours but you still have a lot of time to yourself.

This probably seems obvious to most people. But it’s just something I never really realized when I would waste away on devices.

I doomscroll like crazy 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 be it anything, reels, posts I even keep doomscrolling through articles wtf, atp it has become a coping mechanism of mine and I need to get rid of that, I just need something that keeps me away from scrolling anything lol.

I woke up depressed. Not sure if it's because I'm unemployed or because I can't check my social media accounts for notifications. Could be both. I like reddit tho. I feel like it provides me with some support. I feel like I do pretty well during the day. I have stuff I do to keep me busy, diamond painting, latch hook, puzzles, exercise. I do unfortunately keep checking my phone obsessively for notifications. However I do need to use it to check email and other unemployment related things.

Hi, yall! If anyone has the time, Id love some advice on my personal net addiction situation.

I don't own a phone, at home I have no internet connection and I don't have social media except youtube (and all of that hasn't been different for all my life... and yes, I am young, haha). Ah, and I also don't watch any porn (Im asexual anyway).

To many this may seem like the perfect nosurf acchieving life, but really I am very much addicted. I can only enter the internet, when I'm in my universitys library - but then I do, and I tend to download many more videos there to watch at home. It may sound stupidly simple to change, for I know many are a lot deeper in the mud, but really, for me, it isn't.

On a kinda unrelated note, almost all of my once very active social life has died due to psychosis and this really isn't something I can (or want to) change. So Im stuck with being alone, which would be fine, If it would not be for this timeconsuming addiction. What to do? Is there any blocker, I can use? ColdTurkey & others are so easily disabled. How do I make myself not watch videos, for example when eating, as to regain the concentration needed to read philosophy, compose music and learn languages, as I once loved to?

(sry for bad english, its not my mother toungue).

I deleted two posts of mine that were here that were determinations of taking 2 months off from the internet. Because I had been on for so long, I've lost sense of purpose and felt drained partaking in it that it's been wasting my time more than it has benefit.

I gave an honest effort, I downloaded lots of games I had on top of the ones already downloaded, I downloaded all episodes to date of a favorite podcast series of mine, I had videos downloaded too. All in preparation for being offline.

I even asked my ISP to cancel my internet and agreed to my terms. It started off very rocky, because the internet wasn't immediately disconnected. It dragged on for a week on full speed until I pointed it out, to which the ISP noticed and then slowed my speed all the way down to 1MBPS. Still, while even at that speed, I was still online. I never completely went offline save for the times I manually disconnected the cables and tried going on for a couple days without net.

For awhile, it was great actually, felt very peaceful, save for being concerned about the ISP situation. But then again, I wasn't truly offline because I kept going for the phone that had a data plan.

However, it did get too lonely at times and I was struggling to fill time. I ended up throwing my arms up and got my full speed back. Nothing just went entirely right in the end.

Hi,

I have 2 devices. A Linux laptop and a windows setup.

On Linux I found a way to just block images/videos. To undo this would take a week delay. So, this is perfect. I can still use the internet to read up on something in the evening. I can listen to music, podcasts etc.

On the windows laptop it is complicated. The software I use to block images/videos does not work. So, I'm only using cold turkey blocker. But I find myself finding a way to disable it after 2-4 days by tinkering with windows settings etc.

Do you know what could I do to overcome my internet addiction on windows PCs?

I need windows for work/study purposes, for online meetings etc.

Thank you!

https://phicklephilly.wordpress.com/2026/09/03/finding-peace-in-a-world-that-chases-happiness/

It took a lot of tweaks, but basically, I made a PowerShell script that disables internet on the computer at 8:00 p.m. and re-enables it at 6:00 a.m. And I don't really know how to disable it during those hours, though there are ways if I really need to.

On the phone, it's a parental utility that does the same thing, and the password to it is very long, in a file on the computer, and another script makes it unopenable during the same hours.

I planned to lock my two old computers and phones (and even drives with movies) in a box, and put the key where I can't get to it in the evening.

But in the event, there was no need.

It's just too much hassle messing with those, as is trying to revive the internet. So I don’t bother, and spend evenings working (hobby) and reading, watching a piece of a movie if I'm really tired.

Of course it's a virtuous/self-esteem cycle, so the temptation is much lower.

Just that little bit of friction did it.

I have done up to four months in the past without these tricks, but somehow this year I can’t seem to, despite nice weather and mood, so parental lock has done the job these 12 days.

p.s. There are paid ways to do this, but I'm a cheapskate

Dropping phone screentime after dinner leaves this weird restless vacuum where reading feels too passive and gaming is still a screen. I tried looking into offline tactile hobbies like complex puzles and detailed miniature builds but the friction of clearing a table every night makes me relapse to doomscrolling. What physical, screen-free project helped you build an actual evening routine without massive setup drag?

I check the YouTubers first video upload date (not the join date in about) is before November 30 2022. The day that ChatGPT launched. What are the problems of doing this?

so i recently started usiing a lot of tiktok.

ive alway has insta and tiktok but i didnt use them a lot before. i didnt have a phone and laptop was inconvinient .

so my biggest problem is that im so fucking sensitive.

its jus supposed to be distraction and impractical stuff but i wish my mind worked like y'all.

ive tried talking aand both my closest frnd and sis r insensitive to it they have this tolerance.

you cannot imagine how i feel. i was the most lively loud and fun person.

every fuckig lipsinc tears right thru. im getting uglier too. i rember waking up to those perfect strawberry lips and hazel eyes now all i see is those fucking dark eye circles and imperfections.

so yes social media ruined my life good.

and dont talk abt the pr they get jus from that , the money, the complements.

i mean u can see the guys thirsting in the comments.

its haram i know. its all a test.

but my self worth cannot be bought back.

my perpective of this fucking world. of me.

im done.

so i recently started usiing a lot of tiktok.

ive alway has insta and tiktok but i didnt use them a lot before. i didnt have a phone and laptop was inconvinient .

so my biggest problem is that im so fucking sensitive.

its jus supposed to be distraction and impractical stuff but i wish my mind worked like y'all.

ive tried talking aand both my closest frnd and sis r insensitive to it they have this tolerance.

you cannot imagine how i feel. i was the most lively loud and fun person.

every fuckig lipsinc tears right thru. im getting uglier too. i rember waking up to those perfect strawberry lips and hazel eyes now all i see is those fucking dark eye circles and imperfections.

so yes social media ruined my life good.

and dont talk abt the pr they get jus from that , the money, the complements.

i mean u can see the guys thirsting in the comments.

its haram i know. its all a test.

but my self worth cannot be bought back.

my perpective of this fucking world. of me.

im done.

Hi, I’m 25M. I feel like my head is just full at this point and I really need help figuring out how to slow down.

I spent 3 years of my college in a metro city full of noise, crowds and health issues. I used to stay with relatives where I had to do things according to their routines. They never really forced me, but I had a lot of people pleasing habits, so I would just adjust myself according to everyone else. Then I used to travel in the train during rush hours for around 45 minutes and then another 20 minutes by bus to college. Same thing in the evening. After some time I stopped going to college and used to just wander here and there and spend time on phone.

After college I came home and went through a major friendship grief. I was isolated for almost a year. During that time I was still doing some online freelance work, which I’m still doing now. But now I feel like my head is just constantly full.

I’m always looking for some kind of stimulation. I know I’m overstimulated and I feel like my mind needs a proper break, like a BIG break, and just needs to slow down.

But I’m really bad with boredom.

I masturbate a lot just to kill boredom and loneliness. I don’t really have friends here either. My clients are all online. I live with my family, but I guess I’m kind of the black sheep.

I feel like I’ve been stuck in this loop for a long time and I really want to get out of it.

ughhhhh.

I’m Jenna Zaza, a freelance reporter writing an upcoming piece on how Gen Z is taking back control of their screen time. I’m looking to speak with Gen Zers who are actively using physical or digital intervention tools—like Brick, Opal, Be Present, or participating in "no-scroll" challenges, or joining social clubs— or want to break free from doomscrolling. If you're interested, please reach out to me via DM or comment here and I will reach out over DMs.

I am currently a Reddiholic right now. That means in real life, I use some Reddit terms because I am so addicited to Reddit. I am greatful that this isn't as bad as Instagramable addiction as Instagram is usually you have to spend money to post. I have high functioning zi bi zheng and I am being homeschooled.