Algorithmic Addiction

I was recently hit really badly with the nth round of Doom Scrolling addiction. I never wanted to be in it. But not scrolling wasn’t an option at all. Yes this addiction has come in phases for me. I just tend to leave work, friends, family and other responsibilities like even bringing medicines for family as I’m procrastinating everything and too lazy to do anything. It does end whenever I have a real conversation with a close person and an enlightenment occurs that I should get back to life! Hit the Gym again, Fix my sleep schedule, Go out of my house for work, Eat all meals, Talk to friends and family.

Having close people around me has helped me get away from the doom scrolling addiction.

There are 3 stages of the screen addiction.

1. Netflix: You watch a long form series, and you are hooked into it, then you just binge watch it, leaving aside everything else in the world. The addiction ends when the series ends, or when you have a self realisation. The good part of it, is that after the series ends, you have a chance to get back to life. Today’s temporary safe spot is that Netflix isn’t that good at getting us insta hooked onto another series, so there is a buffer time. A difficult situation would be if AI would keep us hooked into the continuation of the series. Or even worse make very similar series that will be of perfect interest and hook you instantly with the reels strategy like below
2. Youtube: Netflix had hooked us on long form series. Next, here you have a magical algorithm that knows what you want to watch and you continuously watch things until the entire content of that genre is completed from the recent days. Old videos are good when you want to watch with intention, but the real hook is in the new uploads, the channels that have a continuous building set of videos. Be it a news channel you follow, F1 race weekend, Dota 2 TI matches, Mr. Beast new video, or Tanmay Reacts video. If you have been following the channels, you would want to clear up the recently uploaded videos. At least there is an end. Maybe in say in 5 hours a day you clear up all the videos from your favorite channels. But if the algorithm gets better at always making you feel that watching a video is important (Say a tech education which you might a must watch, but is not necessary) then we are doomed.
3. Reels/TikTok/Shorts: This is the Holy Grail of doom scrolling. You are just drowned. You don’t choose the series or the video. You are just swiping up. You attention span is dropped so low that if something feels boring in your phone you just try to swipe up (but doesn’t work on other apps). At this point you are just a machine whose goal is to just watch as much content as possible and the only action you would do is swipe up.
4. AI: You are kidding me, what worse is yet to come… I hope humanity exists. I can really just imagine what is yet to come by extrapolating the current.
   • Essentially the algorithm addiction is man made and in the best interest of the companies
   • Till now they have targeted out attention, what if it goes beyond.
   • Money and Markets have been an engine running on human competence and productivity. Supply/Demand. You build things quickly and with higher quality that the world wants and you get paid for it. This is natural and a human tendency. Even If there are some humans that are stuck in the money making market controlled by a company then it still a competition between companies that keeps the world stable and still humanly competition to have between companies. But if we are at a state where the algorithms runs all companies then the only thing that would matter to them is to keep the humans working and addicted to their system by working or watching reels. This reminds me of a Black Mirror episode where every human is on an exercise cycle and just cycling to generate electricity which generates power and the humans get money, which they use to buy food and other stuff.
   • Anyway that went too deep, and there could be any other worse future possibilities as well. Now, coming back to the Doom Scrolling Solutions.

Solutions

Here is what has worked for me in the past

1. A long conversation of my current state with my loved ones. Explaining them the situation makes them realise that I’m drowned and their simple words saying ‘Promise me you will watch xyz only after dinner’ is a good start.
2. A random walk on the street, A gym session, A random wedding to attend, A vacation to foreign place. This helps break the routines and give you a chance to rethink life and get back to it.
3. The worst of all. Overdose (OD). You have watched every f’ing thing possible for days together and f’ed you sleep schedule and it is 8 am in the morning ( as of writing this post as well) and you realise that this has to end.
4. Digital Detox: Delete the addictive apps, Set App timers, Grayscale mode, Unfollow channels. These steps have shown improvements as well. It adds friction to reach the apps.
5. People who are good at setting principles of life are in a good spot. If setting goals works for you then great, you have a solution. If not well my friend you have a weak mind and an excuse of having a free mind without rules and restriction doesn’t help this case.
6. Being Intentional with a strong mind also helps. Just think once before acting. “Why am I picking up my phone?”, “Does watching ‘A speed run of Minecraft’ ever help me in my real life?”
7. Switching to other human hobbies like reading a book or playing football with friends is a good break from the addiction to reevaluate.