How I (mostly) Quit the Internet
There's endless doom out there; scrolling through it all doesn't help anything.
I’ve always loved information. New information - whether the information is bad or good - is a significant source of dopamine in my life. Or at least, it used to be.
Over the years my love of information, manifesting as a kind of addiction to the Internet, has increasingly been detrimental to my well-being and productivity. The more anxiety I had about how things were going in the world, the more time I spent searching for information that would somehow make me feel better. As if knowing more about the rough state of the world would improve anything (it never did).
I never had much social media. I’ve always known having access to all the fast dopamine of Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok would literally ruin my life - but I found other ways to doomscroll - news, Reddit, even Wikipedia would send me down pleasant (or horrifying, but in an interesting way) but ultimately damaging rabbit holes.
As much as I logically knew it was bad for me, I couldn’t stop. It was an impulse - before I get started on a boring project, let me just check the news real quick. Which turned easily into 45 minutes down a rabbit hole that I would ultimately forget about the next day, signifying nothing.
I’ve found I can’t be trusted with unfettered access to the Internet, the same way someone with a gambling addiction can’t be trusted in a casino.
Over the years I’ve used various apps to prevent me from doomscrolling, but because I could just uninstall them, they never worked for long.
I know there are also lots of articles about how you can quit the Internet by choosing mindfulness etc.
Those are great ideas but I literally just needed to put myself in Internet time out, mindfulness can come later.
Here’s what finally worked.
Harnessing the ADHD power of forgetfulness
My memory is incredibly unreliable. Details seem to only stay in my brain for about 4 seconds before they are gone forever.
Because I found myself constantly installing and deleting apps to reduce my access to the Internet, I realized the only way to stop myself would be to make it really hard to uninstall or undo my barriers.
So now I have about 4 layers of anti-doomscroll setting and applications that quite frankly I’ve forgotten exactly how I’ve installed things and what blocks what. And it’s great.
I’m a Mac/Apple person, but I think most of these things could be used in a PC /Android environment.
At the very least, I installed:
Freedom (set to block all news, installed on both my Mac and my iPhone)
Blocksite (on all browsers) set to block Reddit and other sites that are especially bad time-sucks for me.
Then, I edited my Hosts file on my Mac, so that my computer’s DNS literally cannot access certain sites that I know are bad for me.
Here’s an example entry, which has the effect of sending any attempted traffic to Reddit to localhost - basically back to my own computer, therefore loading nothing):
127.0.0.1 reddit.comI used my Mac App Limit settings to block Safari entirely (so I could only use FireFox and Chrome, which both have BlockSite installed) as well as websites I wanted to prevent myself from visiting.
I believe there are some other things I’ve set up but…I can’t remember them all.
It’s also a lot of boring work to undo all of my content blocks, so my ADHD brain isn’t interested in all the work involved.
Basically, this has the effect that I can access work-related websites, but I can’t access any dopamine pits that would distract me from what I need to get done.
What about being an informed citizen?
I subscribe to the Sunday edition of the local print newspaper. My daughter gets the Style section, I quickly scan everything else, and it all goes in the recycle bin.
I also make sure to have emergency alerts on my phone, so if an emergency or natural disaster occurred, I wouldn’t miss out on it because I can’t access Internet news.
And obviously I have Substack, but I don’t have the app on my phone and I have a App Limit set so I can only spend 30 mins on it a day (I do my writing outside of Substack, in Google Docs, so I can copy and paste and then all I have to do is format and edit).
Knowing all of the details of everything that’s happening isn’t helpful. The time I save from wasting time on the Internet is spent with my family, on work that’s important to me, and on being outside - which is all good for my mental health and well-being.
When my kids get older and I have a bit more free time, my intention is to be more engaged with my local community. Knowing what Washington D.C. politicians are up to doesn’t change my daily life too quickly - but knowing what my local school board is up to does, and the only way to find that out in my community is to actually go to the meetings.
Which means I can’t be doomscrolling, I need to be living.