A couple weeks ago, I deleted social media off my phone. Insta and reddit was all that was left, but I noticed how much of a useless time sink they were becoming. My daily mood has also improved.
Now, I’ve been reading manga and playing chess online to fill the gap. But I’m still looking for suggestions on what else there is to do besides doom scroll. It’s not like I’m outlawing the internet entirely, I still have interests and hobbies etc, but I’m open to just about anything.
Lemmy (Summit) Open Sudoku
RSS feeds, Gemini and Gopher. Always good stuff there, and feels cosier than social media!
I second this! Hunting, curating, and organizing rss feeds are the best!
Reading articles and books
I read lots of books. Libby is an app to electronically check out books from your local library for free. You can also read lots of amateur stories online on various sites. Royal Road has been one of my favorite sites for regular stories that you can read in public.
+1 for Libby. Also shout out to Z-Library, Library Genesis, and the Internet Archive for all the book epubs and pdfs you can find there
Lemmy mostly
Honestly, as someone who largely disliked social media and was typically a lurking doomscroller that was ready to quit social media altogether at the reddit app ban, what made the best change ever was becoming someone who is primarily a poster.
I post what I want, when I want, and I get to start the conversation that way. It’s always a topic I want to talk about, and it’s something there isn’t much to argue about, and all the interactions will be 99% positive.
It’s a small crowd here, so you can get people that are ready to talk with whoever reaches out to the masses first.
You can take time replying to people, and if no one is talking at the moment, it gives you time to plan a next post.
Pick a topic you enjoy and make yourself our local expert. That prompts you to keep actively learning about something you enjoy too so you can answer people’s questions they ask you.
switching to lemmy has made my social media consumption SIGNIFICANTLY less doomscroll-ey
How is so?
no addictive algorithm to keep you hooked and lemmy actually encourages you to act instead of just scrolling endlessly.
I was like most Americans doom scrolling things things like r/latestagecapitalism and a r/aboringdystopia because I was aware that things were fucked; like most of us are.
It felt like the fuckery was permanent and that there was nothing I could do but accept that this was reality and try to make the most out of it; filling me w despair about life and leading me to doomscrolling all the time.
Lemmy showed to me in writing that this fuckery was predicted almost 2 centuries ago and that there’s actually very few people perpetuating the fuckery (for their own benefit) and they’ve engineered this system to create the mass false belief that all the fuckery is permanent and that there is nothing we can do about it except push for small, ineffectual changes.
Lemmy, tiktok, and rednote have shown me that people like me are living significantly better lives simply because the ultra rich are not allowed to perpetuate the type of fuckery that was keeping me trapped in a doomscroll loop.
Rednote, in particular, was eye opening for me: I learned from them that most people on that side of the planet assume that life altering medical bills, housing unaffordability, & student loans like mine were nothing more than anti-american propaganda from their governments.
us media has a way of sucking the life out of you. internet, movies and even games.
It’s like refined sugar both addicting and difficult to avoid
MTGA. Lots of fun.
Sir, please stop recommending crack to cure OP’s smoking addiction.
Hey man, I can quit whenever I like… Just one more draft and I’ll hit the big leagues
Don’t replace social media with something else on your phone.
Put the phone down and walk away.
I hear heroin is nice.
Probably less addictive.
This was my philosophy, then I realized I prefer crossword puzzles and sudoku on my phone because I can do it one-handed so I can pet my cat at the same time.
I also tried watching shows on my TV instead of my phone but it’s harder to block ads.
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Reading a paper book, playing balatro on mobile. I’m not using my phone as much, not with the current events happening.
I decided to subscribe to digital accessible news papers with proper articles, a left-leaning, center and a right-leaning. While articles from public domains and opinions from online forums can at times give an idea about what goes on, a well researched and well expressed article by a paid media is very well worth the money spend.
So I dropped social media from my idle-time and and now read interesting articles and feel I have a much more in-depth knowledge on current important topics and less directed by sudden breaking news opinionated clickbait titles.
My battery usage says I spend around half my time on TikTok. I also spend some considerable time here on Lemmy and chatting on Discord, Signal, etc. The third place is for reading. Sadly, I spend more time than I would like on shopping apps, and the rest are usually in the ‘< 1%’ (phone settings, e-mails, etc.).
I guess the only healthy suggestion is reading.
Check if my apps are up to date. Then remind myself fun is in real life not my phone. I’m not being pedantic it just helps to focus on my real happiness and keeping my hands busy than not and dooming in my phone.
I read ebooks.
Libby is an absolute blessing.
Oooo, I should try that! I have been using KU, which I know isn’t awesome, but did allow romance authors to break the publishing model (fascinating story: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/romance-novels/). And there’s a part of me that wants to give the middle finger to publishers who took in a bunch of money from romance books to pay for books/authors that would never recoup their costs.
My friend Anna started up an archive of some sort; you should check it out. At least that’s what she told me over dinner the other night.
And a certain archive my friend Anna seems to be running. Not that I know anything about it; she mentioned it at dinner the other evening.
In terms of chances:
- 90% Tiktok
- 8% Lemmy
- 2% YouTube
When I’m actively doing something (not just on my phone):
- 70% YouTube
- 10% Crunchyroll
- 5% Friends jellyfin servers
- 5% Netflix
- 10% Browser / Chatgpt / Termux / any other tool
Duolingo. My whole family has caught the bug. I hear the little ba-ding! noise from all corners of the house all evening long.
Y todavía no puedo hablar bien español 😕
I wish there was a foss option that was so good for, for lack of a better description, mindless learning
It is not as game-ified, but you can have a look at anki. There are plenty of premade decks about various topics to learn with.
I’ve found premade decks tend to be extremely over done in a way that makes them actually pretty ass. However, I do love anki so much. I’m using it for Japanese , 2000 words in so far.
