I bet it's not about the internet, just the social media apps.

[integrate777@discuss.online]

I bet it's not about the internet, just the social media apps. Why not just uninstall the apps or tell the participants not to use them?

[baggie@lemmy.zip]

I did something similar to what this article describes a bit back. For me it was turning off my phone, the effect was staggering. Anxiety etc dropped immediately.

For me in particular, it was being constantly available to anyone in my life, but also the doom scrolling, and knowing there's a vast ocean of infinite content at my fingertips. Sure, I could curate my experience, and block people, but overall the phone is still functioning largely the same as it ever does. I can always turn those features back on. By changing how the device works externally, you're disconnecting those people from the decade and a half of reinforcement and whatever they have associated with their phones.

To get similar results I was able to just turn off my phone, but that might vary for some. Anyway, it seems reasonable for the experiment at least.

[leftover@lemm.ee]

I agree. I’m on lemmy because Reddit wouldn’t allow me to control what I was seeing. It’s definitely a breath of fresh air not it being continually bombarded by DT this and DT that. It has me thinking maybe I just dump the social media apps all together.

[sleafordmod@feddit.uk]

True. On Lemmy I can still be bombarded by stuff about the two billionaires running the USA, if I look at the active threads on all instances. But I can avoid that by just looking at threads from the instance I'm on, or by visiting particular communities individually.