The internet and I grew up together; it's nearly always been a part of my life. I use the internet every day for several hours. My career involves constant use and access to the internet. I also get my news and communicate with friends via the internet.

All that said, I spend time away from the internet every day and not as some forced action to distance myself from it. I don't see the internet as some perverse addiction that I need to break. If I'm not working for a stretch of days, there's a good chance that I will not use the internet simply because no situation comes up that calls for it.

The idea that 3 days away is life and mind altering is deeply concerning to me.

I think three days off might be just what I need.

My concern is that when I read these articles, the authors often seem to be speaking for more than themselves. It seems as though they are projecting an unhealthy addiction on all members of society. I see that as likely incorrect and potentially harmful.

I'm not certain what's unhealthy about what you listed other than the self-imposed exhaustion. Humans have been exhausting themselves unhealthily long before the internet came about. If you feel you're doing so, by all means, find the way to give yourself the rest you need.

There are always some folks who show up in these threads who seem to have perfect control. Or maybe a well developed ability to delude themselves, I have no idea.

But out in the real world, my observation is that probably better than 90% of random citizens are addicted to their phones and spend damn near every waking minute on them if there isn't something else to entertain them.

> Why would you say that?

Because it's true. Go out in public and tell me what fraction of people are buried in their phone. To a rough approximation, all of them.

Still, I agree that it seems to be a pervasive thing, and I do believe a little reset period like the author describes would, on average, do the population some good.

More than 50 years ago one prominent philosopher anticipated an increasing problem with "Future Shock" where the world has just changed so much so rapidly that people would have a harder and harder time dealing with technological life. (This was a spark that ignited a lot of Cyberpunk tropes in the 80s among other things.) With hindsight, it seems clear that we've intentionally and/or inadvertently "boiled the frog" better than philosopher's like that one anticipated. We made technological life the background normal of a huge populace. So much so that it is perhaps a lot more noticeable this sort of "Past Shock" where someone disconnects for long enough to feel it.

Speaking only for myself, about a decade ago I started taking advantage of some of my vacation time to entirely disconnect for at least a week. (In my case, by doing Caribbean cruises where data plans are so expensive to not be worth it.) It is shocking. It does feel healthy and useful to me and my mental health. I don't consider myself an "addict" and have taken a lot of steps to eliminate some of the worse "addictions" of modern internet life (I left Twitter for slower Mastodon feeds, Discord chats with chosen communities, and a broader return to RSS; I dropped all non-comedy news sources; as a couple examples), but there's still so much I take for granted in the current "normal" that is lovely to have at least one, shocking, week long break from each year. I would recommend it to other people. Not because I think other people are "addicted", quite the contrary, I think other people are "normal" and maybe just don't realize how hot the water is all around them (whether or not that's fine to be in such generally hot water; to abuse the metaphor a bit, as my vacations also remind me sometimes it's great to be in a hot tub or sauna for longer than is "strictly healthy" per posted signs, it feels normal and fun and if you don't dehydrate yourself or accidentally heat stroke in the process what was the harm).

(ETA: given some of the other comments in related threads, it may say something that for me it takes at least a full week to really feel the shock. Three days does seem too short to me. I don't know if that says my attempts to eliminate some "addictive" sources have worked better than I think they have or not, but anecdotally, it is interesting data to add.)

Could I go 3 days without 'social media' or 'socializing online'? Yeah - it might be a bit tough as it's definitely a habit, but... it's not 'vital'. I went to the beach last year and ... just sat and read a book. Got a phone call from my wife, which ... perhaps that's 'social media' in some sense? But I had a bit of time away from the standard online social places (including HN) and it was definitely doable.

Three days without 'internet access'... including driving navigation, banking, access to my health information, etc? That would be harder. Doable, but would definitely be a lot more noticeable. Would ideally plan for it a bit in advance :)

    Dave, your behavior indicates a possible existential crisis in the next hours.
    How about watching people making food in the most ridiculous way on TikTok?

That's your problem. I once logged into tiktok and found myself clicking next for four hours without blinking. Never again have I logged into this addictive platform. It's engineering to keep eyes on screen, scary.

I agree. I was left with the impression that the author could benefit from a therapist. It is a strange and unsettling concept to me that someone should be so emotionally vested in being connected to the Internet as much as possible.

When in company I find it disturbing that people pick up their phones to check messages/notifications, etc.

I still remember the time when it was not polite to talk in public on your mobile. Phone ringing in public was frowned upon. Much changed :)

For example: WhatsApp, Messenger, iMessage, Netflix, a lot of cable services (I just changed providers, their tv service now runs over wifi to the router with no option for a physical cable to connect to your tv) that now run on the 'internet'. You mean if you are not working, you don't interact with any of these services?

I gave up my smartphone for several years. When I rejoined the smartphone world last spring it was weird to me how so many apps expected a constant connection, since I had grown accustomed to only having internet access at home and (sometimes) at work. My feature phone had a browser in the old-school mobile sense (Opera mini over 2G) but unless I really needed an answer to some question right away I would wait until I got home.

The main thing I noticed was that if there was something I wanted to learn more about, or look up an answer to, I need to remember it until computer time--and write it down if it's important. Usually it's not that important, and I ended up becoming more okay with not binging information immediately every time I had a craving for it.

I also don't like to think of myself as Internet addicted and like to believe I'm pretty self disciplined about my usage.

Even so, doing a 24-hour no media with my family led to an experience very similar to what the author describes here. I had no idea how often I was throwing away little five minute slices of my life to staring at my phone.

If the people I care to talk to are in the room with me at the time, I don't need to get on my phone. That's not always the case. Sometimes I will stick my nose in my phone in a public setting, and it's not intended as a slight. I just have a fancy in my head about something I'd like to go read about.

However, this is more to my point. My separation from the internet has never needed to be some all-encompassing effort. I have never thought about needing to make sure that there is absolutely 0% access for an extended period. If I go on a multi-day backpacking/camping trip, it's not to escape the internet, it's because I like being outdoors.

I've been escaping into the woods for several months on long distance hikes. No Internet, no phone or GPS, nobody to talk to but the moon. When the moment is right I have a tent, sleeping bag, a few bits and bobs like a ferro-rod, rescue-blanket first-aid kit, plenty of blister band aids, and whatever else I can fit into a backpack.

This has literally healed my addiction, and my crippling life-long depression.

I'm really happy people see how powerful (and weird) 3 days offline can be so they feel an urge to tell everyone. I also find it hard to keep it to myself. But I hope their next step is to imagine what 1 or 3 months could do. Truth is you can become a totally new person beyond your wildest imagination.

It'll be really weird when you get back because people still think you're same when in reality you've totally become someone else. It's a literal lifehack.

Once I came across some distressed farmers in the mountains who lost their cows. I offered to help them searching. They were confused and said you will help for free? Aren't you busy on a hike reaching your destination. So I told them that experiences like these are my destination. The problem with herd animals like they told me was that they were already gone for 3 days. And timing is so important! Apparently if cows are separated too long from their herd, then chances increase they won't bother coming back. If you do catch them they will always stay "naughty" and tend to escape again. But worse! They often bring a friend with them and continue to remain a problem for the farmer forever. I feel like that cow sometimes.

>> This new mode of living came with another alien sensation: that of having tons of time.

describes what it's like for me if I don't smoke or drink for a few days. You say you healed your addiction and depression by going off-grid. I lived off-grid for a long time and it probably made me more of an addict. But at least I was living a genuine life, meeting people and ending up in weird situations that stimulated me. Not in the depressing mundane world of social media.

Your post makes me remember that, and it's something I very much want to get back to. The original article makes me sad that people a few years younger than me are so addicted to this screen that 3 days away is as difficult and mind-boggling for them as 3 days without booze is for me.

it was the same for me. The first time when I returned back to civilization I was overwhelmed by the emotions of being among humans again. Shopping malls, busy side walks, traffic or more than 3 people in a room almost gave me panic attacks.

The addict in me said: "you've got so much catching up to do". "surely you earned the right to party a little after all this abstinence?".

I've been an addict all life so it would be preposterous to think I could kick the habit within a few months. What it did give me was the confidence to face my own feelings all by myself? Feelings I never faced being sober.

My second hike was well planned out and I cut down my drinking and smoking well before I left. Suddenly there was a destination (on the map) I had to reach in very specific time, a level of fitness required, a positive state of mind I wanted to be in much more than a blunt, a scotch or the approval of the opposite sex. Also what contributed was that I gradually replaced quite a number of relationships with more positive ones that supported and believed in me, and who didn't really know or care about the old me.

I'll continue to struggle because there is no cure for the human condition. It's not _one_ thing I have to do and some months later it's all different. It's playing the long game and realizing that even if I sometimes lose myself I must get back up.

When your only outlet is through a screen, or patio outside the bar with a few neighbors, everything narrows down. I know a guy who just got back from ice climbing in Utah and I think, well, fuck it's too late for me to ever do something like that. I really feel trapped.

Hey anyway, thank you for sharing this. It does give me some inspiration. You're the kind of person I hope I run into out there, when or if I do get out there again.

Thanks nuduerme for the delightful discussion. It's always nice to bump into like-minded "travelers" like yourself :)

This is the same argument that has been used for generations. Our parents were addicted to rock music, before that it was something else, and you can go as far back as socrates to say they preferred "chatter" to exercise.

Why is 3 days without any screens such a big deal. Not all screens are the same. 3 days of doomscrolling on instagram is not the same as watching an hour of a movie or a tv series, or using youtube for guitar lessons. Why is not going 3 days without screens an addiction, but not going 3 days without reading a book not an addiction?

Comparisons of social media to alcohol and tobacco are apt, it is something that's both harmful and difficult to quit. Rock music and books are not similar.

> Rock music and books are not similar.

The issue isn't rock music, or dancing, or books. It's an older generation claiming that the way that they experienced things is better than the way the the current generation are, and they're worse off for it, and the younger generation just need to take their word for it (which is exactly what the commentor I've been replying to keeps saying).

Now, obviously rock music and books probably have less addictive design than social media, but it's still true: Once it starts negatively impacting your live, it becomes a problem.

Because books are not (yet) generally authored by sociopaths working at social media companies, altering what you see to maximise "engagement".

You're making the same mistake that OP is; conflating screens and social media. How is watching one hour of Line of Duty/Better Call Saul a day worse than reading 3-4 hours of any of the hundreds of nonsense romance novels that are published every year. Also, if you think that book publishing is exempt from the abusive marketing/psychology tactics, you're sorely mistaken.

Watching doesn't require imagination. It doesn't activate the creative part of the brain that even the most idiotic dime store novel requires to interpret. That's how. Again, this isn't new; it was standard knowledge taught to children in the 1960s-1980s as to why television was mind-rot.

Yes, at some level, you can sit in front of a mindless sitcom or reality show half-asleep and not engage at all. But there are plenty of TV shows and movies that require active engagement to even know what's going on. The idea that printed material occupies some higher plane than video material because it requires turning a page doesn't make a lot of sense.

Our parents weren't "addicted" to rock music. Reading a book is, objectively, infinitely better for your mind than watching even the most erudite educational video on YouTube, for the simple reason that you're required to visualize the content for yourself. This was common knowledge during the TV era. The only thing that made TV not the end of reason was that it was a large object that children couldn't drag with them everywhere.

No, it's not just an "old man" generational thing. The people raised in the smart phone era are different. This is a qualitatively different technology, a far more invasive and all-encompassing form of media than anything that's existed before, and it distorts the basic elements of what it means to be human, namely: *How one encounters others, how one encounters nature, and how one encounters oneself*. Three fundamental discoveries that are lost when they are discovered "for you" via a constant stream of videos, podcasts, news feeds, texts and blog posts in your pocket.

For the first time, it's possible to imagine a human who never discovers any of the basic things about life; who lives from cradle to grave being shown images of kangaroos and dolphins, watching shows about lovers and wars, without ever actually experiencing any of them, and being satiated with the constant flood of images presented, dying with no knowledge of anything besides the shadows on the cave wall. That is a fundamental shift in what we do as a society with human capital, what we teach children, and what it means to be an adult; and this is visible throughout every aspect of our current decline as a civilization. Listen to an interview on YouTube with random people on the street in 1960, on any subject, and you will hear voices from blue-collar high school educated people that are more eloquent - by habit of learning to communicate directly with others - than the most gifted podcasters are today.

So no, the difference here is not just "rock and roll" versus "big band". Or even printing press versus handwritten scrolls. It's a cheapening and denuding of the human landscape; and I say this as someone who spent most of my life building the systems that contributed to it and, superficially, am mostly enmeshed in it, understand it, and don't believe it should rob us of authenticity. But it does.

Rock and roll never robbed anyone of authentic experience. Neither did reading a book.

> anywhere near as addictive for me as the crack cocaine of smart phone apps.

There's a big difference between smart phone apps and screens, you've just said it yourself. I don't think there's any argument that modern apps are destructive to many people, but the rest of your post is really just not understanding how anyone can have a view point that isn't yours.

> For the first time, it's possible to imagine a human who never discovers any of the basic things about life; who lives from cradle to grave being shown images of kangaroos and dolphins, watching shows about lovers and wars, without ever actually experiencing any of them,

Complete rubbish. Books have been giving that experience for generations. TV shows have been providing that experience for 50+ years.

> Rock and roll never robbed anyone of authentic experience. Neither did reading a book.

As much as you think this is a unique thought, this is what your parents generation thought about the decisions you made. Nonsense like what you're claiming here has been spouted about music, video games,TV shows, movies, dancing, music, etc.

No, I maintain that there's a qualitative difference between screens and books.

"Screens" includes video games. Which are a model that encourages one person to sacrifice their life and time trying to decipher someone else's creation. RPGs are the same way. Yes, books can be treated this way, but only by zealots. The average person did not spend 8-12 hours a day reading books as an escape, at any time in history. That wouldn't be considered healthy.

Screens can deliver good things -- they actually did, when they were liberated for content in the 90s and weren't just feeding distraction to the masses. That's long gone.

You think you see what I'm saying because you've been told that any attack on the media environment you're accustomed to is just a reactionary howl like older generations always have. But I have no primary issue with Tiktok or Instagram. I have a problem with what I've literally witnessed them do to people's minds. And I have 40+ years of firsthand data collected as to how absolutely fucking melted people have become as the juggernaut of mass-social-media and smartphones has progressed to become a constant habit.

All you have is an objection on the grounds that every generation thinks things were better before. But you have no proof (and can't prove) that the time you're living in is not intellectually inferior. You would have had to actually been alive before to know that.

You've pulled numbers out of the air, and conflated the topics _again_. Taking your number at face value, that screen time generally includes work time, and doubles up on time (internet plus TV). It's also not an average person spending 8 hours a day as an escape. Finally, I think you're misremembering the past here, at least my experience was that people _did_ read and watch TV for the majority of their leisure time. I can't speak for a time before TV unfortunately.

Yet again, you're conflating screens and social media apps. You say screens are unhealthy (well, the modern kinds, not the kinds that you had in the 90s), but only talk about TikTok, and not youtube channels like JustinGuitar, This Old House, Serious Eats, etc etc. I don't think anyone here (and I certainly am not) is claiming that the amount of time spent on Instagram/Snapchat/TikTok is healthy (who knows, I might be eating those words in 10 years), but this fear mongering is _exactly_ the same as the video game propaganda that came out 30 years ago. Unfortunately, I'm finding google hard to wrangle today on this topic, but here's an argument from 12 years ago [0] that pretty much makes the same complaints about video games that you're making about TikTok here.

> And I have 40+ years of firsthand data ... You would have had to actually been alive before to know that.

1) You're assuming my age here. 2) Your argument boils down to the same argument that has been made by every generation for 2000 years. "Your elders know better because of experience, so trust me" _My_ experience with people who play this card play it because it's their only card. And after all, I should know, I have 30+ years of experience of people telling me that.

[0] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/duncan-smith-games-ar...

That's because Google sucks now, and the web sucks, and the entire ecosystem has quietly morphed from what it was 15 years ago into a dead botnet flying through space, populated by zombies. But based on your argument, that's just my nostalgia talking.

Your 30+ years means you were 14 when the iphone came out. I was 24. Although I wholly embraced the coolness of the technology, my thoughts, opinions and habits for conversing with other humans had already been fully formed. When I was 14, I was the only kid in my class who owned a modem.

Can't you kind of see that it's unusual, unprecedented, for all communication to suddenly flow through a new wall-to-wall ecosystem, mostly privately owned, (including the screens) going from nothing to full saturation within 10 years?

It's not the same argument as every generation. It's not about the fashion, style, sound, art, literature (fuck, I wish there was literature). What has been lost to people born since ~1990 and definitely since 2000 is, essentially, the ability to conduct themselves in any fashion outside of a machine-mediated setting. If that's not unprecedented, I don't know what is.

You're doing what you've done in all of your other comments; your building a strawman. The quality of google search results declining doesn't mean the web sucks, and I'm not blaming your nostalgia on that one, I'm blaming your attempt at building an emotive argument to a point that I'm not making.

> Your 30+ years means you were 14 when the iphone came out. I was 24.

The iPhone came out in 2007, not 2002. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt up to this point, but it's pretty clear that you're not arguing in good faith; you're building strawmen and tearing them down.

> Can't you kind of see that it's unusual, unprecedented, for all communication to suddenly flow through a new wall-to-wall ecosystem, mostly privately owned, (including the screens) going from nothing to full saturation within 10 years?

The goalposts are so far from where we started here that we're playing different sports. To answer your question, it's completely bizarre, and likely dangerous. Again I ask, what does that have to do with an addiction to screens and technology? Why is the content that they're publishing so much worse than the utter drivel generated by Fox News, the Daily Express, etc.

> literature (fuck, I wish there was literature)

now _this_ is your nostalgia talking. There is still excellent quality books being published, there are other forms of storytelling (podcasts, video games, movies) which are definitely not perfect, but neither was buying books at any time ever. For every To Kill a mockingbird, Lolita or The Road, there are hundreds if not thousands of terrible, forgettable books. The same is true of other mediums.

> the ability to conduct themselves in any fashion outside of a machine-mediated setting

That's not what's happening at all, and believing that it is is falling into the trap I've been talking about all along. People spending time in front of screens doesn't mean they can't conduct themselves outside of the worlds of technology. Young(er) people (than me) are still travelling, taking gap years, experiencing festivals, drugs, rediscovering theater, food, drink, etc. I'm not sure where you live (no need to share of course) but in my city there are numerous food markets where the majority of the attendees are under 35s (the demographic I fall into) experiencing a variety of things the world has to offer, prepared by people the same age as them and shared as an experience.

Despite the truisms that each generation tends to think things are going to hell, this time they really are going to hell.

A life unmediated by machines is qualitatively different from one that is. Books, TV, video games were self limiting compared to the modern internet—especially social media—delivered via smartphones. Why?

1. Because they change the way we acquire knowledge. Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_. We had paper maps and guidebooks (Lonely Planet, my ass it's today's planet that seems lonely), but when those didn't match the reality on the ground, we were forced to ask people. Now we can all go along in our own little bubbles with our phones and experience things without talking to people.

2. It is reducing our connection to our bodies and bringing us up into our heads even more. To live a full life means to be in contact with the physical world, and to act within it.

3. As has been said above, the incentives of the makers of smartphone apps are almost always at odds with living a meaningful life. The apps almost always will try to increase your engagement with your phone, and because time isn't infinite, this means decreasing your engagement with life.

4. Because of the portability, smartphones are omnipresent. Some people even check them while they sleep.

And the sad thing is that, yes, it takes people who have lived almost their entire lives outside of the 'app' ecosystem to tell younger people this.

The apps and the phone and the habit of using them all the time have changed you developmentally. You can't see the water your swimming in, but there are some of us who still can.

So make that argument against social media on smartphones, not against all screens, and modern media only being "feeding distraction to the masses" (a direct quote from noduerme).

> Anyone who has taken trips to foreign countries before smartphones and GPS would have been forced to talk to _people_

Speaking slowly and loudly in english at someone in a small french village asking for the bakery isn't something that we should mourn losing. The meme of loud americans/english travelling to places and expecting everyone to speak english predates most people on this thread, and was the reality for most people.

> To live a full life means to be in contact with the physical world, and to act within it.

There is nothing about modern media formats - tv, video games, many parts of the internet, that stop you from doing so. As a child, I grew up watching TV programmes, playing games and reading books that inspired me to explore and take on new experiences. I'm never going to go wild camping in yosemite, and that's fine, but I was never going to do that in a pre-smartphone world either.

> apps almost always will try to increase your engagement with your phone, and because time isn't infinite, this means decreasing your engagement with life.

This is not a tautology. it only decreses engagement if you min max your life (which would be at odds with what you're saying).

> You can't see the water your swimming in, but there are some of us who still can.

To use your analogy, you can't see that the water you're swimming in is the same water your parents were swimming in when they were telling you the same thing about <whatever>.

So don't shout then, and god forbid, maybe learn some French?

English isn't my fist language, and yet here I am talking to you.

for a very western-culture-centric definition of "genuine life"

not my intention to say "I'm better than anyone". Only yardstick I have is my past behavior not others behavior or judgement. And I do a lot better today where I'm sometimes absent for months and at other times I log in once or twice a day. For me I consider myself better than I was (not better than others) because I no longer get anxious when I don't carry my phone. And I know I'm happier, which doesn't mean that the same approach is a good idea for others (I wouldn't do it 20 years younger or when raising little kids). Hey, this website is free!

That said I like the effort. I recently disabled chat on a popular online game I enjoy to help cleans my experience a bit. Not just what others say but what I say is a bit too toxic.

On this site, I now just log off and ignore things. Rarely log in but to make a comment, then promptly log off. Viewing my "karma" is just too toxic for me.

It certainly has made me happier to cut as much social media as possible out of my life.

I don't want to go full offline for many days or weeks (nor could, because of work). Many things I like are connected to internet and tech, and I don't mind it that much. Just need to remember to have breaks every now and then.

It also feels so unreal when chat is off, its almost like playing against bots.

I literally have no idea how people manage to play a game like Overwatch with chat or worse - voice chat - enabled in games with strangers. It's an enjoyable game but 9/10 people online just straight up suck and I don't play games after work to deal with that kind of negativity. Happy to be on chat when playing with actual friends or work colleagues, but random people online? That chat is staying muted and off I'm afraid.

Insulting randoms is done in Discord, with friends, since insulting a random player in a game you're currently in does nothing to help if the team is struggling.

Like the other day, I was playing Deep Rock Galactic. I host my own lobbies to keep things simple (and to feel entitled to a bit more control), and had started with 3 players instead of 4, since that's fine. The 4th player to join was the second scout (I prefer to play Scout if I'm hosting, and have no way to change when ingame), and I kinda blame them for why we lost that map. I tried using voice chat to quickly coordinate with them and the others, but lack of coordination ended up killing us all. In hindsight, I should have just kicked the second scout when they joined.

(Hazard level 4. We got a Crassus detonator (big, does big damage, explodes on death, makes a golden crater) and a Dreadnought (big, somewhat fast, armored, ranged + melee attacks) spawn at roughly the same time, were SUPER short on Nitra (resupply resource, and we were missing a whopping 3 out of 80), and not enough damage output to kill one or the other big baddie properly (Crassus needs to be killed in a tunnel to maximize its reward). I also asked the other scout to go revive another player who had gone down in an odd spot (since scouts have great mobility), but they preferred to use their weak gun against an armored enemy, while the Gunner tried to get the Engineer and also went down.

Plus, earlier in that map, people had burned their 1-use perk to get up after being downed, while there was still a very good shot of surviving. If I tell someone I'm coming for them, I really do mean it, even if I'm dancing around shooting the bugs off of their downed body. I just want to make enough space to not get bitten, and to not waste my 1-time use of Field Medic to insta-rez them.)

Disabling the ingame chat is the most sane thing you can do. Games are won by playing, not by typing.

[0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/not-a-cell-phone-in-sight

Another stupid time-waster is reading about a thing I want to do, instead of just doing the thing. Such as reading opinions about some video game I already own, instead of just playing the game, or watching videos about playing guitar instead of actually doing it. I get cross at myself for how easily manipulated I am.

Then what do you do?

This article is a great advertisement for turning it back into a library.

I know that I sometimes struggle with pulling my phone out for no reason and refreshing HN or Reddit. Same with my laptop during work hours. I don't like it and I'm trying to do better; I want a healthier relationship with my devices and the internet.

I definitely took something from this article, though. For a while I've been using Do Not Disturb to cut down on distracting notifications throughout the day, with a whitelist for family members in case of emergency. But from now on, my phone's WiFi will be turned off and I've also disabled cellular data for all other non-critical applications.

Now if I want to refresh HN or Reddit for no reason, I either have to connect to WiFi or explicitly grant Safari permission to use cellular data. Overall, I feel like I'm taking steps in the right direction...

Finally, when it's appropriate, I leave my phone in my car entirely. Occasionally for dinner/breakfast, on runs, and going to the movies. Just leave it at home. The world will go on without you - especially if people know you're away.

For me, 3 days is little more than a bank holiday with my family. A trip to the zoo, family meals, walks along the fields and foot paths, teaching the kids to ride a bike, playing games: sports games, board games, card games, or even just hide and seek.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy "online" as much as the next person (video streaming, online gaming, HN etc) but sometimes it's nice to interact with people and/or nature instead of LCD screens. So not spending time online is as natural as eating.

But, I didn't grow up with screens everywhere. They are simply another thing I use.

I'm as online as the next guy, but why would someone check the weather more than once or twice a day? Granted, I live in California so I don't worry much about extreme weather, but even when I lived on the east coast I would only check the weather once in the morning.

I usually check the weather about three times a week. At the moment it's daily while we deal with our bout of storms.

It is interesting to watch forecasts shift as conditions change. Having it on my wrist, I find I check it about as often as I check the time. Even if I'm not really planning to do much with the information.

Weather is one of the oldest forms of small talk. Even when you aren't worried about extreme weather events, weather is part of life.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back...

But 3 days without internet? What is this, intermittent fasting for social media obesity? Nothing changes in 3 days of any routine change. And he already reached enlightenment. Wordle is "“mild purgatory” — like being stuck in human flypaper", email is a "stoppage of living", I can't stop laughing.

This is some low quality "I did 100 pushups a day for a week and this is what happened" youtube style of click bait stuff. It is no-fap level of ridiculousness.

This has to be sustainably. You can't do that with a 3-day or 30-day detox. You won't be successful with monochrome hacks or net nannies. You can't do that even going cold turkey because you have to use technology to still function in society unless you're going off grid and starting a homestead.

What I found to work is to start small, replace one habit at a time. Give yourself plenty of time to do absolutely nothing and you will creatively find great uses of that time again. After a few years, you'll feel back in control, happier, and healthier because of it.

Don't use a desktop environment. Literally run in text mode. Use Lynx/Links/w3m if you need to look something up. VLC has an ncurses interface, and you can use youtube-dl to download music. Use emacs or vim for text editing, and tmux to split the screen ( + more, but I never used it to it's full potential ) and you can cover a lot of ground.

For the innevitable need to view pdf's and pictures, download them to this text mode machine, and then file transfer them to an offline only tablet.

Did I discover this because I was dumb and didn't know how to handle nvidia drivers? ...I was a noob ok :| . That being said, I think I focused more and accomplished more with this setup then I did for the next 3 months after I set up a DE.

100% offline is basically impossible, but very limited and high latency (we had a 3 second ping) is doable. Mostly you have to remember to download things when you get the chance. Get offline copies of Wikipedia and stack exchange (via Kiwix), download package docs as PDFs.

Installing anything is a nightmare so work on a cloud system and run a job server if you're able to (eg jobs that take hours to days and need a connection). Pip is a disaster for this - download every wheel just to check the toml file for dependency resolution? Just doesn't work with poor connectivity. Get good with rsync and wget flags to manage partial downloads. My preferred method is to pull remotely and then rsync partial to a local machine over a few days. That's much more reliable than wget with the -C flag.

You end up building a lot of packages from source, a shallow git clone is far smaller than a compiled binary.

Forget Overleaf. Install tex locally like the old days.

For my own coding, I usually don't use the internet anyway. I browser offline documentation of the stuff I use, vendor all my libraries (i.e. building doesn't require internet access), so maybe I'm going to try disconnecting my computer during those sessions. That's of course not counting coding at work, due to the tyranny of Slack.

Instead of going offline for X days I try to have healthy online and offline habits. Reduce the twitter doomscrolling and increase the social interactions over text chat or zoom. Reduce the TV watching (is TV watching offline or online??) and walk more and read more books.

People may suffer from social media addiction, or gaming addiction or porn addiction, or TV/video addiction, but internet addiction seems overly broad.

Am I addicted to the internet because I check the weather every day or look at google maps every time I go anywhere?

It's one thing for some of y'all not to get it or understand it - great. I'm happy that there are people with healthy boundaries for that.

It's shameful how many posts in this thread are making light of it. "Three days is nothing pal, hey I went 45 minutes without coffee who wants my blog?".

---

I had COVID right before Christmas. I had to cancel all my plans. Christmas was relatively slow news-wise. Lots of my friends were busy, and the few I interact with online were doing family things.

So I had time to myself, with no compulsion to go out or to seek friends to hang out with.

It was incredible. I remember playing Skyrim a lot, which I've wanted to do for a long time. I watched some good TV. I read a book. I worked the ham radio. I cleaned the house. And I was happy at the end of each day, other than blowing my nose 75 times. Oh, and I didn't drink either.

Now I'm back to my routine. Several days a week of no drinking. Several days a week of 7-10 drinks. Every 10-15 minutes is a swipe/refresh of reddit. Whenever a loading screen pops up at work for more than a moment I "ctrl-T, ctrl-L, new" and open up google or HN.

Compulsive behavior is awful. Not having focus is awful. FOMO is awful. And I'll preemptively tell you to eat a cottonball sandwich if you think it's as simple as "well, don't do it". I'm sure the answer incorporates a support structure from friends, changing communications habits to be less worried about missing messages, and even therapy.

Hey, wouldn't you know, talking and blogging about it can help.

Er... Okay, I guess it's more about whether they could control their cravings, and not checking whether offline life is possible anymore? Don't we still have, like, ways to check an address without using internet?

Yes, this is all somewhat of a reflection on my inability to push it away. I get quite angry at myself sometimes when my control slips and I feel hours of my day slipping into the void.

But my professional life depends on Internet access. So I can't just put it down and walk away. I've considered blocking HN on my router, sometimes ;-).

Was I more focussed and aware, yes I would say so - but it's not as if I suddenly become super productive with this new focus all of a sudden and would pursue every project or idea I ever dreamed up in my head. What I found was that initially I become productive but it was more from the excitement of moving away from the internet. What happened after is that my mind found other ways to distract, some better than others; for example I read a lot more books than usual however I would also just spend time doing nothing at all or watching pointless TV. It was enjoyable to sit and actually concentrate on something for once. I spent more time outside and that initial anxiety of not know what was going on (FOMO) slowly started to fade as I realised the insignificance of it upon my life. I think the biggest difference though is that I felt happier without the internet in my life.

The return is an almighty crash, that proved the addictive nature upon me. My screen time shot through the roof, I tried to check up on everything I had missed, I felt shame at just how strong the grip was and how little control I had over it. It tapered off after a couple of days and I am better than I was before, more aware of the strong hold that looms over me. I try to use leave my phone away in the evenings to avoid that spontaneous reach for the next dopamine hit. It works, but I think I will do another detox for a longer period of time soon.

It's a funny thing, I think the internet has done wonderful things for me, it's certainly given me a fantastic career that I would otherwise never have had. It's given me a wealth of knowledge and entertainment over the years - but like most things in its nature it came with a hefty price.

As soon as I power off my laptop intending to study, I get an almost irresistible urge to start working on random math/physics problems I read about months ago. But honestly, that's way more productive than browsing HN/Reddit/4chan all day.

"Yes, I am a 20th century person. My curse is that of being born on the cusp of the digital revolution. My curse is that of wanting a simple life in a friendly world. My curse is that of being smart enough to know that this 21st century life isn't something good, it will never be for me. "

1) being available all the time and feeling like I’m expected to reply or be considered potentially dead (or very rude)

2) picking up the smartphone to check something useful and end up in some doomscrolling rabbithole because a notification seized my attention

I wish there were easier ways to put the phone into an automated setting that lets you access only a subset of apps. I know you can do similar stuff with the iPhone, but I tried, and blocking apps works for like a few days, and then I constantly hit “remind me later”

After that that, my cyber-addiction has mostly stopped: I can go without a computer big or small for months (but then I would need the good old paper for various needs) and not give a damn about likes or karma or even toxic comments.

1. I know exactly how this passive state of mind feels to me. It's good to hear that others feel the same.

2. 3 days might not be much, but it doesn't matter, if it is long enough to give one clarity how the own mind works, to reflect on a bad habit, and, which is most important, come up with rules how to further break the bad habit, as the poster did.

Saying this, I'm gonna go to the rock climbing gym now ;)

The problem isn't knowing that there is a problem with phone/online addiction, the problem is finding a balance between work that requires us being online, real world things that make it so useful, and the rest that drives our dopamine centers in our free time. Taking a break is good, but what happens after?

> I was in jail with a guy...

I'm one of those who remembers the world before the Internet. I was about 30 and married when I got my first computer in the mid-1980s. I did a lot of reading back then, and some writing as well, though I didn't get serious about writing until I discovered word processing.

I've been thinking about writing my own essay about tech minimalism, just because I've seen so many articles like this one over the past couple of years. In some ways it's something I aspire to, if only because I sometimes enjoy making things difficult, to test myself a little. But with a few exceptions, I like the digital life I've built. I'm happy to be able to get online every day. I've managed to mostly break the doomscrolling habit, to be able to close the laptop and put down the phone and read a book (on my Kindle, because I can make the type any size I want).

Bro has issues, I don't think the issue is the internet I think thats just the symptom / enabler.