Internet Addiction

c'mon you cant really post this anecdote without at least hinting at what the other board is

― 乒乓, Thursday, March 14, 2013 10:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I kind of already did ;)

by freudian slip, no less!

but that's as far as I go

lol I think I know what board youre talking about, then

i just installed blocking software on my browser so as not to waste valuable writing time waiting for social media pellets

as you can tell it really worked :P

my job tech people actually wouldn't LET ME do it

i have mixed feelings about the internet and the role it has played in my life.

i haven't been perfect about it recently, but starting last year i've been taking an "internet sabbath" on the weekends, primarily just to help me feel more present and available to my wife/son/myself during my free time. distraction on the web during work hours can still be an issue, though.

not to be a pendant but really the term "addiction" is bogus for the internet. compulsivity yes definitely but not addiction.

Having a toddler has kind of forced me to spend A LOT less time on it on the weekends. I rarely post during weekend days anymore, only when everyone goes to sleep.

and marcos don't worry, I don't think you're a pendant

when i work in offices -- which i'm not doing now but will be doing again soon with some luck -- i just have a policy of never browsing the web beyond what is called for by my job, and i try to fill down time by organizing stacks of papers or something. i just cannot trust myself... if i start reading something interesting i will become totally absorbed in it.

i wish i could stick to this policy when i have things to get done at home but it doesn't work out. maybe i'll go to the library and sit near the cow statue, imagining it is my boss looking over my shoulder. actually... i am going to do that. i'll leave in 17 minutes.

what is the name for an addiction to EN dashes and ellipses?

http://dump.fm/images/20130606/1370555494306-dumpfm-Seacrestcheadle-nlo0.gif

hey guys

I was thinking maybe the "addiction" isn't really to the internet but to the little dopamine hits that the internet is particularly good at producing (when you get a "like", an "otm" a response to your post, a new post in a thread you're really into, etc.)

anyway, this is really fucking bad lately, I just need to acknowledge that somewhere. I already locked myself out of a couple of sites I was overusing (changed my password to some C&P'd gibberish). Really not getting work done.

this is a major issue for me too. i think the internet is the "perfect drug" for people (like me) who have any sort of tendency for ADD. it is an infinite source of novelty and affirmation.

i am worried about productivity but also, more generally, about what it means to spend so much of my life caught within the cycle of high and withdrawal, always eager to check my phone.

yeah that, and also so much of my life in front of some screen, and relatedly not developing other skills/abilities/traits while doing that

It's so easy to come up with something slightly clever/funny, post it somewhere, and immediately get a lot of positive feedback and the accompanying rush (I mean, not necessarily easy on ILX bc I feel like people here are very smart and have high standards, but easy elsewhere). I used to wonder why I spent some of my best creative energy online, but that's why -- you try to really write a novel, short story, screenplay, stand-up routine, it can take weeks, months, years to even get to the stage of getting feedback, so if what you're really living for is the feedback high that's no way to get it. That sounds really really terrible when I write it out. None of this is to say I think I have a good novel or screenplay in me, just that I think there must be some more holistic and genuinely fulfilling way to use what little talent I have, and at a minimum it would be nice if I could better use it to complete my work efficiently so I could do things like take a nice long walk away from the office on a beautiful day at lunchtime, or get a full night's sleep, or even start up a new band.

(likes post)

wait no I guess that was the flag post button

I feel like maybe in 5-10 years there will be a decent amount of literature about this in terms of psychology/psychiatry, maybe even something in the DSM, but right now it seems like the older generation doesn't quite get it and the terminology and understanding haven't caught up (fwiw, I've had experiences with several therapists trying and failing to explain to them what the problem is -- they all seemed to think if I just treated some underlying anxiety it would go away, but they failed to realize how strong the pull was even when I was dealing with anxiety very well).

ppl def laugh this off too easily imo

I mean there are whole industries being built on it at this point

for real

yeah, and also I have heard people make the argument "well maybe you enjoy the internet" or "you learn lots of interesting things/talk to interesting people on the internet, so what's so bad" etc. It's not that any of it is per se bad, it's the feeling that I can't stop compulsively going back to it that's bad.

xp actually I heard on NPR some VC guy who invests in apps and such drop that "little dopamine hit" language into the conversation and it clicked for me that, yeah, this is exactly what people are building their businesses on

I met my wife on the internet. I got bored at my last job, spending hours looking at mylocaljobs.net. Then I got a job as the assistant editor of mylocaljobs.net.

I have a roomba downstairs I bought with money earned thru a short-lived tumblr. I guess I have somewhat of an addiction too, but I've really come around to just whole-hogging going all in with it.

The Christmas cards some of you send us are lovely.

I guess I'm not really about to "own" being in the office at 11pm because I couldn't get enough work done today, is what I'm saying

I mean, I guess I'd better own it in the responsibility sense, just not something I want to be cool with

I guess tho the compulsive behavior was there for me for a long time -- when I was supposed to be studying in college I'd spend like 2 hrs playing pinball or 4 hrs listening to records in the listening library.

The same here. I'm only half-joking when I say I quit school in my sophomore year to stay home and play Castle Wolfenstein.

So THAT'S what I did before the Internet.

I was also an early Prodigy/AOL adopter. You could probably say I've been an internet addict in some form for 20 years.

i identify with this a lot

i think setting a rule that i dont surf the web while my son is awake has been rly helpful. as he's gotten older, i'm not as rigid about it as i used to be, but i've def been able to curtail this a lot more.

I don't do it while I'm home with my daughter, that's sort of a rule. Ok, occasionally check fb on my phone while I'm with my daughter, but it's not the same kind of disappearing into the net behavior.

OTOH, I guess I could have been home for bedtime tonight. Fuck, this is sad. Not that I usually miss bedtime, but still.

i've been reading the internet more or less constantly since 2003, when my prep school issued me a laptop. the whole campus was hooked up to wifi. when i realized how much music was now available to me (mostly through closed filesharing networks on campus with other students) i was so happy i think i probably cried. besides music, music blogs and things like pitchfork the big problem for me at first was just reading news articles so it felt educational... in any case, i actually discovered ilx in 2007 or 2008 but didn't allow myself to really post because i knew that it would be an "issue" for me

i respond a lot to what hurting is saying about not knowing how much is the internet and how much is "me". i certainly engage in escapist behaviors of all sorts.. it's tough for me to really summon up the courage to begin a mounting task, even though once i start it's never as bad as i imagine it to be.

I started this thread a few years ago hoping it would create some discussion about controlling internet use (and other things):
The Information Diet

Lately I have a policy of not bringing my phone with me if I can get by without it. It seems to help and I've had some genuinely great experiences that would have been impossible (probably) if I had it with me.

i don't even use my phone for anything now and hardly talk to anyone on it and can't afford to use teh interweb on it anyway but when i leave the house without it, i still feel kinda, wahey, you're going out into the lonely depths of space! or a remote forest, etc.

all this totally resonates with me. my procrastination has gotten horrible, i'm noticing that i'm like resetting my standards super low. when i feel productive i get 1-2 substantial things and 3-4 insubstnatial things done in a day. now it's like if i get one big thing done a week i feel justified to blow off entire days. it sucks. totally identify with that feeling of leaving work too late because i did jack shit and then only get a little time with my son before bedtime.

like reading some really good new yorker article is fun and entertaining and informative but at the end of the day i don't feel like it improved my life more than being present and committing to my work & colleagues would have.

and a reading a whole new yorker article is like as good as it gets when i'm wasting time on the internet, at worst it's like some dumbass ilx threads and facebook and other random sites i compulsively check

feel like there's a strong tie-in here to modern american office jobs and poor allocation of time

I'm sure everyone's been in an office and had the thought or even had some they work with say "can you imagine what work would be like without the internet?" And then everyone laughs bc it sounds like some horrible dark age, like before there was running water or electricity.

But when I'm at work and just jam through it without internet (which is rare) I feel a lot better at the end of the day.

otm

since i got the internet as a middle-schooler, in the 90s, all the office jobs i've ever gotten were to work ON the internet, really. but back then the internet was kind of like a natural and appropriate counterpart to real work so checking usenet or whatever was actually kind of productive, kept the mind limber. look up coding advice, or whatever.

i think the encroachment of mind-numbing drudgery onto the internet - the use of web interfaces for office-data type work, administrative bullshit - has had something to do with the change of character of the other parts of it, or of people's non-actual-work-related uses of it. like having given up on the belief that it was primarily a good and useful counterpart to the actual world, people have also given in to the despair that is joyless dumbass social media click click clicks or whatever.

(have commenced first 'office space' rewatch in years, am feeling embittered about tps reportification of the internet)

Since it uses invites, I feel like there's more open bitching about people who might come after you on twitter

discord is a bloated, chaotic mess of an interface and retains almost nothing fun about old chatrooms... it's also pretty spooky/awful how it retains so much in chat history.

I love Discord. Big servers can be tough to follow, though. Mute is essential.

It's good for really niche things and since it's like a cluster of different forums you can just bounce between them. Some servers I've given up trying to follow properly and accept I'll miss a lot of the conversation.

Not addiction exactly but I got the worst lump of stress in my throat I've ever felt from Pinterest, which seems like such an innocuous site but I guess it's because it's so jumbled and feels even more neverending than other sites somehow