HN is also in a strange category for me.

The articles and the conversations are better quality than on any other social media with the added bonus that what I read is relevant for my daily job and career.

At the same time, it's still distracting, I almost never finish an article and go straight to the comments, thinking "entertain me, comment section". I feel productive, but in reality, it's superficial knowledge, and spending time here is time I don't spend on actually working on my goals.

In the end, it's all about balancing the pros and cons. For Facebook, Instagram, it's easy, I don't use them. For Twitter, I focus exclusively on tech so that I don't end up in a pointless yet vicious fight. For HN, it's spending 10 minutes on the top articles, keeping up with important industry news every second day.

I feel the same way.

I've spent countless hours in the last ~5 years on reading seemingly useful articles, and comment sections.

I cannot pinpoint even one instance where anything helped me IRL.

Something might've helped indirectly, but the connection is not clear.

Does it need to be a "direct" benefit? I think sometimes the things we do out of our own volition shape ourselves not only directly but also indirectly.

As a personal example, I have noticed how my way of discussing heated topics has changed based on discourse I have seen here.

And this would not have happened if I didn't invest time similar to yourself.

Yes in your case you identified a specific way to improve your communication skills by immersing yourself in the HN environment.

This is a hit or miss though, because you either identify specific ways to improve or not, and you may or may not actually improve those identified skills by reading trough the comments (and not taking action).

If improvement is the goal, then there are more efficient ways to eg. learn better ways to discuss heated topics (like reading a specific book on the topic, or attending a "Nonviolent Communication" workshop).

The more I think about this the more HN only seems like a place to get a specific flavour of entertainment (which I personally like), but nothing more.

It’s still a random search for new information, distraction, entertainment.

Yes, but random search for information is not always a bad thing. There's a time for exploration.

I agree. HN is net positive for me over the many years I’ve been around. But if you want to cut social media, you probably should include HN ;)

At some point I decided that abandoning social media as a whole would be a tremendous task because of years of being 'trained' by tech... Now I separate useful and useless social media. Shaping my perspective this way helps regulate my Internet use a lot.

I think if you're disciplined in your HN use - like, check the front page twice a day, not a few times an hour - then it's basically a community-curated newspaper. And while newspapers may not be particularly healthy, they're probably better than most social media.

HN content tends to be longer-form which I feel is quite different from the typical infinite scrolling for quick dopamine hits on sites like Reddit or Twitter or Facebook.

Isn't reading a book the same, by this definition? You could say that when picking up a book you do control the topic (while in social media it is others), but this is an illusion if you do not read that book for the second time.