Internet Addiction

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.