I think Minimum Effective Dose applies. I quit most media for 4 years. The next 2 years were 2 hrs/day on Reddit for jokes. It was the best.
But 1 year into that, I read an article by Swyx on how to use social media. I tried but gave up for another 2 years. But the end of that last 2 years was the election...and I was curious...so I went to X.
Within 3 days my opinion of the outcome flipped.
And...since I already read Swyx's article, I was ready to effectively navigate other topics of interest.
But the key to effective media usage is to ALWAYS be on guard. Your mental filters have to be running all the time. The second you drop your guard, you're vulnerable because the stream never lets up.
But when you do this, you find that you quickly run out of truly interesting things to read. Luckily I've also got physical hobbies. I now spend a TOTAL of 2 hrs/day across all media, and my mental health is just fine!
But also I find it highly rewarding in many areas such as investing, history (the X format works so well!), international (language, culture, politics).
I also highly recommend taking a second to put each post in scale or context. This does 2 things: helps decide importance of post, and slows scrolling so your brain doesn't get DDOSed into a mental health crisis.
And the (increasingly cheap, powerful and ubiquitous) LLMs can be used to either save time or power you further into the conversations.
But 1 year into that, I read an article by Swyx on how to use social media. I tried but gave up for another 2 years. But the end of that last 2 years was the election...and I was curious...so I went to X.
Within 3 days my opinion of the outcome flipped.
And...since I already read Swyx's article, I was ready to effectively navigate other topics of interest.
But the key to effective media usage is to ALWAYS be on guard. Your mental filters have to be running all the time. The second you drop your guard, you're vulnerable because the stream never lets up.
But when you do this, you find that you quickly run out of truly interesting things to read. Luckily I've also got physical hobbies. I now spend a TOTAL of 2 hrs/day across all media, and my mental health is just fine!
But also I find it highly rewarding in many areas such as investing, history (the X format works so well!), international (language, culture, politics).
I also highly recommend taking a second to put each post in scale or context. This does 2 things: helps decide importance of post, and slows scrolling so your brain doesn't get DDOSed into a mental health crisis.
And the (increasingly cheap, powerful and ubiquitous) LLMs can be used to either save time or power you further into the conversations.