but MAN i just like the feeling of using the tv

i know its dumb but it just feels right, and there has to be some app i can sideload that helps with that

This is why I use a PC (Linux) hooked up to my TV and not the TV. There is too little control in TV OS’s and there are many ways around that. Not using it is the easiest solution.

Do you like it that much. I mean overall I find it has some nice things to be a time filler but I don't see addictive levels of good content. Are you following the algo like with facebook and other social media. if so its not a facebook thing its a social media algo addiction.

i dont think there exists anything like that for my tv, but smarttube is open source so i could be wrong

There is a plugin called unhook that I find useful for this purpose. You can hide suggested, chat, comments, home feed, etc to really hone in on what you want to watch. Each option has a toggle so for days that you feel the need to just loaf you can still do so. I also uninstalled YouTube from my mobile devices so I am forced to use the browser which adds additional friction. I still watch a lot of YouTube, but I am much more intentional now.

i thankfully quit reels, and yes i actually watch the videos and its not on my phone

its been a bit better today so ill try to replicate what i did different moving forward

Are you watching or do you passive listed like me? Or are you on the reels because that's magnitudes of more difficult to pull yourself back from.

Generally the best advice for most phone addictions is to have allotted times for phone use. If you're on one of the former mentioned types of videos I personally would shift to one of the less absorbing kinds until you're at a point where you can do a different activity.

Can you go for walks where you're at? Garden? Crochet? What did you like doing before you liked youtube?

eh, i know its probably because of youtube but im not really that interested in podcasts, i like music more so i can just listen to that instead

(smarttube doesnt have ads and has sponsorblock built in. its available on android tv but you need to sideload it) i have also turned of the homepage on both my phone and my tv, but the problem is that under the video i am watching theres a bunch of recommended videos

i have removed the home page on both my phone and my tv, but theres still recommended videos under the video im watching so that kinda makes that useless

i have hobbies but youtube is just so addicting 😭

I've found podcasts to be a good stepping stone. Lots of YouTubers have podcasts, too, so you don't have to find entirely new creators. And it's still a form of entertainment, but without tying your eyes to a screen.

So, you can do other stuff while listening to podcasts, like going on a walk / bike ride, cleaning your place, chopping veggies before cooking, doing the dishes, gardening, drawing etc..

On F-Droid, you can get AntennaPod for listening to podcasts.

How about ignoring the home feed that’s designed to keep you hooked?

Limit yourself to the view with videos from channels you actually subscribe to. And curate your subscriptions to higher quality.

The end result is a list of videos that will run out every day, forcing you to get up and do something else instead of finding another related video to watch.

I did this during the pandemic and after a few days of friction it felt much healthier to me. YouTube became a secondary part of my hobby/media habits instead of an all-consuming one.

Find a hobby. Youtube might be a good place to look.

Today has been wrecking my Piefed timer lol, it's a slow Friday.

Reading suggestions really depends on what you like reading. I love "hard" sci-fi. Recently I have been voraciously consuming Greg Egan's body of work. I just finished Permutation City yesterday, started Distress today. I originally found this author after finding his book Diaspora on a reading list, and I really REALLY liked it. His more recent "Orthogonal" trilogy is fascinating, the characters are somewhat more flat, but the physics of the universe the series is set in is so thoroughly fleshed out. That universe consists of 4 identical dimensions instead of the 3 spatial and 1 time of our own universe. Many of the characters are scientists and explorers trying to make sense of their world, and there are sometimes just pages of equations to explain one small thing, which... I just love it so much.

Before tackling Egan's work, I read Ra by Qntm. They did some writing for the SCP foundation, and that same vibe really comes through in their work. Ra has such an interesting premise, and there were many twists in the fundamental understanding of what was really going on, I couldn't put that book down. Qntm wrote some other short stories, which are on my list to read next once I finish Distress.

i don't count an e-reader either, no.

nature & animals are truly what keeps being my font of wellbeing likewise. i adore that you keep a hammock and an e-reader around. those aren't big nor heavy to carry around either. would you fancy sharing some recommended reading from what you keep on your e-reader in a forumpost? i have had trouble deciding

apologies on the broken up relationship, i do feel that screen issue with texting alot: right now i'm flirting with someone and this is a big reason why i stay online literally all day. 45 minutes is an amazing screentime you've reached, that it's 15 minutes sometimes per day is mindbogglingly impressive to me. in liason with the article i disseminated here your anecdote on awareness then seems like a prominent take-away: a screen timer for each screen. didn't know Piefed has a timer- immensely helpful.

yes with your work hours being put behind a screen then that's quite some screentime in total. do you turn off the colours on your work screen? apparently a colourless screen (atleast accessibility settings -> high contrast mode) would decrease blue light. i turnt that on today, but it didn't remove all colours and my screen is quite bright at it's lowest, so i've yet to feel much difference.

I've gone multiple days before when I am out camping (unless you count an e-ink e-reader, but I don't). Being out in the wilderness is really something that calms me and grounds me. I live and work in a medium sized city in a very densely populated area, so I am constantly surrounded by stimuli. There are a few places near my work where if I am having a bad day, I will head there after work and bring one of the hammocks I always keep in my trunk, and the e-reader I always keep on me, and read in the woods for a few hours.

De-smarting my phone made an IMMEDIATE improvement on my morning routine. No longer can I lay and scroll... I silence my alarm, check the weather for the day, see if any of the emails I got look important, then get up.

The home screen launcher I use on my phone (Olauncher) includes a screen-time counter prominently on the home-screen, so you can immediately see how long you've been on your phone that day. I've gotten down to less than 45 minutes a day, for the most part. Most days is less than 15 minutes, especially after I broke up with my girlfriend recently, she texted SO much...

The Piefed web interface also has a time counter. If you scroll to the bottom of any page, there is a time listed. That's the amount of time you've spent on Piefed on that specific device (It doesn't count between devices. Like I'm on my work laptop, which is where I have the hardest time avoiding scrolling). I've spent a hair under 14 hours this month... Which feels like a lot, but then looking at the date, it's only a little over an hour a day, which is WAY less than I used to browse Reddit at work. My laptop at home is under 2 hours, I don't have trouble keeping offline at home, I have so many hobbies and things to do.

I think I am down around the 2-hour screen-time for personal things every day, maybe closer to 3... but to me it still feels like too much, I think because I do a lot of WORK on a screen. Between 4 to 8 hours of my day (sometimes less depending on which machines broke) is spent behind a computer, and that's something that I can't control.

okay. the more we talk about it online we'll manifest a normalcy, if not in others then in ourselves.
thanks for the brief instruction on disabling scores

and that's funny, talking about a "smart" phone with an android app dev. glad you got along with someone and didn't have to self-regulate to fit in when the topic came up =)
reminds me of Tom Nicholson's episode on 'limbic capitalism' - great public educator - for all the reasons he puts forth interface designers (like himself) feel guilty for the addiction happening.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuTQbOo3Y30

appreciate the question!
i hope to enforce the "2h screentime per day, no screen the 1st hour of the day" guidelines set by research papers. in short the 2h cap to reduce neurogenesis and neuroinflammation (scary words, right? i wanna be scared into taking it seriously too so i don't sugarcoat it to myself) and the [1st hour of the day] thumb-rule is because introducing an object such as a screen before we've gotten out of bed and truly woken up puts our nerve system in literal fight-or-flight mode. not to be alarmist or anything. (if i had spoons i'd pre-emptively fine-read and post sources to these two very specific claims. right now it's very much a notion i got from glossing over conclusions. anyone asks and i'll feel obligated to take responsibility for the claims.)

how long have you gone without the need to look at a screen before?

If you're interested in hiding scores, see here: https://piefed.social/post/853795, simply copy and paste that code into the "additional CSS" box on the settings page.

I've taken to simply just not talking about it in real life. I made friends with an Android phone app developer recently, and he was actually very interested in my phone situation (smart phone with all the smart intentionally disabled), and we had a very nice long conversation about it last weekend, but that's far from the norm.

What's your next personal goal for reducing the screentime in your life?

i've read what you've written <3 (i got so glad from seeing a comment before the day ended)

writing notes as my thoughts come while reading:

• i also don't know many (understatement) people IRL that get it, not now and not before. it's an added weight to not be believed.
• glad to read your IRL friend-situation is changing in the very same sentence that you bring it up!
• it really is like the whole humanity goes out the window as soon as there's a score to it. i didn't know PieFed has a "hide score" feature, neat of you to mention it.
• there's certainly alot to be said about being in person but i too come to the conclusion that people just shrug alot more often. as you say being wrong sure sucks but it's inevitable. it's not an issue when life is divergent - full of facts which come together. online human communication is reduced because we have so few senses touching eachother... our expression is reduced, we maybe read some with our eyes, but don't hear smell touch or feel there's another human in the room, so we're treated so convergent - everything is either agreeable or disagreeable. "remember the human" was the first rule of the internet, now that i think about it.

It is kind of ironic that I feel that the most accepted place to talk about this is, again, behind a screen.

Thanks for making this community, I'm on a digital minimalism journey, and I feel like not many people I know IRL really understand.

I've made a lot of progress over the last 2 or 3 years, but here I am browsing aimlessly... I will say that Piefed/Lemmy has been a lot better for me than Reddit, which was my previous addiction that I finally freed myself from (partially) a couple weeks back. I say partially because even though I no longer have an account, I still find myself sometimes going back to aimlessly browse r/all when there haven't been any interesting new posts here, like window shopping for things I can't buy.

I struggle the most with online communities, because I don't have many IRL friends (though this is changing!), and I yearn for social interaction. I also really struggle with being incorrect. Everyone makes mistakes, sometimes I'll say something wrong or stupid, and in real life, I can kind of laugh it off, because people forget, it's not like that one random comment I said was the only thing my friend remembers about the whole day... I'll still feel bad about it, but then after a time, even I forget. Online, though, those posts stick around and constantly remind me of their presence. Hiding post scores here has been a huge improvement for me, because even a single -1 karma on Reddit would usually ruin my day (which is stupid, I know it shouldn't). I can still know that I was wrong, but not seeing the anonymous dissatisfaction is better.

Nothing changes once they’re clean, except the fact that instead of giving in to the addiction, they’re resisting it every day. (...) even the most determined addicts-in-recovery will relapse when they revisit the people and places that remind them of the drug.

this is just what gets me every time. i give up everything for nothing then i am pulled back. the middleground is unbearable.

this reframing into "what actually changes?" reminds me of the quote from an alcoholic to a doctor: "but what do to, doctor, if not drink every day?" furthermore it reminds me of how "everyone's addicted: our journalists, our politicians, celebrities are all turnt into nervous narcissists putting in posts into the twitter slot machine for that dopamine-hit." to paraphrase Jaron Lanier (2018) who in the same talk goes on to contextualise this addiction beside tobacco and alcohol: "in those cases there were people in society outside the addiction system (not just rehabilitating but never on it) to uphold the integrity of a space for discussion. we don't have that."

Jaron Lanier, 2018, UC Santa Cruz

Persuasive design might push you to make a one-time decision,
this reminds me of the "one-click" at the foundation of Amazon's entire business model: that it should take one-click to make a financial committment.

also i am reminded of this interview with 1920s parliamentary pollers in the US who use the phrase "that's a loaded question", regarding the phrasing of a question for a political poll. a documentary in four parts which aired on BBC in 2002, Century of the Self by Adam Curtis. the documentary series itself relating to what i now think is a silverlining in "persuasive design": the conversation between whether humans are "rational beings capable of their own governance" or if humans are "irrational beings incapable of governing their own lives", which to this polling group interviewed in the 1920s to me seems answered by "yes, people can make rational choices for the betterment of their lives (if we do not persuade people.)"

(...) while addictive design could keep you coming back.

persuasion + addiction = (left blank as an excercise to the reader.)
synonyms to addictive: game-ification, driving engagement, incentives, external motivators, ...

Resorting to persuasive mechanisms can be framed as being in the user’s best interest, and user benefit is subjective.

right, it can all be seen through anyone's perspective. knowing my own perspective helps immensely when persuasion and valid considerations mingle. this is where my own mantra "a thousand other times i thought..." helps me keep my line through such shifts in perspective that y'know a dialogue is all about; my integrity is what lets me view others perspectives without losing my own.

Is the persuasion used to align user behaviour with goals that they themselves explicitly selected?

No. this is all a really intricate machinery to put our heads into, but it's not for us. it's just about us. i recall again Jaron Lanier (2018): "Why would Facebook go out and say they can change people's perception? Why make that study public? That's because it's not about two parties - you and facebook - it's about enticing investors into Facebook for dealing with you." Population control isn't so radical or mind-boggling once you've sat in a decisionmaking apparatus representing alot of people. Autocracy becomes a joke rather than a taboo very fast, together with defining "the average human" to design a system around, because it all hinges on deciding for people that aren't present and that involves alot of tedius processes to be fair to everyone - more tedius the less a person speaks up for themself. It's easier to dismiss the silent masses as someone agreeing then.
there is a topic to be had about normal/norm in statistics/standardizing humans/logistics and the parliamenterism of 2000s compared to the parliamentarism of the 1900s. it is contextual - as nothing exists in a vacuum - however we're not quite there yet;

i think it's like that air instruction manual where we gotta put on the breathing mask for ourselves before we can help others; i can't even do my own dishes after dinner & keep a weekly laundry day for the "research" into obscure topics of video essays, posts and comments then (despairing over having neglected myself all day, yet exhausted and addicted) i don't successfully compose myself enough to care for myself in the real world. not to mention how all my loneliness and negative emotions come all at once when i put down the screen- ofcourse i wanna feel better again in those moments. it really is an added emotional burden to be addicted.

“And so the only form of ethical persuasion that exists in the world is when the goals of the persuaders are aligned with the goals of the persuadees.” - Tristan Harris
https://www.wired.com/story/our-minds-have-been-hijacked-by-our-phones-tristan-harris-wants-to-rescue-them/

awesome axiom. could be a thing for oaths.

Here are some persuasive or addictive design mechanisms that designers should be careful with, or avoid entirely.

• variable rewards (the slot machine effect)
• (artificial) Scarcity & Urgency
• Social proof and Authority (top 10, the best, recommended, 605406 followers, ...)
• Reciprocation (message sent, delivered, read, ghosted, someone retweeted, someone visited your profile, ...
• Technology-induced guilt or obligations (parasocializing with... a fictional character.)
• Lack of friction (1-click design)
• Gamification
• Interruptions (popups, inducing negative emotions which urges further escapism into addiction)

Norbert Weiner wrote perhaps the first condemnations of a human being being put inbetween the input-output of machines. his are solid, fully academically published, papers. so we're not without litterature for navigating the "what does it matter if i'm persuaded and addicted and don't realize it myself? it's normal."

the more i learn of Piefed the more i realize the features to turn off those design mechanisms: can turn off post scores, total time on Piefed is logged and shown, no obnoxious ads, (can i turn off the notification's icon red & numbercount? probably.)

further reading mentioned in the article

• Adam Atler, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (2017

'Rhytm Games' i chose for myself

Guitar Hero-series (on PS2)

'Adventure Games' i chose for myself
"these games are a litmus test. can i even bear playing these? am i too quickly loosing focus to even sit with these? at the lowest shelf of my step-down drug cabinett."
2012 Counterfeit Monkey
Depression Quest
Quest for Glory