I stopped using reddit when Apollo went down, and 2-3 hours of scrolling and active posting in some niche subs turned into ~30 mins of Lemmy per day, which I find much more healthy.

I didn’t start doing yoga, painting, or a side business, just feel much better having cut back the last big pillar of my social media addiction.

So thanks Steve!

(If it’s not too much to ask, please take a look at how you could improve instagram, you could save another 15 minute of my day)

  • richardazia
    5•11 months ago

    It bothers me when people think of social network use as addiction. If you went to a bar, restaurant, work or school you wouldn’t see it as an addiction. I think that seeing social media as addictive is especially harmful when Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok use it to do immoral things. They hide behind the “but they’re addicts anyway, so what does it matter?” Social networks are not addictive. They’re compelling.
    Does this mean that married people are addicts, to each other? Think the absurdity of calling social media addictive. It devalues our online communities to use such words.

    • @mettwurstkaninchen@feddit.deB
      10•11 months ago

      TBH: If you really are spending a lot of time in bars, several hours a day, you also have to face some ugly truths about addiction. And there are also people addicted to work.

    • @koolkiwi@lemmy.world
      10•11 months ago

      That’s like saying playing video games for 10 hours every day isn’t a sign of addiction because it devalues the gaming hobby.

      Social Media addiction is a real thing. Every single popular social media app is designed to draw people in and keep them using it. The “drag down to refresh” is literally copied from slot machines.

      • Boz (he/him)
        3•11 months ago

        This. Social media can be used in a healthy way, but that doesn’t mean social media addiction doesn’t exist.

    • @Plissken185@lemm.ee
      9•11 months ago

      They are addictive by design. They’re very much like slot machines in casinos. They want to take as much of your attention as they can to make profit.

    • losttourist
      3•11 months ago

      Something becomes an addiction when you persist in doing it even though you know it’s not doing you good or even actively causing you harm. By that definition, excessive internet use IS an addiction, because many people will endlessly doom-scroll their favourite sites even though they know there are more important things they should or could be doing.