screen addiction

i genuinely want help.

please spam this video every-fucking-where for the love of all good things. especially on social media sites that aren't on the fediverse.

there's no composing these notes to be presentable. sensationalist title i know, but it's literally on a form of brainwashing: echo chambers reinforce and worsens held beliefs wholly restricting critical thinking. echo chambers radicalize, remember? here that's the topic disseminated about. i just have a video to share on why the world stinks and jotted notes on what each person can do to help their BDNF to rise.

BDNF is cognitive flexibility in short.

• schedule your screentime. scheduling is the sustainable alternative to quitting cold turkey. easier to make lasting effects.

• only watch a screen while standing, as a rule of thumb. seating should mean shutting of screen. while eating, shitting, masturbating & near sleep screentime has more severe & addictive effects.

• no longer than 2h screentime a day to deter neurogenesis - literal brainrot.

• on your phone: turn off notifications for as much as possible, turn on greyscale, use a homescreen launcher that doesn't have icons. make that screen boring this way.

• intensive training twice a week

• dancing and aerobic excercise

• sauna (20 min, 3-4 times a week)

• meditation (20 min, any day of the week, body scan being the least risky meditation)

• listening to live acoustic & vocal performances (in my experience great to go to once a month atleast)

• journaling (including Journaling RPG) (effect up to six weeks later, 20-60 min daily, atmost once a day atleast once a week.)

• furthermore: practicing an instrument, meeting people for physical games like cardgames boardgames dicegames pen&paper-roleplaying (including SoloRPG), sitting audience to an acoustic & vocal performance

as for diet • macrobiotic: prebiotics (like Inulin), probiotics (especially Lactobacillus plantarum & Bifodorum strains)

• serotonic: tryptophane (in legumes nuts seeds 'spannmål' dairy)

finding out the incongruence is what makes porn "addictive" and harmful to (the person) is such an eyeopener! it was always about morals, not whether sexuality objectively was good or bad and hey that makes sense

i'm sat here missing another morning because of screen use. it was a good morning where i woke up well rested and had an early breakfast- yet i picked up a phonescreen, with good intentions, before preparing for the day- shower, clothes, y'know. now i am sat here three hours later and the hill to get those things done is steeper than ever. i missed the morning schedule by not walking out the door- and i don't feel like rushing myself yet again is gonna leave me anything but with more difficulty tomorrow.

addictions are symptoms of problems. i have tried middle paths, cold turkey quits and just indulging withoit restraint. nothing helps my wellbeing long-term- considering i am always here again.

going back to my cold-turkey attempts and reitterating: what am i lacking when i go off the screen? i am eternally drawn to videogames, specifically 3D fighting games like Tekken SoulCalibur BloodyRoar DeadOrAlive Tobal ... list could to on... i figure i could get that fulfilled by actual fighting sports, i know it's an unwritten meme and i also don't like what i've tried of actual fighting sports... but i figure defining the fighting game genre's skill checks and psychological effects (not pushing buttons, emotional self-awareness in adverse situations, mechanical execution-reaction honed to fit intuition and to not be indoctrinated to mindless responses... all these are excercises within any given fighting game cough that is good cough and result in aforementioned effects that i just really really appreciate for my wellbeing.

for fighting games i'm thinking of actual fencing with gear and racket sports (like tennis badminton pingpong) and archery (for some reason idk.)

*'m'ups - including beat'm'ups like the original Final Fight and shoot'em'ups like the original Gradius - i wanna lump together with ciruit-racer games like Enthusia, Richard Burns Rally (PS2 exclusives) and others from consoles earlier and later. simply because it's all holding the line in an ever repeating pattern: it's less so reacting and more so internally preparing & pacing yourself to space according to the obstacle course ahead of you. the course is constant, some obstacles will be there but it's predetermined stuff. if you haven't thought it out beforehand... so i am also including Mirror's Edge to this and that leaves a simple entryway for me to consider offscreen activities.

for mup's, racing games, speedrunning games... i'm thinking freerunning, parkour, vehicular sports (like biking (maybe driving an actual car but economy & ecology & crashes though...), wallclimbing or bouldering you call it in english, longskiing (my beloved), rollerblades, aerobatics (aerial silks, corde de lisse, aereal hoops, ...)

for "search action" games like Demon's souls, Dark Souls, Castlevania, other metroidvanias and also point & click adventure games like Quest for Glory i am thinking more puzzle & trap oriented roleplaying games of any medium (pen & paper, boardgame, whichever) with less emphis on dialogue & gaining stats or leveling up (if at all.)

for minigames and clickers i am thinking- straight up- a yoyo, a fidgetspinner, a squeezy toy like those slimes...

for MOBAs... cardgames; for battle royales... spinning tops; for arena shooters... knucklebones, marbles

for visual novels and such... writing & drawing zines, going to and participating in theatre performances

it's something forced upon me. by surroundings. pondering whether the poor are forced to be online and onscreen more.... self-education is a factor in overcoming the hardest pitfalls of poverty, especially of wellfare diseases (alcoholism comes to mind) why not this one too. so another resource to this stack to keep on track while atleast i'm in another onscreen period. how online & onscreen are others who read this post and why? i read and can reply to every comment

this is another curated video. Dr. GGamer here is someone who i realize genuinely suffered and wants to help people by giving away the relevant knowledge from the other side of the academical gates. former incel and gamer addict turnt public educator. i downloaded all of his videos and listen to them in a playlist when i feel like i'm stuck and wanna figure out what bothers me in life. then i pick out that video and make notes of the always well-articulated (albeit less sympathically so) key-takeaways of each situation.

here are my notes from the video for executive dysfunction specific to screen addicts/gamers. these are my key take-aways with some anecdotes from my point of view, if you have more take-aways- hey i'll always read & reply to your comments and posts in c/screen_addiction.

• blood flow to hippocampus lessens, divergent (open-ended) problems become near impossible to break down since that's not what we were doing while we gamed; convergent (close-ended) problems means everything spelled out in-game or we'd get frustrated and quit that game.

• blood flow to amygdala lessens, negative emotions are literally muted. un-muting (leaving the screen/game) un-mutes us emotionally only to hear an overwhelming queue of negative-emotions which we lost track of how to deal with orderly... a societally ignored or mocked feedbackloop of increased perceived need to game for the real benefit of actually muting negative emotions that do pile up: this ultimately acts like an XP-debuff and life goes on hardmode.

• serotonin aversion, no sense of accomplishment ever with lower serotonin. more screen & games -> less serotonin in every part of life. feels like hollowing out all meaning until a gnawing hole forms in the bottom of my stomach to right below my chest, in my own words for the daily experience.

• dopamine dependency, the dopamine-hits we're all struggling with. visual flares and audio queues that induce catharsis under the guise of being just for the mere kinaesthesic sensation of weight in a cyberspace.

i recorded an audio log for my diary while watching a video i just posted here (pausing it to collect my thoughts for my diary) and there i snowballed in a very vulnerable tirade that got to the root of why i want my addiction: to hide thoughts that bear down on me, especially since i'm lonely and hold no real social roots anymore. since i don't wanna sit around and feel bad i continue a screen & internet addiction to cope. so this gave me some direction: what to use to cope instead? is there a way for me to talk to others about what i'm burdened by- before going out to try to meet people again? that would undo the need that addiction fills for me. two concrete goals.

this is a video curation post. this video is standing out from the many alarmist videos on the topic of addiction to me; it doesn't reinforce helplessness in addiction, it validates and shares knowledge on an eye-to-eye level.

that's all,
download it- go offline- listen to this then draw something meanwhile? <3

this is a dissemination post. sharing notes you made while reading creates a consensus around the topic of screen addiction, i for one will read and reply with any thoughts that come up: just so you know it's not "just you" and that it's not just on you for being addicted.

tonight i wrote a post in a drug-help forum in my country. then i shared it with a few near and dear to gauge their reaction to me writing in such severe honesty - i have told them alot but never gotten much recognition. this time it was wellwishes. som initial response i got i wanna share: "so you're a junkie now?" to which i lauded "sure, e-junkie."

social norms are weird and i'm sure i'd exhaust by writing, as interested as i am, just how much i wanna have added to the topic.
so i'll just wrap up with another response i got: "ironic that you look online for help against onlineaddiction." fucking ironic yea.