Ask Lemmy

Of course not. Internet, even with the issues of social media, is a huge net good. Remember before the internet? If you and your acquaintances didn't know something and it wasn't in an encyclopedia, you just didn't get to know that thing. Maybe a teacher at a uni you could call, maybe.

The ability to communicate information before that was limited to things like telephone, fax, and the mail. Vastly slower and much less bandwidth. This would impact our ability to get life-saving information to people through means other than radio.

You'll probably get the biggest benefit by getting off social media.

Stop using social media. Yes. Good idea.

Stop using the internet entirely? No. Bad idea.

Depends on what you do when online.

Are you actively searching for knowledge so you learn how to do things (playing a game, an instument, learning how to fix something), reading (news) from various sources or asking questions out of interest? No, not worth stopping, never stop being curious and learning.

Are you passively consuming all that's being pushed/force fed to you? Yep, but don't quit, change how you use internet. Use it to your own good, not so companies can have you hooked.

Here, the phone is in the livingroom on a shelf when I'm at home and don't need it for 2fa. Also, default notification sound is None and I set a sound for things I want to be notified of like ring tone, sms, personal messages (no group), calendar and set a dnd period between 21:00 and 7:00. I use a tablet for gaming as alternative for TV. (Although I'd be better off to read the magazines that are piling up ;) )

It makes sense to spend some time away from it to reorient your life. And I guess some people live without it. But it brings a lot of positives if used in moderation.

I'd say no, the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks. But yeah, it's important to have enough discipline to get outside and do plenty of stuff that doesn't revolve around the internet

Why stop at internet, stop using keyboards as they're used to cause so much harm. And pen and paper, so much harm has been done by letters, books, messages. Slippery slope.

Internet is a tool. You can whitelist content to suit your needs rather than allow the floodgates of ad tech play with your mind. I remember the days before the internet. Bureaucracy galore, queuing for basic services, relying on the whims of some individual to get simple actions performed. It wasn't fun. With today's low attention span and low tolerance for boredom most people would have a mental breakdown.

I mean, "obviously causing damage to our health"

The issue with that is the question "And do what?"

Like what matters is that you do something that is actually healthy for your body. Internet is if anything probably a step up from the age of couch surfing on the TV, since you at least need to actively navigate it. Mostly meaning to say that you could easily just choose something that isn't any better.

But either way you'd be better off just choosing something healthy to do, like exercise.

As a web developer, I would rather not lose my entire industry. I was very poor until I started this work. And I still have a lot of catching up to do!

Nope. I'd have to go to banks, on office, and generally be around people. Ick. No thanks.

As someone who remembers a time without even answering machines, let alone computers at home: yes, absolutely. We are definitely worse off.

I stopped carrying a cell phone in my pocket and over the past year or so I've gotten much better at talking to strangers and appreciating my surroundings. Pretty based if you ask me.

We spend half our lives online nowadays and it’s obviously causing damage to our health.

Any time an argument begins with "obviously" alarm bells ring. If it's obvious it must be easy to find a reference?

Anyway, if I stopped using the Internet I would be immediately out of a job and unable to communicate with most of my friends. So even if there is some kind of health damage it probably still wouldn't be worth it.

I certainly recommend taking breaks from the internet every now and again. I didn't really have the internet until sometime in highschool (it depends if you consider AOL before the WWW addition "the internet", though I guess we had BBS and such before that). When out on my own, we couldn't afford a monthly dial-up subscription, so we didn't use it that much. Certainly, no internet in my pocket until I was into my 20s, and certainly not full browsers, etc. like today. Maybe that makes it easier for me, but I don't know.

Depends what issues you are trying to address.

Likely no issues turning it off most of the time.

There are retreats one can go on with time lock safes to put phones in.

Yes, but not long term.

You'll always wanna return to hang out with the Animal Crossing villagers aka Lemmy users sometime. Just say you're on holiday for a bit (for Muricans: on vacation).

Try it for 1 day then report back to us. Curious how it will go.

You can always try to find new meanings for yer life. Yes, it takes effort, but so does taking care of your other needs.
Try out some new stuff - hobbies, seeing new peeps. Ask yer friends to join you for new things, maybe it's more fun that way.

I started spending less and less time on the computer. It gave me the chance to be more spontaneous, doing different things with my girlfriend I normally don't do.

:..except if you talk about ALL usage of any sort. That's gonna be difficult since digital is in our lives for a stay.

You can go 1-2 days but eventually you will get bored if you don't have anything to do in the meantime. Our brains nowadays are wired to consume content on demand and cutting them out could be hard.

You could identify what is causing your addiction, if it's social media, then i find it best to use the browser version, and not the app. This way you will spend much much less time on it and eventually you can cut it out if you wish.

... they said, on the Internet.

The benefits are obviously very worthwhile, else you wouldn't be asking. Access to community, information, entertainment, communication that you wouldn't have otherwise.

We can also see a lot of damaging things like all the bad news happening in the world that has nothing to do with us but still hurts to read, lots of things to distract from our real lives, a need to always be present when someone sends us a message.

My suggestion would be moderation rather than abstinence. If you're feeling unhappy because of what you're seeing, put the phone down. I know it's harder for some than others, but there are apps that can disable your phone after a certain amount of time I believe. Turn off your electronic devices and put them away when you're not actively using them. Put on "do not disturb" mode on your phone if you don't want to be contacted. Realise that whenever your phone makes a noise, it is only asking permission for you to look at it - if you're busy then you can ignore whatever phonecall or message it is (unless you're a parent and it might be an emergency with your child or something)

I think it’s worth trying for a month or two

No lol. How am I supposed to get free books without LibGen and Anna's Archive? Those alone make the Internet worthwhile for me.

No. I actually don't think it's a good idea to stop using social media at all. Maybe it can be, but overall social media is a net-positive thing (I hope i worded it correctly, am not a native speaker)

Instead moderate usage of social media. And filter out accounts or posts that aren't worth your time.

This sounds to me like going Vegan, while you would have almost all the same benefits when reducing meat eating to just Sundays or the weekend. It's not black and white.

I think the premise is questionable. After a quick google search it was easy to find studies showing that internet access is beneficial to health.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9218541/

"The results indicate that access to the Internet significantly improves the average health condition and alleviates health inequality."

https://www.fcc.gov/health/SDOH

"There is increasing evidence demonstrating a strong relationship between broadband access, Internet adoption, and health outcomes."