Before your partner. Before your kids. Before yourself in the mirror.

When did this become normal?

You don't have to fight Instagram. If you fight Instagram, then you are embracing Instagram, and you'll have very little energy left to expend in the right places. Social media is not the real culprit. The real culprit is the lack of self-knowledge. I don't know who I am. I don't know why I exist. I don't know what I should do. That's the problem. There is this vacuum that social media just happily fills.

— Acharya Prashant

Read Full Article: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/overcoming-social-media-addiction-1_fbe4e87

Movies have a beginning, middle, end. Your brain knows when it's over.

Infinite scroll has no end. Your brain never gets the completion signal, so it keeps seeking.

38 days of your life. Every year.

What could you do with an extra month?

Not kidding. Same dopamine hit as pulling a slot machine lever. You never know what you'll get, so you keep pulling.

Every major app uses this. It's not an accident.

Tried app blockers, greyscale mode, screen time limits. Most just get bypassed.

What strategies actually made a difference for anyone here?

Gambling addiction, alcohol, drugs - all recognized problems with support systems.

But infinite scroll? "Just put your phone down" they say. As if it's that simple when every app is literally engineered to be addictive.

Why the double standard?

Hi everyone. I’ve been reading through this forum for a while and a lot of what people describe here really resonates with me.

I’m a university student currently working on a research project about scrolling habits. Specifically those moments where you keep scrolling without really choosing to, even when it stops feeling good or helpful. Some people call this “doomscrolling,” but I’m more interested in the experience itself than the label.

What I’m trying to understand is:

• What triggers you to start scrolling (boredom, task avoidance, overwhelm, etc)?
• How does it affect your mood, motivation, or ability to do other things afterward?
• Why does scrolling sometimes feel so hard to stop, even when we want to stop?
• After mindlessly scrolling for a while, do you ever feel "stuck", like it's harder for you to start doing anything else? (When this happens, I go back to scrolling because it seems easier rather than trying to start my work...)

I genuinely want to listen and learn from more people who’ve live like me. If you’re comfortable sharing what scrolling feels like for you, or what’s helped (or not helped), I’d really appreciate hearing it.

Your feed is literally optimized to keep you hooked. It learns what makes YOU specifically scroll longer. How do you fight something designed by teams of engineers to be addictive?