Techno Addiction
Top 10 Ways to Loose your Techno Addiction!
Intro
As per customary habit, I arrived to my date fifteen minutes early. Today’s setting was lunch at a local burger joint that I haven’t heard of before. It felt homely with the cheap worn leather booths. I casually browsed the menu and my phone until his arrival.
This man arrived not a second before or after the scheduled date. I still don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.
Nothing remarkable to mention, everything was going well until I accidentally mentioned I was totally addicted to some new Netflix show.
“Yeah, TV addiction was a tough one,” he casually remarked.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, I used to be addicted to a lot of stuff, but I’ve quit it all.”
“Like drugs?”
“Worse, technology.”
This is where the date took a turn and I only have myself to blame for further questioning something I knew would be a mistake.
“Addicted to technology?”
He began his essay.
Step 1: Acceptance
Techno Addiction is no different from any other drug. And just like a drug addition, the first step is admitting that you have a problem.
The difficulty about this is that having a techno addiction is so accepted in our culture that we don’t even view it as a problem. So lets dive into it.
What do you wake up to, on the beginning of a fresh week? It’s Sunday, hopefully you don’t have responsibilities, and you can relax and sleep in until the sun has warmed the morning air. What’s the first thing you do on this fresh week? Check your iPhone and see your weekly screen time report. “Oh great, I spent three hours a day on my phone this week. Cool.” Three hours isn’t even an embarrassing number. Feels perfectly normal. But three hours is 21 hours in one week, and that’s a whole fucking day, including sleep, spent on the phone. I think that’s crazy. And that’s not even including the time I spend on my computer doing useless shit.
So what exactly am I doing during all this time. What exactly is Techno Addiction? I don’t have a problem, I’m just keeping up to date with the world by scrolling through the feed.
Scrolling Through the Feed: so your Insta, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, etc. While these sites have their uses like finding out the person you sat next to in Grade School is pregnant, or learning about how to distill beer, most of the time spent on the feed will not be so productive. The little dopamine we receive has driven us to find and consume more and more random bullshit on the feed. Now we’re not just following the person we sat next to in Grade School, but we’re also following random internet influences in different countries, people we’ll never meet, but for some reason we know they’re expecting their first child, and we’ve never been more excited in our lives to hear about it. And we’re not learning how to distill beer anymore, instead we’re watching hour long videos about why the brand-new Batman movie is the worst thing ever and has been ruined by the some political movement. We’re gaining absolutely nothing. And this is assuming that learning about the person you sat next to once a decade ago is even an important thing. (Beer distillery on the other hand, is very important.)
But my choice of poison was video games. And oh god, they are so fucking fun. I was allured by the immersive gameplay, the gripping stories, the new medium of adventure. But, the corporations noticed that games can make a lot of money, and they transformed them from fun into grinding money machines. I don’t feel happy when I’m playing games. All I feel is the trickle of dopamine as I mindlessly kill strangers over and over and over. And then I get really mad because I died due to the fault of a stranger on my team. And repeat. For about three hours a day.
I wasn’t really getting much done in life due to all this wasted time. I always dreamed of change, but was too busy doing nothing about it. I was in a viscous cycle chasing little crumbs of serotonin.
Be critical of the media you consume. Once I started thinking about the meaningless content that I was reading/watching and how little effect it had on my life, it made me realize how much a waste it all was.
And then be even more critical. Who’s making the algorithms that give you the feed? How are these providers rich with money? Am I merely data being analyzed and brainwashed? Constantly viewing the feed isn’t just a waste of time, it’s unhealthy.
I accepted I had a bad addiction.
I sipped the straw of my glass of water while listening. Trying to nod at the correct moments. I took note of the relation of the distance between the washroom and the exit.
Step 2: Channnnnge
Well the only way to quit is to quit. I chose New Years to be the day to quit gaming.
But first, can we take a side note on New Year’s Resolutions? Who the fuck decided the best time to introduce a new habit, something that is both mentally and physically hard thing to do, and start in fucking January? The coldest, darkest, shortest length of daylight time of the year to start anything? Like it’d be so much easier to start a new habit during the summer. Hurr durr I’m going to start running when it’s winter. I’m going to quit video games when it’s too cold to go outside, so I’m stuck inside with nothing to do.
Anyway, changing. Well if you were quitting heroin would you keep heroin within arms reach at all times? Same thing with technology. Get that shit out of there.
I feel like I nailed the timing of nodding my head to his paragraphs.
Video Games
I bought a new laptop that couldn’t play games, and unplugged my old computer. That old bitch of a computer took like twenty minutes to boot up, and that was enough deterrence to keep me from gaming. So I recommend paying $1000 for a new laptop that can’t play games.
This lead to a second problem though. I rebounded so fucking hard.
Just delete your account. I still use Reddit all the time for information, like if I have a question about a certain topic, I specifically Google a Reddit result for it. If I discovered a new hobby, I’ll browse through the top posts for a bit. But there is no reason anyone needs to know all the opinions of a topic every god-damn minute. Delete your account. And delete the Reddit app on your phone. No one needs Reddit on their phone. And the mobile browser version suck so much that there’s no way to be addicted to it.
YouTube
Oh fuck, this was my worst rebound. I’d just spend all day watching videos. Sometimes I’d only watch a quick five-minute-long video, but would then spend hours clicking on a new recommended video. I’d just constantly scroll through the recommended list both on my computer and phone. Half the time I’d be rewatching videos I’ve already seen.
Solution: Unhook YouTube extension https://unhook.app/. They have a lot of settings, but I’ve disabled the recommended list. I still love YouTube and like the people I’m subscribed to, they don’t upload too much, usually a new video from one person per day. I’ll watch it, and that’ll be that. I can move on. Unfortunately there are no extensions for phones, so I deleted the app and signed out on the browser. Sometimes I’ll open YouTube on my phone, and I’m greeted by the un-algorithm recommendations of absolute trending trash and I close it.
I’m a big fan of Twitter. While Reddit is following topics and random wankers posting about the topic. Twitter is following individuals I actually like. And then the rest of Twitter is ads and recommended wankers to follow.
Solution: another extension https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/. Strips away all the bullshit so, it’s just the tweets from the people I follow. So sure I waste like ten minutes a day reading all tweets from them, and then there’s nothing else to do except move on.
As for the Twitter on the phone, I deleted the app and keep myself signed out on the browser. Too much work to sign in.
I’ve never used Instagram so I have no thoughts.
Lmao who’s addicted to Facebook.
Netflix
So this is where I rebounded the hardest. I had so much time in the day with quitting video games, and was super depressed because of said reason, so I ended up watching a lot of TV. I binged like three series. Some were good, some were shit. I don’t know what to tell you. Eventually my withdrawal eased out, and I stopped being addicted to watching TV shows. Consuming unique and well written TV shows isn’t the worst way to suffer a withdrawal.
I was starting to feel self-conscious of my constant nodding. He was talking a lot. I wondered if I was supposed to have a notebook out taking notes or something.
Extra Step: Make Everything as Inconvenient as Possible
I guess to recap the previous step, make everything as inconvenient as possible. Which seems backwards in logic, but you have to view these websites as drug dealers. They make money from you using, so they make it as enticing as possible and constantly remind you about their drug through notifications. Delete your drug dealer from speed dial.
Step 3: What Now?
Wow, the days are long without an addiction. What to do with all this extra time.
There is a theory, that one can eliminate all their addictions, and achieve true enlightenment with spending 100% of your time being productivity. Unfortunately, being a human being in the 21st century requires you to be an addict of something. So choose something productive.
I’ve become addicted to coding (I don’t recommend). But just start doing stuff. Start a new hobby that you’ve always wanted to do. Start a new project, begin planning for something, do your work more thoroughly. Do something, do anything other than admire strangers on your phone. Start living for yourself. Those dreams of you being super cool and productive in the future, don’t let those be dreams. “If you will it, it is no dream.”
This guy must be trying to sell me a product or service at the end of this. The hook must be coming.
Step 4: Don’t Go Extreme
Don’t lose too much of yourself in your absinthe. You don’t need to completely eliminate technology and start living in the woods with no electricity (actually that would be really nice). Technology is a great tool, but only when you have control of it. I still play video games, but only with friends. I am using video games to socialize with close friends. I am in control. And I still use Reddit for information, still watch YouTube for entertainment, still read Twitter to be influenced by people I’m aspired by, etc. I don’t view myself as a hypocrite. It’s okay to use technology, just don’t waste your life away doing nothing.
I’m going to blog about you.
Step 5: Never Stop Bragging
Most important step. Constantly nag people that you quit your techno addiction and that you are better than them. This ensures you never fall back into old habits, because that would be way too embarrassing.
Yeah who could have known that you brag about this topic constantly?
Outro
There was a moment of silence. Was he done?
The silence continued.
Oh shit, I was supposed to say something.
“That was something, you really put a lot of thought into it eh.”
He nodded as he took a bite from his now cold greasy cheeseburger, sauce leaking out from the burger with his bite.
“So how’s life without addictions?” I finally managed to ask
“Terrible. I’m never relaxed, still miserable, and hate everything.”
“Cool.”
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