Internet Addiction

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.

i've described this anxiety to my parents and they can't relate at all. they use smartphones and facebook and whatever but it's not enough a part of their lives to have become seductive or dysfunctional. they're just tools that they use, not environments they get lost in.

I think our generation is caught in the middle. Your parents - like mine - use the Internet like a tool set. For people born today "the Internet" probably won't be an "environment" to get lost in because it's so engrained in life.

We're screwed, basically.

whenever i find myself with no internet access i wonder how i'm going to pass the time, then i have a great time reading and listening to records and otherwise doing low-key worthwhile and productive things, and feel that i should certainly do this more often, and then as soon as i have internet access again it's back to endless twitter and fb and ilx

"Think in most ways regarding the internet, kids today have the advantage that the "internet" isn't an alien entity"

think the internet is probably better off as an alien entity tbh

whenever i find myself with no internet access i wonder how i'm going to pass the time, then i have a great time reading and listening to records and otherwise doing low-key worthwhile and productive things, and feel that i should certainly do this more often, and then as soon as i have internet access again it's back to endless twitter and fb and ilx

rueful otm

Btw my stayfocused experiment lasted a good week then i started slipping into incognito to avoid it -_-

I think it's going to be very interesting to see what the children of today will do with the internet. They'll be the first generation that didn't have the opportunity to be straight up blindsided by this unbelievable technology; as has been said upthread, it was always there. My two year old cannot quite read or type yet but she has no problem browsing youtube on a touchscreen, finding content I didn't even know about (look at the view counter for videos containing "play doh surprise eggs"!)

i'm of same generation as treeship and (i think) bateau and i wouldn't describe myself as having been 'blindsided' by the internet and it never felt like 'something hi-tech sci-if dreamlike Jetsons thing that became reality out of nowhere during our lifetime'. started watching flash cartoons, going on chatrooms and aim around fourth grade but i was aware of its existence even before then. i think kids today are just as fucked as us. my cousin age 13 is addicted to the internet, first via minecraft (including watching videos of other people playing minecraft) but now she even like goes to buzzfeed dot com and reads lists

the internet getting shittier and noisier has probably been the best thing for breaking my internet habit. once i disconnect i don't feel much compulsion to constantly check in on it any more. turning twitter etc off just feels like sweet relief now.

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.

haha otm. the ridiculous endless rounds of clicking i engage in when i procrastinate don't have anything to do with the internet per se, they're to do with procrastination and if the internet isn't there i just find even more pointless ways of procrastinating.

i took a lot of time out from the internet. now i engage with it at work, then switchg off when i leave the office, but sometimes this is harder than i hoped. its also why i hate streaming services. i cant watch online TV without thinking about looking at something else.

the main prob ive found with the net is the same one as before, theres so much to read, once you see it all, you feel like youre missing out/losing out/getting out of touch by not reading it. but now i just print out pieces i want to read and read them later. i cant read anything properly at work, shuttling between actual work and websites.

https://twitter.com/noz/status/725194524750958592

i hope future generations will think of the internet and social media the way we do smoking today

i think a better reference point would be television. i think most people would think it was a problem if they spent many hours a day channel surfing but it's considered more acceptable to do that on the web.

I don't do much internet browsing these days. Most of the internetting I do is fairly utilitarian aside from ILX-ing and some news trawling (almost all of which I do during work hours). Extracting myself from social media and the WWW equivalent of channel flipping was nothing but helpful. Still use the damn thing too much, though.

have there been any songs about net addiction?

waiting for michael franti to record an update of 'television... the drug of the nation'.

I was thinking back the other day to a time when I used to write like a machine every day and wondering what happened to make me break that habit and, oh yeah, of course it was before I owned a laptop and a smartphone and a tablet.

ILX is the only place on the internet I really like, and serves as a decent filter for the rest. I'd be overwhelmed as a Twitter user. But even this is mainly procrastination, and I ought to be doing work or reading books instead.

I think my biggest problem stems from the fact that my job heavily uses the internet and browser-based subscription sources. Over the years, I have grown deeply bored and dissatisfied with my job and I spend more and more of the day browsing message boards and going down rabbit-holes on the net. If I don't find a way to change, I imagine eventually I'll probably get fired or something. I still manage to live up to the requirements of my job for now though. But it feels worse all the time.

in an old apartment i purposely didn't have wifi, just a desktop with a make-shift standing desk--all designed to minimize the time i spent on the internet. i would often end up laying on the couch staring at my phone instead.

for people like myself who have trouble distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information (and this was a severe handicap for me as a scholar, i'd spend months researching things with only the most tenuous relationship to my own writing "just in case") the internet is an incredible mechanism for capturing attention. that "always on" quality tends to give it prominence over any other other media--the internet is happening now in a way that other mediums cannot match. this makes the information there seem more important to us even when it isn't.

not even live television can match the information stream of twitter. i sometimes read twitter during live sports and i honestly think i barely watch the game sometimes for all the commentary im reading on it. (or think about how getting a text when doing something else almost automatically gives that text message prominence over whatever it was you were doing before, even socializing with a live person!)

the only possible way to react to this situation--other than through sheer will power and self-denial--is to somehow achieve a relationship to the internet in which the informational content doesn't somehow automatically achieve that prominence. how do you push the internet--which automatically tends to foreground itself--into a background which can then be the object of selective attention?

I'm able to do my job on almost complete autopilot these days, it's great. Except it's not great and I hate it. But it allows me to post here constantly without compromising my work one iota, so everybody wins. Except I'm totally not winning. Help me.

Ryan otm

uh some people obviously need to consult a doctor in this thread

have read addiction is really a mental illness but ill leave that to the experts to diagnose

anyway wrt the web

had it since the early 90s

back then 'noise' wasn't pushed in front of you
you had to find it but it was definitely there
and there was a lot of it

there are plugins that will kick you out of a site
or block you from it after an amount of time that you set to your liking

if you feel the web is interfering from your daily life
practise some self discipline

Around 2008 I got rid of my pc and home internet connection, went through university without, sometimes borrowing a computer for writing assignments, mostly using the ones at the uni library. I did it because I couldn't control time spent online and felt much of my browsing was a waste of time. Not having a pc (or smartphone) never stopped me from using the net though, it was always available at the libraries, used it a lot since I ran a music blog, later got a full time job as tech supporter which is when I discovered ilx.

It did cause some hassle to not have pc/internet - no music streaming, warez - but I also found it rewarding.

Gave in last year when I bought a laptop and now have high speed fiber connection, considering getting a smartphone too. It's been less of a change than I'd expected but I've had to install leechlock - perhaps recommended itt? - in browser to help me stay productive/focused when working on digital projects (writing and music).

Ilx makes up abt 99% of my browsing.

there are plugins that will kick you out of a site
or block you from it after an amount of time that you set to your liking

Used one of these last year. I liked it a lot, but ultimately just overrode the controls and unblocked everything. I'll try setting it up again, or looking for another one.

if you feel something is interfering from your daily life, why not practise some self discipline?

Congratulations, you just solved addiction. Your Nobel Prize is in the mail.

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.