I did a test last October where I disabled Facebook, Twitter, Reddit on my computer and on my phone. It was a good experiment.
I was a little bit tired of the same topics everyday over and over (e.g. election, covid, end of the world). There is also a kind of toxic environment where the discussions are not there anymore. The new rules of the game are to be right and get attention instead of sharing knowledge.
One common pattern that we see often on social networks is someone, somewhere got offended by someone or something and instead of fixing the problem between them or ignoring it, they broadcast it on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or any kind of social networks. Or they share a post from someone where they completely disagree by denigrating or insulting them instead of trying to understand their view.
By sharing this "event", the compound effect happens (similar to the "Wheat and chessboard problem") and it’s a flooding of toxicity and bad noise making a bad experience of social networks.
"Wheat and chessboard problem"
"If a chessboard were to have wheat placed upon each square such that one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on (doubling the number of grains on each subsequent square), how many grains of wheat would be on the chessboard at the finish?"
"On the 64th square of the chessboard alone, there would be 2^63 = 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains, more than two billion times as many as on the first half of the chessboard."
[Source]
This is the bad side but the good side is it’s easy to keep contact with family, friends and acquaintances across the world. I like to see their projects and passion or I like the idea that people in a specialized domain around the world can share and talk about their domain and share it with everyone.
Result of my experiment!
During this one month off, the result was I spent more time on reading books and on my projects. With a phone in your pocket or close to you, it’s really easy to look at the news or any social networks anytime when you have 5-10 seconds available. By disabling apps, I avoid looking at my phone and I thought more about random stuff (e.g. projects).
After this month off, I added a maximum time on each app (Facebook:5min, Reddit:10min, ...) and since I do that, I really enjoy the experience more!
The next parts below are about how to disable websites on your computer and apps on your mobile if you wanna try.
DNS Loopback
This part is about how to block some websites on your computer (Windows OS). The trick is to do a DNS loopback which will redirect the website address into your computer locally.
"What exactly is DNS?
The Domain Name System resolves the names of internet sites with their underlying IP addresses adding efficiency and even security in the process. ... At its most basic, DNS is a directory of names that match with numbers. The numbers, in this case, are IP addresses, which computers use to communicate with each other." [Source]
First, you need to open notepad as administrator
- Click on Start Menu and type "notepad"
- Right click on notepad and click on "Run as administrator"
- After, open this file: "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts"
- If you don’t find this file, you may need to switch the file extension (Text Documents *.txt to All Files *.*)
- If you want to block a website (e.g. "yourwebsite.com"), you just need to add 2 new entries like that:
127.0.0.1 yourwebsite.com
127.0.0.1 www.yourwebsite.com
- Don’t forget to save the file. You may need to reboot or flush the DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns)
"127.0. 0.1 is the loopback Internet protocol (IP) address also referred to as the localhost. The address is used to establish an IP connection to the same machine or computer being used by the end-user."[Source]
Now if we ping your yourwebsite, it will target your computer loopback ip
ping www.yourwebsite.com
Pinging www.yourwebsite.com [127.0.0.1] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Ping statistics for 127.0.0.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
Some examples (to include inside the hosts file):
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
127.0.0.1 www.twitter.com
127.0.0.1 reddit.com
127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com
127.0.0.1 instagram.com
127.0.0.1 www.instagram.com
...
[Tip of the post]
If you have Facebook pages and you don't want to block it,
you could use this link below to see and manage your page(s) only: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=your_pages&ref=bookmarks
Like that, you will not see your main feed every time.
Screen time (Android)
You can uninstall the app on your mobile phone and reinstall later but one feature I like to use on Android is the screen time where you can set a time limit for an application.
Usually, I set at 5 minutes for Facebook and 10 minutes for Reddit but for the one month off, I set 0 minute where it's always disabled.
One minute before the time limit, your screen will become gray. After the time is over, the app will close by it-self and the icon will appear in gray.
How to set a screen time?
- Find the "Cog" inside your phone
- Click on "Apps & notifications"
- Select the application that you would like to set a time limit (e.g. Facebook)
- You should see a "Screen time" option, otherwise, click on "Advanced"
- Click on "Screen time"
- Click on "App timer"
Screen time (iOS)
There is a similar option with iPhone/iPad about the Screen Time.
Click on the Settings button and you will see the "Screen time" in the list with multiple options like Downtime, App Limits, Always Allowed, Use Screen Time Passcode, ...
Book and Documentary
There is an excellent book named "Digital Minimalism" where the author (Cal Newport) suggests to do a "30-day digital declutter" by disabling or removing all applications that require your attention or like he says: "Remove applications that make money with your attention". After this period of time, you will rebuild from scratch the tools that you need.
I read this book last year but I didn't do the 30-day directly. I limited myself with the screen time but by doing the 30-day digital declutter last October, I found that the result and the impact was a lot higher.
Here are 2 small samples from the book:
I also learned about the negative impact of unrestricted online activity on psychological well-being. Many people I spoke to underscored social media's ability to manipulate their mood. The constant exposure to their friend's carefully curated portrayals of their lives generates feelings of inadequacy, especially ways to be publicly excluded.
In addition, as demonstrated during the 2016 presidential election and its aftermath, online discussion seems to accelerate people's shift toward emotionally charged and dragining extremes. The techno-philosopher Jaron Lanier convincingly argues that the primacy of anger and outrage online is, in some sense, an unavoidable feature of the medium: In an open marketplace for attention, darker emotions attract more eyeballs than positive and constructive thoughts. For heavy internet users, repeated interaction with this darkness can become a source of draining negativity.
...
Now here's the problem: Our society today, through the wonders of consumer culture and hey-look-my-life-is-cooler-than-yours social media, has bred a whole generation of people who believe that having these negative experiences--anxiety, fear, guilt, etc.--- is totally not okay.
I mean, if you look at your Facebook feed, everybody there is having a fucking grand old time.
Look, eight people got married this week! And some sixteen-year-old on TV got a Ferrari for her birthday. And another kid just made two billion dollars inventing an app that automatically delivers you more toilet paper when you run out.
Meanwhile, you're stuck at home flossing your cat. And you can't help but think your life suck even more than you thought.
The Feedback Loop from Hell has become a borderline epidemic, making many of us overly stressed, overly neurotic, and overly self-loathing.
...
There is also an interesting documentary on NetFlix about how the social medias capture our attention:
Like almost everything in the world, there is always both sides of the medal and I think, we are still in early years with social networks. I think we will need more time to "masterize" this part.
