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For me, the worst part is that it is so hard to go back to previous forms of media. I often delete these short form content apps in an effort to quit them, but

For me, the worst part is that it is so hard to go back to previous forms of media. I often delete these short form content apps in an effort to quit them, but it is now so difficult to get engaged with "slower" forms of media. The thing with Tiktok isn't the length of the media, it's just how fast-paced and "catchy" it is. I could watch an hour long fast paced video just fine, but watching a slow paced show, or reading a book is so much more difficult. It truly is like a drug.

boringg 1y ago
You let your dopamine loop get hacked
- jollyllama 1y ago
  This. It's going to take some serious effort to un-wirehead yourself. Look to religious traditions for methods. Meditation, fasting, prayer.
  - fennecbutt 1y ago
    Or just walk outside lmao. Those religious traditions have roots in control and manipulation.
dleeftink 1y ago
The first step to recovery is... You'll get there. Go from shorter form content to things that'll grab your attention, piece by piece.
mtalantikite 1y ago
> I could watch an hour long fast paced video just fine, but watching a slow paced show, or reading a book is so much more difficult. Attention and concentration are skills that can be trained, so not all is lost. I was feeling like I was losing my focus about a decade ago and decided that every morning I'd wake up and read a novel for 30 minutes or so. Within a few weeks you'll notice the difference.
- famahar 1y ago
  Yeah, it's amazing how nice this feels. You can tell your brain is healing. You're lighter, happier, more relaxed. The first few days are rough though. Hard to focus. Need for stimulation. It really is a drug. Horrible reality so many people are trapped in.
- rrgok 1y ago
  I don't understand. The problem is not that we don't have attention or concentration. Otherwise how can he watch hour long fast paced video. This a different form of attention. I would like to call it the intensity of attention. Reading a book, require attention but of lower intensity. While watching an hour long fast paced video, require a high intensity attention.
  - jquery 1y ago
    They put reading a book and watching slow paced television in the same category, which to me seems like a category error entirely. I see nothing wrong with avoiding slow-paced video… life is short, time is precious. If slow video is not your thing, that’s fine. However, books are a different matter entirely. Not all books are worth reading, but being unable to read any book is definitely a sign that your attention span is suffering. Some books are low-intensity, but some are quite high-intensity, and everything in between. But regardless of where they are on that spectrum, all books require an attention span greater than the one required to watch TikTok videos. My attention span went (back) up after I forced myself to read some books start to finish. It’s something you can lose, but fortunately it’s also something you can regain.
    - rrgok 1y ago
      I don't know. I have a hard time reading most books because they are indeed slow-paced. And by "books" I mean novels and fantasy books. But I can read an HN/Reddit discussion of several pages without a problem. Heck, sometimes I spend hours reading a specific subreddit. I like to think that books (novels and fantasy) are low-resolution prose, so the crux of the matter is distributed — mostly useless info — across several pages. While forums — like HN or Reddit — are high-resolution prose. I don't know if I make sense.
famahar 1y ago
Watch the film Sátántangó in one sitting with no distraction. If you can do that, you are healed. I imagine a chronic tiktok user would find the film a form of torture.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Almost any film from the mid-70s and earlier, go online and read recent reviews, and they're all full of complaints about the pacing. "Too boring!" "Too slow!" "Fell asleep while watching!" I mean, first of all, who falls asleep during a movie? Even stuff I've seen 30 times already, is still engaging and holds my attention from start to finish. Yet, then again, we've had to cancel "friends movie night" in our house because people would come over, sit down to watch the movie, and after 10 minutes they're all scrolling their phones and bored with the movie. Unless it's got frantic action every second, you're going to lose people. Something is really wrong with our attention spans.
googlryas 1y ago
I think you need to make the judgement if a long video is long because it's worth it and needs to be that long, or because it's padded for some reason. When I come across a padded video that I still want to consume for some reason, I usually just paste the url into gemini and ask for a tl;dr and get a few paragraphs to read summarizing the video.
cvoss 1y ago
Try going a whole day (like a Saturday) without consuming any digital media. It can be a challenging experience, but totally worth it, even if just once, to feel what it's like to not be tied to such things. I found it very relaxing and freeing. No YT, FB, IG, TT, or TV for sure. For an extra challenge, try no music (except what you can make yourself) or news (including HN). You'll find yourself grabbing your phone only to immediately put it down again. No need to force yourself to read or go for a walk or whatever. Do whatever you feel like all day, just not the digital things.
- jondwillis 1y ago
  I would run out of stuff to do within an hour or two. Which is the point. I’d have to get into new stuff that isn’t phone or laptop.
jerf 1y ago
Try the video speed adjustments. Most sites offer 2x now. Up to 4x is getting around, and that's generally going to be past what most people can understand for speech, even with practice. I do a lot of YouTube long-form content but I do a lot of it at 2x or even 2.5x. There's also a lot of such things that are effectively podcasts with irrelevant video backgrounds, or only rarely relevant video, so you can do something else entirely while listening.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  My kid and all of her friends watch video content at 2-4x now all the time, because they just can't seem to get through anything talking at a normal pace. I want to worry about that, but I don't know why it's worrying.
  - jerf 1y ago
    After some pondering, I've come to consider it a generally positive thing. If I compare watching a 1x video to my reading the transcript, I am reading very much faster than the person can normally speak. Cranking the speed up makes it so the video much more approximates a reading speed. You still don't get as much random access and I can generally still read at a speed where I wouldn't be able to comprehend the speech if it was keeping up, but I think being able to handle increased information density is generally a good thing. It also tends to filter out videos that are just noise and flash and such, because any video tuned for simple tickling our lizard hindbrains at 1x is much less appealing at 2x (because if it was more appealing at 2x, that simply would have been the original speed it was served at). It is also a side effect of the fact that frankly a lot of stuff on YouTube doesn't actually need to be on YouTube and is, as I mentioned in my first post, really just a podcast with a video track because it has to have a video track to be on YouTube, but that is perfectly ignorable. Even channels as high quality as Practical Engineering are (guestimating) something like 80% stock footage and 20% something he actually created that is useful and germane to the topic. I often have a hard time dealing with videos at 1x as well but it's not like it has impacted my social relationships or anything. I don't perceive normal people as speaking slowly now or anything like that. Somehow my brain has this segregated, and I phrase it that way because it's not like I can consciously take credit for it, I didn't do anything, it's just happening naturally.
lm28469 1y ago
That's how they get kids too now, look at patpatrol and the other slop they ship, you don't get more than 1 second without a cut. These kids are fucked forever, setup for failure from birth
grishka 1y ago
Probably a good thing then that I've never had TikTok and avoid even opening reels in Instagram, shorts on YouTube and clips in VK, unless someone sent me one.
aucisson_masque 1y ago
What if you are reading an interesting book ? I think it would be a great way to train your attention to the level it used to be. And if you can’t even do that, I suggest you start reading a book right before sleeping until you pass out. Every night. You will fall asleep extremely fast at beginning but I managed to get back to reading while having extreme difficulty concentrating from a completely different illness than TikTok. It only took 2 years.
- unfitted2545 1y ago
  Doing this, I always sleep better as well :)

boringg 1y ago

You let your dopamine loop get hacked

jollyllama 1y ago
This. It's going to take some serious effort to un-wirehead yourself. Look to religious traditions for methods. Meditation, fasting, prayer.
- fennecbutt 1y ago
  Or just walk outside lmao. Those religious traditions have roots in control and manipulation.

dleeftink 1y ago

The first step to recovery is... You'll get there. Go from shorter form content to things that'll grab your attention, piece by piece.

mtalantikite 1y ago

> I could watch an hour long fast paced video just fine, but watching a slow paced show, or reading a book is so much more difficult. Attention and concentration are skills that can be trained, so not all is lost. I was feeling like I was losing my focus about a decade ago and decided that every morning I'd wake up and read a novel for 30 minutes or so. Within a few weeks you'll notice the difference.

famahar 1y ago
Yeah, it's amazing how nice this feels. You can tell your brain is healing. You're lighter, happier, more relaxed. The first few days are rough though. Hard to focus. Need for stimulation. It really is a drug. Horrible reality so many people are trapped in.
rrgok 1y ago
I don't understand. The problem is not that we don't have attention or concentration. Otherwise how can he watch hour long fast paced video. This a different form of attention. I would like to call it the intensity of attention. Reading a book, require attention but of lower intensity. While watching an hour long fast paced video, require a high intensity attention.
- jquery 1y ago
  They put reading a book and watching slow paced television in the same category, which to me seems like a category error entirely. I see nothing wrong with avoiding slow-paced video… life is short, time is precious. If slow video is not your thing, that’s fine. However, books are a different matter entirely. Not all books are worth reading, but being unable to read any book is definitely a sign that your attention span is suffering. Some books are low-intensity, but some are quite high-intensity, and everything in between. But regardless of where they are on that spectrum, all books require an attention span greater than the one required to watch TikTok videos. My attention span went (back) up after I forced myself to read some books start to finish. It’s something you can lose, but fortunately it’s also something you can regain.
  - rrgok 1y ago
    I don't know. I have a hard time reading most books because they are indeed slow-paced. And by "books" I mean novels and fantasy books. But I can read an HN/Reddit discussion of several pages without a problem. Heck, sometimes I spend hours reading a specific subreddit. I like to think that books (novels and fantasy) are low-resolution prose, so the crux of the matter is distributed — mostly useless info — across several pages. While forums — like HN or Reddit — are high-resolution prose. I don't know if I make sense.

famahar 1y ago

Watch the film Sátántangó in one sitting with no distraction. If you can do that, you are healed. I imagine a chronic tiktok user would find the film a form of torture.

ryandrake 1y ago
Almost any film from the mid-70s and earlier, go online and read recent reviews, and they're all full of complaints about the pacing. "Too boring!" "Too slow!" "Fell asleep while watching!" I mean, first of all, who falls asleep during a movie? Even stuff I've seen 30 times already, is still engaging and holds my attention from start to finish. Yet, then again, we've had to cancel "friends movie night" in our house because people would come over, sit down to watch the movie, and after 10 minutes they're all scrolling their phones and bored with the movie. Unless it's got frantic action every second, you're going to lose people. Something is really wrong with our attention spans.

googlryas 1y ago

I think you need to make the judgement if a long video is long because it's worth it and needs to be that long, or because it's padded for some reason. When I come across a padded video that I still want to consume for some reason, I usually just paste the url into gemini and ask for a tl;dr and get a few paragraphs to read summarizing the video.

cvoss 1y ago

Try going a whole day (like a Saturday) without consuming any digital media. It can be a challenging experience, but totally worth it, even if just once, to feel what it's like to not be tied to such things. I found it very relaxing and freeing. No YT, FB, IG, TT, or TV for sure. For an extra challenge, try no music (except what you can make yourself) or news (including HN). You'll find yourself grabbing your phone only to immediately put it down again. No need to force yourself to read or go for a walk or whatever. Do whatever you feel like all day, just not the digital things.

jondwillis 1y ago
I would run out of stuff to do within an hour or two. Which is the point. I’d have to get into new stuff that isn’t phone or laptop.

jerf 1y ago

Try the video speed adjustments. Most sites offer 2x now. Up to 4x is getting around, and that's generally going to be past what most people can understand for speech, even with practice. I do a lot of YouTube long-form content but I do a lot of it at 2x or even 2.5x. There's also a lot of such things that are effectively podcasts with irrelevant video backgrounds, or only rarely relevant video, so you can do something else entirely while listening.

ryandrake 1y ago
My kid and all of her friends watch video content at 2-4x now all the time, because they just can't seem to get through anything talking at a normal pace. I want to worry about that, but I don't know why it's worrying.
- jerf 1y ago
  After some pondering, I've come to consider it a generally positive thing. If I compare watching a 1x video to my reading the transcript, I am reading very much faster than the person can normally speak. Cranking the speed up makes it so the video much more approximates a reading speed. You still don't get as much random access and I can generally still read at a speed where I wouldn't be able to comprehend the speech if it was keeping up, but I think being able to handle increased information density is generally a good thing. It also tends to filter out videos that are just noise and flash and such, because any video tuned for simple tickling our lizard hindbrains at 1x is much less appealing at 2x (because if it was more appealing at 2x, that simply would have been the original speed it was served at). It is also a side effect of the fact that frankly a lot of stuff on YouTube doesn't actually need to be on YouTube and is, as I mentioned in my first post, really just a podcast with a video track because it has to have a video track to be on YouTube, but that is perfectly ignorable. Even channels as high quality as Practical Engineering are (guestimating) something like 80% stock footage and 20% something he actually created that is useful and germane to the topic. I often have a hard time dealing with videos at 1x as well but it's not like it has impacted my social relationships or anything. I don't perceive normal people as speaking slowly now or anything like that. Somehow my brain has this segregated, and I phrase it that way because it's not like I can consciously take credit for it, I didn't do anything, it's just happening naturally.

lm28469 1y ago

That's how they get kids too now, look at patpatrol and the other slop they ship, you don't get more than 1 second without a cut. These kids are fucked forever, setup for failure from birth

grishka 1y ago

Probably a good thing then that I've never had TikTok and avoid even opening reels in Instagram, shorts on YouTube and clips in VK, unless someone sent me one.

aucisson_masque 1y ago

What if you are reading an interesting book ? I think it would be a great way to train your attention to the level it used to be. And if you can’t even do that, I suggest you start reading a book right before sleeping until you pass out. Every night. You will fall asleep extremely fast at beginning but I managed to get back to reading while having extreme difficulty concentrating from a completely different illness than TikTok. It only took 2 years.

unfitted2545 1y ago
Doing this, I always sleep better as well :)