I have read many self help books related to building new habbits, improving performance/concentration for writing or any other work. Now I will pick a new book and will almost predict that they will talk about either managing time more efficiently with some tricks or reducing the internet use.
Recently I read few pages of a book where it was mentioned that it is good to embrace the boredom instead doing something random on internet like social media or lazy scrolling.
My question is mostly related to why internet is considered so much evil when people are doing wonders using it in daily life? Were these books written at the time internet was stretching it’s legs or by internet they mostly mean social media, porn or any other low value high time consuming activities?
by procrastinator_eng
14 Comments
Time is the one thing you can never get more of. Once it’s gone it’s gone, never to return.
Most people’s internet use amounts to little more than hours upon hours of escapism. Escapism often leads to an unproductively negative worldview, self-view, and expectations to boot.
Self-help begins with using your time productively. There are few things stopping people from that as much as the internet is.
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I’m going to be cynical and say it’s so you have more time to buy and read self help books. “My method will change your life! Until I release my next book that will change your life better!”
Self-help culture is *obsessed* with trying to put an economic value on your time. If you see humans as little money-printing machines, as the self-help gurus do, then of course you’re going to chastise people for being ‘unproductive’.
But okay, let’s pretend we accept for a minute the self-help narrative that life is a big game and the winner is the person who is the most efficient at playing it. I would argue that even with this twisted logic, probably worst way of getting ‘value’ from your time is to read a self-help book. The internet is both a force for good and a force for bad but we should judge it on a site-by-site basis. Self-help culture, on the other hand, is nothing but a force for bad in the world: a method of wringing money out of vulnerable people.
Stop giving these charlatans your time *or* your money! Any time spent not reading a self-help book is time well spent (to use a time = money idiom).
It’s probably because a lot of using the internet is mindless scrolling, and a lot of good habits involve being quite mindful or more deliberate in your actions.
Internet usage also tends to give information in short bursts and thus you don’t really focus properly, in a way that is detrimental to our brains. Reading a book for long periods involves more concentration than doomscrolling, for example, and thus is better for your brain in the long run.
Less screen time is also good for our eyes unless you’re consistently using blue screen protections, and basically all internet is accessed through a screen.
ETA: I don’t really read self-help books as I do find them a bit patronising. However, I try to be quite mindful in my life and a few years ago decided to try to keep my internet/screen time to less than an hour and a half per day. Doing that has made me a more present person and the benefits for me personally have been very good 🙂
Would you consider most of the time you spend online as “high-quality”? Scrolling through TikTok clips, Instagram posts, Discord conversations about everyday nonsense, YouTube videos full of hot takes from “influencers” while they put on makeup, reddit posts where new people ask the same questions that have been asked a million times before…
What do you think most people are using the internet for? Making the world a better place or doxxing each other over BTS ships? There’s so much hate and negativity online, especially recently, with everyone feeling free to demand everyone else bow down to their feelings while they virtue signal each other to death (and don’t actually take any real-world action to help the people they are “defending” when they attack each other).
Sure, you can curate your online experience, but the majority of people don’t, especially younger people who grew up with it. They also don’t seem to have any idea of how to interact in meatspace because all they ever deal with is online avatars and internet personas. I see a real lack of common sense and also a mindset where they don’t need to remember/learn/know anything because they can just “look it up” if they need to – then they go onto forums like this and ask ridiculous questions that could be better answered with a simple Google search (not your question, just in general).
Get off the internet (including your phone) unless you purposefully want to spend some time relaxing with mental junk food or are focused on a particular subject. Talk to people IRL, touch some grass, start a hobby that doesn’t involve computers. It’s fine to be online a lot in today’s world but you don’t want to lose complete touch with the physical realities of life and the nuances you get from face-to-face interactions.
For me how I feel about my internet use depends on what I’m doing with it.
Playing a game or watching a movie that entertains me, absolutely. Looking up something that caught my interest, finding recipe ideas, crafting projects, that’s learning and I’m happy with that. But just mindless scrolling between apps, or sites and general zoning out, I try and limit and redirect. I don’t feel bad watching random TikToks for like a little bit after work to kind of decompress but when I’ve been mindlessly staring at my phone for two hours that’s a problem for me.
You said you have read many self help books, but how much of their advice have you put into practice?
There won’t be a single book with a foolproof formula for you. You’re made of habits, and habits and routine is something you have to train your brain for.
For example, if you want to reduce your sugar consumption, and you have the habit of snacking in the afternoon, keep the snacking habit but change the snack. If you go for a bag of chips and a soft drink, get some fruit and water.
>My question is mostly related to why internet is considered so much evil when people are doing wonders using it in daily life?
because not everyone is doing wonders with it. by all means, if you’re one of those people who are, go ahead. chances are you are not though.
Speaking for myself I find too much time on the internet takes me away from tasks in my real life that need tending to. My daughter recently said something similar and her method of preventing it is to take up more reading for pleasure and finding actual books to get the info she’d otherwise get on the internet
The internet can be a huge time suck and can be a very toxic place. I ran a business on FB and IG and I was so glad when I retired that I was able to get off all the platforms. I’ve taken a few years off and started to dip my toe back into social media and I’m finding that even with self imposed limits I’m wasting time and diving into things that are not a benefit to my mental health.
Reddit is one of the few platforms I use because my feed isn’t filled with crap I don’t want to see.
I created a FB account to follow a few local politicians, I’m new to the area and felt that was a better way to get to know them than their overly sanitized websites. Since I follow about 5 people and am in 2 groups and have not added any friends FB tries to fill my feed with popular things, I get videos of Karens, car wrecks and a ton of clickbait sites.
It is possible to curate your social media, but it is a huge challenge and most people fall into the traps of clicking on the links with hard to resist titles.
As a millennial that didn’t really have access to the internet until post 2005 and didn’t have a smartphone til around 2011, I feel the need to agree with those self help books. The internet can be useful, but it can also be a hindrance. I do find myself much more easily distracted and unable to focus on things now that I have mindless shiny keys at my fingertips. I also recognize that I have a much harder time entertaining myself if the internet goes out. As much as the internet is good, I wish I hadn’t gotten so used to it as it has made it more difficult to deal without for a lot of people. I think if you ask most people, the time they spend online is most likely not being spent on anything meaningful. Most of my internet time is spent mindlessly scrolling reddit or watching YouTube baobab procrastinating without any thought. I think most time spent online is not used well.
If you have goals you want to accomplish, whether it is creating art or defeating a video game or making friends or finding a job, those goals take time and effort to accomplish. Being able to focus without distraction helps. The internet is full of distractions.
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