I still peruse feeds of some people I used to follow, but now, instead of doing it compulsively every hour or whenever I need my dopamine, I do it once a month or so, if I don’t forget. I don’t have them bookmarked, so I also enter the full URLs.
And if Twitter says I need to log in to read more of a thread, or whatever, too bad. I don’t have that thingy that you use to log in to Twitter.
Now, Facebook is a different story since they offer a very walled garden. You cannot even read most of the stuff unless you log in, by default. Trouble is, there are people on it I interact with. As it happens with some of those people, Facebook is the only way to reach them.
And another thing is Hackernews, of course.
See, those are places where stuff happens. You go there, scroll to what interests you, engage in a discussion, and it almost feels like meeting people again, especially in a pandemic world.
Or I just want to feed my brain with new stuff to get that sweet dopamine.
I think that what could change this addiction could be entraining the brain to release dopamine as a reward for engaging into more immersive, time-consuming activities. Like reading more of the long form, deep articles or books. Watching a 2 hour movie instead of 15 minute usual youtube fodder. Get that side project to a usable state (starts crying).
In the same way, I bristle at the suggestion that I'm not rational enough to resist the "addiction" of push messaging. We all know what the word "addiction" actually means. This is not addiction, this is just hokey phooey using fake-medical language to push a liberal agenda of extra regulation.
Every time I get a notification from Twitter or Facebook, my day gets a little brighter. When LinkedIn tells me that someone is looking at my profile, that means someone cares, and that's a wonderful thing to know.