I don’t want to pretend that I’m someone who is immune to Youtube binges or similar behaviors. However I am not sure why this is a problem and what meaningful work that this behavior was getting in the way of? Speaking for myself, 9⁄10 if I have a commitment the next morning, I won’t stay up late on my computer because… I know I have a commitment at a set time. (If you forced me to hypothesize why that 1⁄10 times I don’t, I’d guess that it is stress related anticipation means I can’t sleep even if I did lay down—but that is just a wild guess).
I’m also surprised to see how most of the solutions in the comments involve removing access to anything… doing something more productive. I think there is a difference between the nebulous guilt we feel about Opportunity Cost—“oh geez I could have used that time more effectively” and specific, tangible, realistic things we could have done but didn’t.I often find that Youtube Binges are caused by/as-a-result-of not being able to find those activities, they do not frustrate them.
I have perennially found that whatever vice (or as you call it ‘hyperstimuli’) that I remove, I just replace it with another but it’s never a beneficial activity. (The one exception I can think of was when I stopped listening to music when I had a bout of insomnia and instead replaced it with lectures on Wittgenstein or Quantum Physics, because I figured “I might as well learn SOMETHING’).
This has caused me an incredible amount of frustration. For all the talk of “social media detox” and even the farcically named “dopamine detox” none seem to actually result in net increases in my well being.
Going back to what I said about specific, tangible, realistic alternatives: I have found that the only way to stop mid-way through a Youtube binge or a Instagram scroll is to be excited about a project that I have a lot of faith in my ability to complete, and a viable first-step which I can do now.
This isn’t fail-safe, if I’m writing a journal entry or an essay, and I have to leave in 30 minutes, you bet your bottom dollar I’ll be late because I’ll be so engrossed in that writing process. But that doesn’t sound like a ‘hyperstimuli’
I don’t want to pretend that I’m someone who is immune to Youtube binges or similar behaviors. However I am not sure why this is a problem and what meaningful work that this behavior was getting in the way of? Speaking for myself, 9⁄10 if I have a commitment the next morning, I won’t stay up late on my computer because… I know I have a commitment at a set time. (If you forced me to hypothesize why that 1⁄10 times I don’t, I’d guess that it is stress related anticipation means I can’t sleep even if I did lay down—but that is just a wild guess).
I’m also surprised to see how most of the solutions in the comments involve removing access to anything… doing something more productive. I think there is a difference between the nebulous guilt we feel about Opportunity Cost—“oh geez I could have used that time more effectively” and specific, tangible, realistic things we could have done but didn’t. I often find that Youtube Binges are caused by/as-a-result-of not being able to find those activities, they do not frustrate them.
I have perennially found that whatever vice (or as you call it ‘hyperstimuli’) that I remove, I just replace it with another but it’s never a beneficial activity. (The one exception I can think of was when I stopped listening to music when I had a bout of insomnia and instead replaced it with lectures on Wittgenstein or Quantum Physics, because I figured “I might as well learn SOMETHING’).
This has caused me an incredible amount of frustration. For all the talk of “social media detox” and even the farcically named “dopamine detox” none seem to actually result in net increases in my well being.
Going back to what I said about specific, tangible, realistic alternatives: I have found that the only way to stop mid-way through a Youtube binge or a Instagram scroll is to be excited about a project that I have a lot of faith in my ability to complete, and a viable first-step which I can do now.
This isn’t fail-safe, if I’m writing a journal entry or an essay, and I have to leave in 30 minutes, you bet your bottom dollar I’ll be late because I’ll be so engrossed in that writing process. But that doesn’t sound like a ‘hyperstimuli’