Are you aware of how internet consumption takes over your whole day? It’s not by accident, for sure. This YouTube creator wants to help you stop it. Let’s see how.
You must have realized how these days, especially now that we spend more time at home, we tend to go down the internet rabbit hole. Social media owners know it well. Joey Schweitzer, the owner of the YouTube channel Better Ideas, makes an important remark in his video How the algorithm controls your life (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XO53urLcvY), saying that we are not the customer for social media companies – we are the product. The customers are the ones that advertise their products and services online.
The main goal of social media is to make people use them more – that’s why the content is fun and enticing, that’s why we have those red notifications that spike our dopamine, and that’s why the algorithm on the websites is so smart at recommending more and more content that we can binge. As a result, we waste our whole day into nothing and feel more and more addicted to those “pleasure boxes” (as Joey calls them), be it our smartphones, tablets, or laptops.
How To Defeat The Algorithm
There is a solution for any issue, and we are not doomed. Of course, it all depends on us, even though we can agree with Joey on one thing – the more time we spend online, the more (almost physically) painful it becomes not to consume all the online content. It’s a modern drug. So, how to get sober? Here are some ways (also recommended by Joey and Nathaniel Drew in the video) to go cold-turkey from your internet addiction, or at least bring in some healthy balance.
- Audit Your Time – To get away from the digital world, it might be a great idea to go analog. As Joey said, you should take your trusty pen and paper and write down how you’d want your day to look like. Robin Sharma would say – and we couldn’t agree more – miscellaneous plans lead to miscellaneous results. In addition to Joey’s advice, we’d add David Goggins’ tip to write down everything you do in a day, without sugar-coating. You will face the truth on how much time you waste daily, and more importantly, how much time you spend online.
- Mindfulness – How often do you try to stay quiet? Are you able to do it? We know it seems impossible at times. However, if you start practicing mindfulness (or meditation, whatever you feel suits you), it will be challenging at first, but you will increase your ability to stay still in silence. Now, we don’t recommend you to live like a monk without technology, but training your willpower in that way will be like calisthenics for your brain.
- What Are You Escaping From? – This is a tricky question, but a necessary one. When we increasingly consume online content and get caught up with it, it can also mean we don’t find our everyday life fulfilling enough, so we have to “escape” from it into the online world. What do you really like doing? Can you re-set your priorities and make some decisions to create the life you don’t have to escape from? Yes, you absolutely can. It’s a question worth pondering.
- Go Outside – Spending time in nature rests our mind. If you go somewhere where you can be surrounded by greenery, it will do wonders for the possible brain fog that’s going on due to over-consumption of socials.
- Exercise – In our opinion, this one is a no-brainer. Exercise makes a world of difference in overall health, as well as discipline. When you start your day with some sweaty training, weightlifting, or even a calisthenics session, your energy levels rise, and as you challenge yourself and get stronger, your mind gets stronger, too.
Finally, we don’t want you RadPeeps to get us wrong – the internet is a fantastic source of information, great learning, and connecting tool, and it can assist you in creating the job and life you dream of. Like anything in life, it can be both an elixir and poison. It only depends on our relationship with it and how we use it. And since we are rad, we’re able to make the best of it. Let’s get it!
WTR?
You need to remember what’s real in the real world sometimes, and not be drawn in by what’s been designed to capture and keep your attention. Those of us that were born before the advent of the internet should be able to understand this. Get out in the world now and then Radasser’s, and remember what it’s like to live.
