Once a day, ask yourself the question: What's the biggest thing holding me back? If you ask with humility, you’ll find the answers. The wise student who finds space for improvement eventually surpasses his ancient.
You can tell a quitter exactly how to do it, and he will still fail. God, with all his power, can't help quitters. The majority of people will quit before even finishing this text. Most of those who finish this text will quit after a few days and conclude that living with a digital addiction ain’t that bad. If you’re a quitter, I can’t help you. I don't write for quitters. I write for those who want to be great.
My goal with this text is to save years’ worth of your time, which is essentially an entire house. I know what it was like to be internet addicted, I never want to experience that again, and I want to teach my wisdom collected from five years of trying to break free. I never want you to waste your life, time, and energy on something worse-than-pointless again.
I will teach you why digital addiction is a massive problem; I will teach you how to break free and how to keep that momentum. I will teach you mental frames, new beliefs, and also things important to understand. I used to be on the other side of digital addiction; for three years, I created apps designed to addict people; hence, I may know a thing or two.
Your relationship with technology needs to get healthier. This journey took me five years; it will take you around three months. Nothing less than your future is on the line. Thus, without arrogance, I claim that being free from your internet addiction will massively improve your life.
If you want this guide to be effective, you need one thing: pain. That can be defeat, depression, heartbreak, disgust, or anger—they are all amazing motivators. If you are kind of happy with your life, you will fail to generate enough momentum to escape. Every single dimension holds you back; your friends, society, the apps, … they all want you to stay addicted. Thus, you need that pain; you need that energy.
I want to clarify something upfront. It’s not okay to use social media to message friends. It’s not okay to watch videos to ‘unwind.’ It’s not okay to play one hour of video games a day. Just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s okay. If you disagree, respectfully, have fun staying a loser. In person, I don’t talk to people addicted to social media; being able not to control your hands is the bare minimum. Most will fail and feel zero shame about it. They will let down their entire bloodline without feeling any guilt. They won’t even try to look at all the potential they’ve wasted. It’s not okay to let down your entire bloodline. You must do something with your life. Breaking free from your digital addiction is a crucial step in the right direction.
Are you ready?
What’s the biggest thing holding you back?
What’s the best conceivable move?
I got my first electronic device when I was five or six years old. Back then, phones, as we know them, were just invented a few years ago. When my parents weren’t looking, I wasted hours on stupid games instead of socializing or playing with toys. After a year or so, this tablet broke, and nothing happened on the digital front until I got my first phone at the age of ten.
Getting a phone contributed to an overall horrible time I was going through. We just moved out of the homeless shelter where we lived for a few weeks and moved into a run-down apartment. My mother, sister, and my three-year-old brother now lived there. We were homeless because of an emotionally abusive stepfather, whom we left. Around a year went by, and we got used to our new living conditions; I was full of trauma and nonetheless.
By then, I was already eleven years old. My life was purposeless; nothing interested me, and I had no hobbies or friends. I didn’t exist as a person either because I was barely sentient and conscious.
Every weekend, my mother and brother went to sleep; I took out my phone and started watching videos until I fell asleep from exhaustion, which was usually around midnight. The next day, I would get up late, knowing how I wasted my life, time, health, and mental bandwidth. Throughout the day, I wouldn't stop. Because screen time didn’t exist back then, I don't know how much I wasted on my phone. I estimate it to be eight hours a day. My addiction started to control me.
I played strategic games and watched educational videos, yet I learned nothing.
I don't know how many midnight sessions I had, but eventually, I stopped and started to waste time exclusively during the day. I doubt ‘wasting’ is the right word. Wasting is like throwing money out of the window; that happens. Yet succumbing to digital addiction is worse. It does active harm.
In December 2020, I was 13 years old, and my situation finally improved when I decided to pursue entrepreneurship. I started to learn how to program, and now I have a purpose. However, I would still waste an hour here and there; I had a screen time of around two hours. Because 14-hour days were frequent, some days I would go without my phone, but that average of two hours roughly remained. This got a lot worse when consuming short-form videos became a thing for me in early 2022.
In late December 2022, a few things changed. For example, I started to socialize, shower cold, and figure out how to work productively. My traumas started to lose their grip, and a few months prior, I even started to do sports. I was 15 at the time. What also changed was my approach to life.
I took out a notebook and estimated how many hours I had wasted on screen time. The answer made me break out in tears. Seven thousand hours. For two weeks, I didn’t even think of touching my phone. Then I slipped back, and I started to cut out slowly. Three months after I went up in tears, I broke free. I have never wasted a single second online since.
If I can go from eight hours of screen time to effectively zero, so can you.
There’s no scenario where wasting time on your phone serves you.
Social media and video games are a lot worse than you think, especially if you know what it’s like to have no addiction. I want to discuss the problems in detail so that you grow more pain because you’ll need every drop of energy to break free.
1. Look me in the eyes.
After brainstorming seventy-six concepts for this text, I went downstairs. One of my theories is that internet users cannot hold secure eye contact. So, I looked at my family, who all waste three hours a day online, just like normal people, and it turned out to be correct. In school, I also paid attention to my social media-addicted classmates, and I could confirm my idea.
I have a theory of why that is. The internet trains people to look at multiple points simultaneously, which is very different from reading a book, where you only look at the word you’re reading. For example, a hot bikini picture has at least three focal points. An ordinary video also has multiple points. There’s the video, the title, the view count, and the other videos on the side. You are encouraged to look at multiple points. There are also no repercussions if you look away.
Furthermore, people who waste their lives online know that they should be ashamed. When you feel shame, it's impossible to make eye contact. Do you think that the loser watching erotic videos will dare to hold an eye with a girl he’s attracted to? No, he will think dirty thoughts and feel shame.
These sudden and unexpected eye movements aren't rude; they are worse. They make these people look useless, untrustworthy, stupid, slow, and weak. Being rude is sometimes necessary, but looking stupid, slow, and weak is never desirable.
Flirting isn’t about having nice hair; it’s about showing power, which involves breathing deeply, being relaxed, and holding secure eye contact. By the way, everyone knows that women, in particular, have the ability to measure your consciousness. If you aren’t present, they feel it. Everyone feels it. It ain’t sexy. And that makes you look powerless. People are heavily repelled by people with no power.
You can fix that problem by living a real life; holding eye contact and being present can be practiced.
2. Social skills you could have mastered
For years, digital addiction stopped my natural formation of social skills. It removes the need to do so, and also, because everyone else is awkward, becoming social becomes harder. I don’t believe I’m alone and rather, everyone suffers from a lack of social skills.
Books on social skills can be nice. However, the most important social tip I have ever found is being interested in others and being yourself. Unfortunately, most people don’t have a self because they’ve wasted years on screen.
I don’t need to elaborate on how sitting in front of the computer ruins social skills. Yet still, I want to stress one more aspect. Half of the internet consists of people with negative social skills. No social skills means you’re a bit shy and awkward. What I mean by negative social skills is people who, for example, disrespect people, challenge the alpha male, mock religions, and shame institutions for fun. They don’t understand that the real world still exists and that if you disrespect people, you may end up touching murderous steel. They don’t understand that laws still exist. They don’t realize that everyone thinks they are cool until they get punched in the face.
My texts are often dismissive, insulting, and rude, but there’s a difference between speaking with a hammer and openly disrespecting someone. There’s a difference between exposing madness and insulting someone. I hope I don’t have to explain that further.
The internet was supposed to connect people. Instead, it alienated everyone.
3. Ruined attention span and focus
The app I used to message people can play voice notes at twice the speed. Yeah, good luck with having a real conversation after you’re used to that high-paced input.
Most young people are mentally disabled. I believe that if one can’t sit down and read three sentences without getting distracted, there’s a point where something went horribly wrong. People used to sit down and stare at a newspaper for a solid five minutes; what’s happened today? Three sentences and no more.
Three sentences take around eight to twelve seconds to read or speak. The average attention span is just over eight seconds. What does attention span mean? It’s the time you can go about a task without your mind going anywhere different.
My attention span is now around forty minutes, so I can write a four-thousand-word text in one sitting without thinking of anything else. However, just a year ago, when I used to watch short videos, I couldn’t read more than three sentences without my mind getting distracted. I was functionally illiterate. Of course, one can simply lower the bar and redefine what’s normal. Now, it’s normal not to read at all.
If you want to get rich, you don't need time, money, connections, or ideas. You need the ability to sit down and do the work.
Before social media became popular, people used to sit down and watch ultra-niche 90-minute documentaries, such as those on the history of particle accelerators in the USSR, the mountain rescue service in the Swiss Alps, or Genghis Khan's biography. Now, most couldn’t even endure a thirty-second version of these videos and would rather look at a fifteen-second bikini dance with heavy editing and music. Today, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t use their phone while watching television. That’s madness.
I tried to explain to my grandmother being constantly available via phone is worse then wrong on many levels. A twenty-second distraction kills fifteen productive minutes because it brings one out of the flow. I have enough self-respect to refuse to be online. I refuse to listen to notifications. I refuse for people to waste my time texting. My phone is always offline unless I choose to use it. I’m not living to answer text messages. That’s not how life is meant to be lived.
A short attention span will make every aspect of your life worse.
4. Desexualization is the first step to success.
You need to be hungry. You need to be a tiger, not a cow. A cow is slow and eats all day long. A tiger goes for the hunt; it’s a predator.
The most creative and productive I’ve ever been was when I was hungry, as it enabled elevated focus. Slight physical hunger and a large metaphorical hunger for more drive performance.
Controlling your sexual desire is at least just as important. Life feels completely next-level if you haven’t touched yourself in months. Your sexual desire is by far the strongest, thus it contains the most potential but also danger.
One of the internet’s pillars is adult content. That’s part of the reason why the internet was created in the first place. Social media steal your sexual energy; it doesn’t even have to be nudity; the pure visibility of too much skin contributes to this problem. Regardless of your woman’s right philosophy, having a device where pixels imitate a real person is intrinsically hostile. Constantly listening to degenerate lyrics also disrupts the natural way. It hijacks your reward system and degenerates brain parts required for logical decision-making.
I’m going to sound like a church guy, but there’s the relationship of love and sex that gets corrupted and degenerated.
Let’s think bigger. Hedonism always marks the end of a civilization, just as it does on an individual level. What does it do to one if you can view more pretty women in ten minutes then an emperor in his entire life? Why shouldn’t you want work-life balance, gap years, and one hour of video games to unwind?
Self-control is key to success, yet social media tries everything to remove that trait because self-control causes these companies to lose money. Being a man comes down to doing what you don’t feel like doing – that’s self-control. I refuse to talk to people without self-control. I don’t want their energy around me. You don’t start to feel alive unless you start to control your urges, especially your sexual ones. Unfortunately, the internet makes that elevated way of life almost impossible.
5. Hostility by design.
When I write my text, I think,
‘How do I impress the girl I want?’
‘How do I write something outstandingly valuable?’
‘How can I make my texts timeless’…
When designing an app, one has different questions.
‘How do we keep the sheep on the platform for as long as possible?’
‘How do we make them forget about real life?’
‘How do we extract their money?’…
Everything about social media is meticulously designed to steal your soul. Everything. Every sound, color, font size, title, notification, icon, … It’s all trying to drag you into abyss of instant gratification. All of it. It’s a trap.
These traps get better by the minute, and they are all tested constantly. A million dorks living in their mother's basement are trying to steal your time by making these apps as addictive as possible. Companies don’t hesitate to put billions into that kind of research. Social media and videos are now at a point where they are almost certain to addict.
As a former app developer, I know a trick or two because I needed to make my mental math apps addictive. Sheep are hooked, and it’s made easy to join. Notifications, emails, and other reminders help to form habits. By spiking both negative and positive emotions, and by stimulating, these apps steal one’s full attention which makes one forget real life still exists. By adding variable rewards, conditioning sets in. Then, streaks or view counts keep the sheep invested. There are practically infinite ways to manipulate, all relying on the monumental laziness and stupidity of the masses.
Even if the founders' intentions were moral, social media costs money to run and grow. Someone has to pay for the programmers, and if those work for free, someone still has to pay for the electricity. No person would pay to use social media. People want to be addicted – for free.
Many people misjudge how much money these apps make. Let me skip the math; an hour wasted makes the platform between zero to twenty cents, mostly around two. So, social media makes just two cents from stealing an hour of your time. Of course, that’s oversimplified, but that’s perhaps the answer you wanted.
I write with utmost passion because I know many programmers who are truly disgusting. For example, I know a 19-year-old who meets every single stereotype. Girls had never tried to flirt with him, his posture was a question mark, he had zero social skills and was the most submissive person I’ve ever seen, and he listened to his mommy all day long. Those are the people keeping you hooked on the internet. Do you want to accept defeat against them? I refuse to surrender.
Some drugs can kill right away. Social media, adult content, and video games don’t. Hence, most people don’t view those things as problematic and are more open to trying them. I can’t believe most people live with a three-hour screen time, and it never crosses their mind that they should reassess everything. Yes, digital addiction can create withdrawal symptoms, intense cravings and manipulate one’s thoughts in unexpected ways, for example, by making people argue in favor of their enemy, the internet.
6. What about your physical health?
I don’t want to see you lying in bed, taking shallow breaths, having a curvy back, and closing the shutters because sunlight may remind you of real life. I want you to be in the gym, breathing like a king, with a straight back and I want you to see the sun.
7. Rewiring your brain for the worse.
The internet teaches false behaviors. For example, it trains one to seek instant gratification, waste time, indulge in one’s unhealthy fantasies, and pursue pleasure only within the apps because real life gets too boring. The youth, in particular, suffers from a lack of impulse control. There’s no need to go through hell if you can instead surrender and watch another video. If you spend three hours a day unlearning impulse control, unlearning delayed gratification, and unlearning to live real life, you have a problem. A life based on your impulses is pointless; it doesn’t lead anywhere. Do you want to be a slave to your insatiable desire for instant gratification?
8. It’s not even fun.
After a while, the internet stops being fun; the pleasure runs out. Despite this, your brain has been conditioned to seek gratification online. Because social media isn’t fun on that day, you fail to ignore reality. So, you feel down and begin to question the meaning of life. Instead of confronting reality, they will blame a being ‘tired,’ ‘anxious,’ ‘stressed,’ or ‘just lacking purpose.’ In reality, they have become too deeply emotionally dependent on the internet. When a day fails to provide the usual amount of pleasure, it triggers an existential crisis. Is that fun?
9. False teachings
Narcissism, degeneracy, consumerism, and promiscuity are often rewarded on social media, and exposure to these topics is high. That's a huge problem because everyone takes an example from them.
This is a very simple yet effective way to view history. Hard times create strength, strength creates good times, good times breed weakness, and weakness breeds hard times.
The internet promotes weakness. No, it’s not okay to be fat, and neither is it cool to be anorexic. No, it’s not okay to procrastinate; procrastinators are useless. No, it’s not okay to be stupid, impulsive, loud, and lazy, either. No, sending memes is not sexy. Neither is it okay to be scared of women.
Everyone on the internet has an objective. Even me. I want to gain your trust so that I can sell books and maybe even offer coaching calls. Why do I want that? Well, daddy wants me to be a programmer, scientist, or engineer. The problem is that I hate those lifestyles, topics, and vibes. I want to be an entrepreneur, writer, psychologist, or philosopher. But daddy wants me to be a good boy and study in university, get a job, get a promiscuous girl boss wife, and then accept that life is disappointment after disappointment. – All because I'm not supposed to land under the bridge. While my objective is to gain your trust so that I can live a life authentic to me, others might have other objectives, bigger ones. Everyone is following an agenda. It’s your task to figure out whether it serves you or not.
10. Damaged personality
What happens when you upload a picture of yourself, especially as an attractive woman? You’ll get validated for it. You’ll not get validated for anything you’ve done but for the looks you’ve been given. That makes you emotionally dependent; you are worthless without your looks. Now, all you need is one little accident, and then you’re worthless in your perception. That’s horrible.
Many people validate me for being a genius. Do you think that made you a better person? No. It made me bitter. People don’t validate me for facing my fears, working hard, and living true to myself; they instead praise how brilliant I am. It gets worse. I get anti-validated for doing sports, being myself, and working hard. I can only assume that the same thing happens to beautiful women. In real life and especially on social media, they will get validated for their looks and grow bitter, resentful, and arrogant as a result. Furthermore, pretty women and brilliant men aren’t allowed to have problems in life. Failing life is one thing; failing life in ‘easy mode’ is another. Do you see why getting praised for the wrong stuff grows bitterness?
I know a girl around my age who had a massive glow down; she went from an eight to a three because of wrong lifestyle choices. However, on social media, she gets told how pretty she is. So, next to emotional dependence and bitterness, there’s another problem. Women tend to get deluded about their attractiveness, which creates even more bitterness and emotional dependence.
Therefore, I refuse to date anyone with a social media presence.
11. Detachment from reality and exorbitant standards
Please understand that what you see on social media rarely matches reality. The trailer of a movie contains the best moments. The movie is two hours long, and the original plot can stretch for years. Life gets boring if you only see the best. I often see people with zero life experience have the highest standards, leading to disappointment – I have zero life experience when it comes to dating, and the only reason I'm single is because of my standards. The line between delusion and delayed gratification is thin regarding high standards.
12. They are not your friends.
One of the main reasons to use social media is to message people. However, just because you talk and spend time together doesn’t mean you are friends. If your friendship lives on social media, sorry, it’s not real. Most of your friendships are based on convenience rather than on genuine connection.
You are the average of the people you spend time with and the people whose content you consume. I don’t believe you need to talk to that meme-sending friend ever again. I refuse to think that memes are what you want to get out of your life.
There are two ways to stop being friends. The toxic and cowardly way is to go offline, reply less, and avoid their messages. To be transparent, that’s the approach I used because I never had people message me daily anyway. The manly way is to tell the truth. “Hey, it was nice with you, and I thank you, but I think I’ve changed, and I don’t think we are compatible anymore.”
By telling the truth, your conscience stays clear, and you get to close chapters.
13. Comparison is harmful; competition drives performance.
When the gap between reality and wish is zero, happiness is found. Hence, the comparison is harmful; the gap is too large. Competition, on the other hand, uses smaller differences as fuel to get better.
14. The fear of missing out, trends, and consumerism
There is an allegory. A pharaoh wanted his pyramids built and needed tens of thousands of slaves for the construction. These slaves carried stones and were guarded so that they wouldn’t run away. The slaves had nothing to be motivated for and little to lose. Hence, they worked as slowly as necessary not to get punished. Nonetheless, they needed food and shelter. But then, after careful thought, the pharaoh decided to pay his slaves and rebrand them as craftsmen. Now, he no longer had to pay for their food and housing. He paid them by how many stones they carried. The guards became obsolete, and now everyone was motivated to give their best and work even harder. After all, now they were free.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. – Goethe
What do we have now? A job to pay for rent, food, and products that break once every three years.
Social media pushes that lifestyle to its limit by promoting disposable products, fast fashion, and scam influencer products. The average phone lasts two years. But of course, why not buy new things? It’s nice.
15. An enslaved mind
Many people spend hours of their lives selling and buying second-hand items. Is that a good use of one’s time? I can name a hundred things more productive than that. How about you donate that stuff and save yourself tens of hours of work?
Most people have already quit reading. Why? Because they decided that my text was too extreme. They’ve agreed that wasting three hours online a day is cool. They have decided that a short attention span ain’t bad and that I'm overdoing everything. They’ve decided to value peer pressure more than the will to power. They’ve decided that I don’t know shit and am simply full of resentment because, after all, social media is good for communicating with your relatives. It’s hopeless for them.
When I sit somewhere to wait, I'm often the only one present and taking deep breaths, and everyone else is sunk in their phone. Who do you think is happier?
Are you living for your phone?
I don’t.
16. Privacy
How would you feel if I were to steal your girl?
Why aren’t you upset your data is being stolen from you?
You may know a thing or two about me, but writing about my stories and dreams is literally my job, and I don’t have a problem with that. But I would argue that I have more privacy than most. I barely use the internet. I only post content.
There are over 3,000 billionaires, but I bet you can’t name more than five. Most of them don’t need bodyguards because no one knows what they look like. Then, there are some silly girls who make themselves visible online.
17. Constant pressure
Maybe your hot blonde crush asks you out? Maybe someone invites you to a birthday party and you only have ten seconds to reply? You have to be online; didn’t you know that? Maybe there’s an emergency, and for some reason, they need you. You need to be online. Didn’t you hear all the stories where people put their phones away for three seconds, turned off notifications, and then regretted it for the rest of their lives?
18. Life is paradise
Why waste your life on video games when you can pursue real life? Why build your dream house in a video game if you can build it in real life? Why drive around in a video game when you can drive around in real life? Why do people put in thousands of hours in video games when they can put in real life where they will be monumentally rewarded?
19. It’s all connected
Let’s restore harmony in the universe. Do you see how bad habits, constantly being online, a short attention span, a lack of impulse control, instant gratification, your phone, mental health issues, your enslavement, deliberately ugly architecture, your indifference, casual sex, purposelessness – do you see how they are all the same? Do you see how one thing causes the other? Do you see how weakness causes more weakness? Because it’s all connected, you need every drop of pain to break free.
1. Actually, I'm not addicted.
Can you go without your phone for at least a day, specifically without social media?
Can you go without your phone for a week?
If yes, you’re not addicted.
Even after breaking free from my social media addiction, I had some remaining phone addiction left. I used to learn a language on an app, and I also used my own app. I feared losing my phone because otherwise, the nine-hundred-day streak would end. That means even though my screen time was less than twenty or thirty minutes, I was still sort of addicted to my phone.
Only a few weeks ago, I became entirely independent from my phone after I decided to stop pretending I learned something on these apps. Now, my screen time is around five minutes daily, enough to check messages and directions when going somewhere. I'm only online when I choose to, and I don’t think about my phone.
I argue that screen time of over twenty minutes is problematic because then your phone starts to become a stable part of your life rather than a means of sending short messages. Of course, this is different when you work on your phone. But let’s be real. How many people actually work on their phones?
I believe that checking your phone sixty times a day is a disorder.
2. Educational content and playful learning?
Firstly, most educational content isn’t education; it’s entertainment in disguise, which is arguably even worse. Also, you need a lot less education than you think. If you studied a chapter of ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ a day, you wouldn’t ever need to worry about social skills again. You don’t learn more by consuming more; you learn by doing or – at least – writing. Furthermore, reading is better than watching videos.
Learning apps don’t work. They can work, but the problem is that there are much better ways to learn, such as workshops. You need twenty dedicated hours with instant feedback to get good at something. Chances are, you spend more time on that app and don’t even come close to being good. I have wasted much time on learning apps, you don’t have to repeat my mistake.
Another tip: playful brain training apps aren’t effective either. These apps are cope. Of course, they are better than scrolling social media, but going to the gym, writing, sleeping, and eating nutritious food are much better ways.
However, educational videos and podcasts can work, given that they are high-quality and low in editing.
3. It doesn’t hurt me too much
The problems of social media, video games, and being online are real, but you may be right and not get too much damage. So you may not be hurt too much. However, wasting time is still never the right choice. There’s never a time when you would profit from more social media addiction.
4. I need to stay informed
If that’s a desire, watch the news on television for 15 minutes a day. However, after watching the news for years and not watching the news for years, I can confirm that listening to the news didn’t improve my life. Focusing on your thing is most likely the superior choice.
5. I need to stay in touch
Many of my friends are online once a week, and we’re fine.
6. At the end of the day, everyone is equally happy, it’s not worth it
Trust me, without digital addiction, annoying friends, constant pressure, induced instant gratification, and distractions everywhere; I'm living a serene life.
7. It’s too difficult
I started with an eight-hour screentime and midnight social media sessions.
1. Pain
“If you do not experience the pain necessary to break free, allow a few more years to pass by. You will see how many opportunities you missed, how your health deteriorated, how much potential was buried, how many days passed without progress, and how often you struggled for nothing. You will realize how many years of your life have been wasted, especially those of your youth. Let regret give you motivation. It may be too late, but at least you were convinced you had fun.” – text #12
Take a piece of paper and take out your phone.
At what age did you start to waste time – was it 10?
Look at your daily average. Don’t sugarcoat anything. Be brutally honest.
Now multiply that by 365 and the number of years.
Consider this: it takes 10 hours to read a captivating book, 20 hours to become proficient at a new skill, and 30 hours to earn a driver's license.
A six-pack can be sculpted in 100 hours at the gym, while 200 hours are enough to craft a 100,000-word blog. Learning to program takes 300 hours, building an app demands 1,000 hours, completing a school year takes 1,400 hours, living through a year takes 8,760 hours, and attaining mastery takes 10,000 hours.
I estimated that I wasted 7560 hours.
That realization shook me to tears. That’s more than four hours a day over five years. That’s a year of my youth, my most valuable time. It’s gone. There’s no way to turn back time; there never was and will be. That energy is gone, perhaps even worse than simply ‘gone’. I thought of the most inspiring funeral, one that I hadn’t attended; I thought of my deathbed and regret.
I decided to change.
That realization was painful enough that, almost a year later, it still made me cry while looking back. Seriously, what kind of fool can defend the idea of balance? Wasting your life has very little to do with balance. I cannot imagine someone wasting potentially over 10,000 hours and not feeling anything. I can’t imagine how one can argue that you need social media to stay in touch with your relatives. I don’t understand, and I have zero interest in doing so.
I decided to never touch my phone again.
That’s what I did. After two weeks of not even daring to touch my phone, I slipped back for a while, started to cut out slowly, and completely broke free from my internet addiction just three months after I decided to.
Most will fail to write down the number because they don’t want to confront the truth. They don’t want to cry for twenty minutes and would rather suffer for the rest of their lives.
Pain was the first step.
2. Start extreme for one week.
Everything was against me. I wasted so much time on my phone, social media, and playing games that it may as well be a digital addiction degree. Now I had to unlearn every habit, belief, and expectation I kept repeating for years. My mind was the biggest saboteur. So, to combat that misalignment, I used brute force.
No, it’s not supposed to be easy.
I want you to start extreme. For one week, you’re not allowed to waste time under any circumstances. You’re just not allowed to. To make it even more extreme, you should cut out every bad habit as well. No going to bed late, overeating, sugar, warm water, music, or whatever other habit comes to mind. Yes, warm water needs to be sacrificed as well. If you’re too scared to sacrifice music for a week, good luck.
That’s your first step to developing discipline and willpower. This week is the hardest, but you will notice by around day five that you like being constantly happy and relieved. You will learn to enjoy looking at the sunset with a cup of tea in your hand.
This week, you aren't allowed to slip back under any circumstances. There are no alternatives or easy ways to avoid or shortcut this process; nothing desirable is easy and reachable via a shortcut. No one admires someone with an easy, excuse-rich life. Fun fact. Willpower doesn’t actually fatigue; that’s a straight-up lie. Even if it did, which it doesn’t, you could still train it like a muscle.
How do you fill that extra time? You can read, do sports, or go for walks in nature.
What if you fail on that week and accidentally mess up? What if you end up randomly scrolling social media for three hours? Your mind will bully you so much that you may give up. To silence the bullying mind, hit the gym or go for a run.
3. Slip back for a month.
Going through one week is hard but doable, but you will need a little break because you’ve contradicted so many hard-wired habits at once. The initial motivation fades and that’s normal. So, slip back. Now that you know what life could be, you will feel shame for wasting your life. I, too, heard a quiet voice in my mind telling me to stop being a loser during the approximate month I completely slipped back.
4. Cut out slowly.
After I suffered enough from scrolling social media again, I naturally started to cut out my addiction. While I would have spent three hours, now I spend two hours and thirty minutes. Then, a bit less and here and there. As I started to read more, that was doable. That’s also when I began to go to the gym, and the gym helped a lot.
5. Mark the day.
On April 2nd, 2023, I broke free and would never waste my time online again. My journey took three months. This was the day I started to write my diary to keep myself accountable and busy.
At all stages, these tips will serve you.
1. Change your identity.
You aren't trying to lay bricks; you are building a cathedral. You aren’t trying to quit social media; you’re on your path to live right.
Do you see the difference? Laying bricks is boring and exhausting. Building a cathedral makes every brick a testament to strategic strength, unbound power, and mastered resilience.
I used to identify as the fuck-you to everyone’s excuses. Now I'm living that.
You aren’t trying to quit smoking; you’re simply not a smoker. Identity shift is one of the greatest tools in your arsenal to use your subconscious. It controls which thoughts are allowed to occur and which ones aren’t. You aren't trying to quit; you are on your journey to move past that addiction.
Your identity starts with your language.
2. Change your environment.
Change everything. Your computer-wallpaper, profile pictures, and potentially the layout of your furniture in your room. If your friends don’t support your goals, they are your enemies. If you are about to move away, for example, for university, use that opportunity. A new environment helps to establish a new identity.
3. Keep yourself accountable.
Breaking your promises can cause people, including yourself, to lose respect. I encourage you to find a close friend to hold you accountable. If you don’t have friends, use a notebook or a habit tracker. This tip is especially relevant in the cutting phase. Your priority must be transparency. Improvement is only possible when you look life in the eyes.
4. Focus on the good habits
Related to the previous tip, I don’t want you to obsess over your screen time. Instead, I want you to think about your other habits as much as possible.
5. Find less potent alternatives to satisfy your cravings.
This tip is always relevant, but especially when you are learning to control your urges. Less stimulation leaves you with more clarity and focus.
Instead of music, listen to nature sounds.
Instead of watching short videos, watch podcasts.
Instead of buying something, take a warm bath.
Instead of your phone, use your computer.
Instead of eating cake, eat some honey, dark chocolate or an apple.
Instead of hot blondes on social media, pursue real women.
6. Remove temptations.
The reason I wasn’t addicted to video games is because my computer is slow and a pain to use. So, downgrading your tech can help to make you break free.
I also recommend app blockers and web extensions. When websites are less stimulating and apps harder to reach, breaking free is easier. Ad blockers are also helpful in purifying your mind. Technically, that’s cheating because it doesn’t rely on brute force willpower, but at the end of the day, who cares?
I also want you to delete the video game world, the games themselves, and the accounts, and I want you to sell your consoles. I also want you to delete your social media accounts. Unless you’re using them to make money; you don’t need them. If you use social media for work, do it on your computer.
Also, whenever you don’t use your phone, just turn it off. Please disable notifications and put your phone on silent. My phone never makes a noise. I also employ airplane mode to stay focused. Also, putting your phone away physically helps.
7. New activities.
7.1. Exercise
To break free, I used pushups. I didn’t go to the gym for most of these three months. When I craved something, I used that energy to do pushups, and consequently, connecting that craving to pushups made the craving disappear. Physical exercise is one of the most important pillars of life. A strong mind follows a strong body, and you need mental fortitude.
7.2. Work
Get used to working on something meaningful.
7.3. Walks, solitude and nature
Nature restores your Zen. I also can tell from experience that walks can satisfy one’s content addiction. I also discovered that there’s something deeply satisfying about walks. They awaken the part of me that wants to conquer.
7.4. Reading, writing, journaling, and meditation
You need to cure your brain. You do that by adding stillness. Reflection and the absorption of new wisdom also help to conquer the battles that lie ahead.
A lack of mindfulness causes bad habits.
“Meditation is simple. You start to focus on something, preferably your breath, and try to think about nothing else. Eventually, you will notice your mind wandering again, and then you refocus. Refocusing is like doing mental pushups. You don’t need to be angry about losing focus because that’s progress! Do this for fifteen minutes daily for the rest of your life, and your quality of life will improve immensely.” – text #91
Spirituality allows you to break free from the pointless cycle of craving and indulgence. It sets you free and allows for greater levels of existence.
You can meditate away the moment you accidentally open social media.
You can meditate away many of your bad habits.
8. Hot blonde
“I will do everything in my power to get what matters. I will dedicate every second of my life aligned with my purpose; I will go to monumental lengths for love.” – text #87
I want you to keep in mind your purpose and see the bigger picture.
I use the metaphor ‘hot blonde’ for anything desirable in life. I think it’s a useful metaphor because it provokes strong desire, at least for me. Then, there’s another deeper meaning to it. And no, it’s not about how blonde is similar to gold. You have to know exactly what you want. You have to know which woman you want down the color of her hair. You have to know which car you want, which house, how many children, how many emails you want to read each day and what you want your daily tasks to be. If you don’t know what you want, you will not be able to sacrifice. It’s impossible to go through hardship without a purpose.
“He who has a why can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche.
I wanted to break free from my digital addiction because I wanted more productivity, more life satisfaction, less stress, and more stories. Specifically, back then, I wanted to start making millions from my apps. Thus, sacrificing social media was almost insignificant.
If you don’t have the purpose of becoming monumentally successful, then I want you to sacrifice your digital addiction for the Lord himself. If you have convinced yourself to be an atheist, sacrifice it for your bloodline. Still, the hotness of your blonde will depend on how much gratification you’re willing to delay.
Do you see how your activities, temptations, environments, purpose, and accountability all point back to your identity?
9. The compound effect.
They all say that eating cake once doesn’t make you fat. Not eating cake once doesn’t give you a six-pack, either. But isn’t it easy to turn one cake into two? That’s when the negative spiral starts.
Negative loops are well known. But there’s also a positive feedback loop. You start going to the gym and feel better. Because you feel better, you don’t waste time on the internet. Because you don’t waste time, you’re more productive. Then, this productivity makes you feel hotter. Then, you get more courage. Then, you get your hot blonde…
The slightest improvements change your life forever. I want you to view every decision as either subtracting or adding one point to your success road. Everything you do adds up, especially the earlier you start. I want you to celebrate every day you don’t waste time on the internet, especially if you are young. It’s not about who can make the biggest improvements; it’s about who keeps standing the longest. So, even if you mess up multiple times, I want you to celebrate the times you didn’t mess up.
Choices build habits, and habits build momentum. So, choose which ones you want to build.
For those who have, more will be given, and for those who have nothing, everything will be taken
away.
– That’s what the bible says in Matthew 25:14-30, and it’s true. If you move in the right
direction, even with trivial or shamefully small steps, you will start to accelerate in the right direction.
And yes, breaking free from your digital addiction is the right choice. I would even say, it’s the best conceivable move, it’s the best move possible. Not breaking free is never the right choice.
Exponential progress also means that at the beginning, you will see no results. You will have to go through that valley; you can’t skip it. You can view it as a test, a price to entry.
If we are talking about the compound effect, let me remind you to sit upright and take deep breaths.
Being slightly better determines everything.
10. Keep improving
“The general who advances without coveting fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do good service for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom. […] To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength; to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight; to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear. What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins but excels in winning with ease. Hence his victories bring him neither a reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage. He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
After starting extreme, slipping back, slowly cutting, and then breaking free once and for all, let a few months pass before you touch any video games or social media.
Only after you break your addiction and harden your new habits can we talk about any moderation.
By the way, adult content and short videos are too addictive for moderation to be possible. You must categorically refuse to indulge in those things. Entertainment is not needed either; you can go without it.
However, after I removed my short video addiction and abstained from the non-email parts of the internet for two months, I started to watch videos again, specifically long, unedited, podcast-like videos. I enjoy watching videos on business, self-improvement, dating, psychology, and philosophy. Fun fact. Those things are pretty much the same. I learn a lot from these videos, and they inspire me to think, write and act.
I watch to learn. I refuse to watch anything that doesn’t make me take action.
I don’t watch to entertain, numb, or distract myself. Life is not supposed to be balanced with mindless social media use. Playing one hour of video games a day to unwind will make you lose to a person who doesn’t.
Even if you aren’t super ambitious, then you still should play because there’s still life to be lived. You could pick up a real hobby, do sports, or go on a date.
However, there’s more nuance. When you work sixty 14-hour days in a row and feel a bit exhausted, by all means, go and play some video games. Ironically, your bad habits can be the cure for your exhaustion. Nonetheless, I still think there are better ways to rest and recover, for example, by going on a walk. I hesitated to write down this tip because most will view this as an excuse to remain addicted and lazy, which is not my intent.
Am I saying that you’re not supposed to use the internet as a whole? No. If you can buy a train ticket online, by all means, do it. If you can grow your business by posting on social media, do it. However, what I refuse to accept are unproductive uses of the internet, for example, entertainment.
I believe that social media and the internet are a way to succeed and should be utilized. However, that doesn't mean that you should waste time on them by scrolling.
1. I refuse to date anyone using social media
If she uses social media during the date, I will have to go to the ‘bathroom’. By now, I have explained in detail what harm social media does. Even if she isn’t posting any sexual pictures, I don’t want that kind of energy near me. I don’t want someone with zero self-control, dominated by peer pressure. If she’s still using social media by the third date, and I have expressed my concern, she’s out. I don’t expect her to be perfect, but if she isn’t even trying, she’s out. I recommend you to do the same. High standards prevent nasty experiences.
2. Are digital addicts bad people?
No, there’s more to life than being or not being an internet addict.
3. Younger siblings
I failed to cure my siblings. I fear they want to be slave minded. I can talk about the negatives of digital addiction as much as I want, but I can’t fix them, and that’s a problem – do you remember the compound effect? Moreover, younger brains develop to be more heavily addicted than people with later exposure. I find it shameful that parents let this happen.
4. Older people
Surprisingly, many old people are addicted to social media, and that’s especially problematic because they are not only weak in their will but also incompetent when it comes to technology.
5. New technology
If virtual reality and augmented reality establish themselves, it’s game over. Combined with artificial intelligence, real life just won’t be able to compete. If brain chips also see some breakthroughs, there will be no real life anymore. The world will become meaningless, a façade. sI hope that more people wake up and say no.
I believe that a good life comes down to delaying gratification. I believe in the power of thinking for oneself and executing on the best conceivable move. I insist that wasting your life is never the right choice. I believe it’s your sacred duty to become the best possible version of yourself. Are you willing to suffer the pain of being a nobody or the pain of being great? The choice is yours.
What’s the biggest thing holding you back?