Addiction

I have an addiction to mindless scrolling and online shopping. It’s a instant dopamine addiction.

There, I said it. The first step is admitting it, right?

I have wasted so much time on social media that I have probably lost years of my life to it. This is not good, not at all.

It affects my ability to focus at my job, takes time away from my writing projects and personal pursuits.

In an effort to combat its addictiveness, I have chosen to uninstall all of the Meta apps and sign out of the websites. I have made it hard to log back in on purpose to prevent me from overly checking it. I haven’t deleted the accounts as there are aspects of the platforms that I still use. I stopped using TicTok ages ago because it was a complete waste of time. I should probably just delete the account for that because I am not a fan of it.

I have switched to Bluesky for all my social media needs and will be using this website and YouTube to share my life stories. Most of the people I was following on Instagram also have YouTube and I enjoy longer videos more than short. I have LinkedIn to connect with former co-workers and to keep a mild eye on changes in the world. I have links to all three in the top bar.

As for the online shopping, taking out the social apps that focus on selling crap to me was step one. Step two was unsubscribing from shopping apps like Amazon. Step three is unsubscribing from all newsletters from the products that I follow.

2025 is going to be an important year for me to reset my credit and decrease my consumer spending. Even my travels this year are planned to be local as much as possible in order to keep costs down.

It all boils down to this: Spend less money and energy on crap & create more time and space for myself.

Remember, you are what you eat and that include the media you consume. If you consume trash, then what happens to your mind and body on that trash?