5 Surefire Methods To Eliminate Your Internet Addiction

“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Each and every day, more people find themselves ensnared by and addicted to the high amount of stimulation available on the Internet.

Internet addiction is a hydra-headed issue with different causes and effects. Regardless of the causes, we know one thing:

The technology we use now is so incredibly pervasive that many people find themselves unable to lessen their use on social media or various other Internet-related devices. It is a worldwide issue that people are becoming more aware of as the 21st century progresses.

In this article, I’ll be diving deep into how to make the Internet work for you instead of visa-versa and lessen the grip of addiction on you if you have one.

Let’s unravel some threads.

Note: I’ve written a more comprehensive guide to quit social media. If you have a social media addiction rather than just a straight up Internet addiction, I’d recommend you read that one.

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The Internet: Past and Present

In the years 2005 to 2009, there was no widespread definition of Internet addiction.

Why choose those years? A couple of reasons:

1. Those were the years of my middle adolescent period
2. Those were the last couple of years before Web 2.0 and widespread social media
3. The world was becoming more connected via new technologies

I can personally remember a distinct period of “before” and “after” especially with regards to how people in my age group communicated and their expectations from life.

I can remember a time when Myspace and AOL were “social media”, blogs were considered a “new thing”, and everyone had flip phones. There was no real type of “clickbait” and YouTube was still in its early stages. Many people alive today (mainly Generation Z) cannot relate to this experience.

With widespread Internet use, you also get a larger user base. With a larger user base, you are able to easily draw conclusions about how specific things affect a specific population over time. In this case, the population is humanity and the “thing” is unrestricted Internet access.

As of this writing 4.5 billion people use the Internet on a consistent basis. That’s a large amount of people and obviously any type of large-scale deployment of something as alluring as the Internet will have a tangible effect on many people.

Even though the technology I grew up with as a teen is considered relatively “primitive” compared to the times we live in now, I still came out on the other side with a mild to moderate Internet addiction.

My drug of choice back then was Facebook and multiplayer video games, but for many people now it is in the form of Snapchat, Instagram, Fortnite, Twitter, even Internet pornography.

As more people connect to the Internet, more people will find themselves hooked on even more alluring stimuli. Artificial intelligence designed to serve customized content, virtual and integrated reality, even remote work are some of the developments that will contribute to increased engagement with the Internet.

Why Is Internet Addiction a Big Problem (and Why Now)?

As a society, we are currently coming to grasps with what Web 2.0 has done and is doing to us on a daily basis.

More and more psychologists, teachers, and government officials are beginning to understand that Internet addiction and social media addiction exist and it is dramatically warping our society and interpersonal relations.

Books such as Irresistible, The Shallows, and Digital Minimalism have lifted the wool off of our collective eyes and made us realize the problem is not to be understated or avoided.

If you’re reading this article, it’s clear that you have a good degree of self-awareness. You realize that you probably have an Internet or even general digital addiction and you want to fix it.

Coming from that train of thought…if you think of time as money (which it very well can be), the amount of money you have wasted (literally and figuratively)…is staggering. Many people hate wasting money, yet that is what millions of people do when they spend excessive time on the Internet.

Realizing the effect Internet (over)use has had on millions of people worldwide, it is easier to turn a more inquisitive eye towards our collective social media and Internet habits so we can ask the question:

“What is this doing to me?”

4 Reasons Why the Internet Pulls You In

To even begin to diagnose if you have a problem, you need to know why you may even be pulled to the Internet in the first place.

Pain/Pleasure Principle

We humans naturally avoid pain and seek pleasure. This means we gravitate towards the path of least resistance, usually in some form of escapism.

The Internet offers unending pleasure and minimal to no pain (or so it seems). Because of this, we humans are naturally drawn to the Internet.

It’s easier to browse the Internet than to study or work on something of value and it “seems” to offer a great reward.

Unlimited Novelty

Human beings are wired to seek out and enjoy novelty and new experiences.

Why?

Because our ancestors’ survival relied on them to chase new experiences and surroundings. If that wasn’t the case, only a tiny section of the world would be explored rather than the entire globe.

The Internet takes advantage of novelty with the creation of things like “the news feed”, “clickbait” headlines, or pornography.

Novelty triggers dopamine, the motivation molecule. There will always be new things to do, experience, and see on the Internet; so it is something that constantly keeps us engaged. Anything you want, the Internet can conjure up.

Unfortunately, the brain isn’t the best at filtering out things that serves it no use, so all information (especially in an untrained brain) is tagged as “valuable”.

A young, developing brain is sensitive to novelty because it is trying to get a grasp on the world. Adolescent brains are constantly firing dopamine in an attempt to get them to engage with the world and encounter new experiences.

So, unending novelty is one reason why the Internet is so difficult to step away from.

Lack of Feedback

All species learn through conditioning. Going back to the pain/pleasure loop, someone will engage in an activity the more immediate (positive) feedback they receive from it and disengage the more negative feedback they receive.

As a child, you may have put your hand on a hot stove. After getting burned once (or twice), you now associate a hot stove with pain. You realize not to touch it again. However with experiences such as the Internet – there is no immediate feedback. You don’t know how wasting endless hours on Facebook will affect your life a year from now. You don’t connect all those missed hours with lack of achievement or accomplishment down the line.

As a result of this disconnect in feedback, it is easier to fritter away long-term gains because you didn’t take those hours you spent on aimless Internet browsing and instead redirected them to something more valuable.

Societal Conditioning

The last and arguably most important one has to do with a type of societal enabling. Everyone and their grandmother (literally) is on a social media platform of some kind. As digital technology gets to become intertwined with our real lives, the Internet becomes an extension or even replacement of our own physical existences. On top of that, people will find you “weird” if you aren’t constantly on all the social media platforms or using the Internet constantly.

During the pandemic of 2020, the world spent an unparalleled amount of time indoors or away from actual social obligations. This made many people run to a source of comfort: the Internet. Many people have developed a ton of bad habits in relation to the Internet during this time and a bad habit not addressed only grows stronger.

Internet Compulsion/Addiction Self Diagnostic

Ok, so you may be in slight denial at this point.

Maybe you use the Internet a bit too much, but you aren’t “addicted”, right?

Here’s 3 signs you may have a problem:

1. You Try to Regulate Your Use But Can’t

This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to cut down on your behavior. Maybe you’ve tried before in the past but you always keep backsliding.

Using the classical definition of addiction:

Addiction is the repeated involvement with a substance or activity, despite the substantial harm it now causes, because that involvement was (and may continue to be) pleasurable and/or valuable.- MentalHelp.net

When most people try to stop, they find out that they can’t. The rewards they get from the Internet are too attractive in comparison to stopping.

And because there is no (immediate) feedback that prevents them from stopping, their use continues indefinitely.

2. Withdrawal-Like Symptoms When Use Is Discontinued

Let’s say you have managed to significantly reduce your time or completely quit using the Internet with the exceptions of necessary obligations. What happens?

Well, for most people, withdrawal-like symptoms will appear similar to when someone quits drugs. Depending on the extremity of your use, some of these may be:

• Irritability
• Anxiety
• Daytime fatigue
• “Brain fog”
• Restlessness

And the list goes on. In fact, researchers have found out that Internet addiction and drug addiction have very similar effects on the brain:

3. Specific Behavioral Traits

Because Internet addiction is largely behavioral, there will be certain traits that one exhibits as an addict. Each of these traits on their own are not enough to prove a distinct diagnosis, but together they form of a picture of someone’s level of activity with the Internet.

• Incessant desire to constantly use the Internet
• Loss of interest in real-world activities
• Low mental resilience
• Lack of long-term focus
• Constantly checks out news sites, infotainment websites, or any website that matter for “new content”
• Some form of pornography addiction
• Low-moderate to high amounts of social anxiety

Again, all of these things may be issues in and of themselves, but if some or most of these resonated with you – maybe it’s time to turn an inquisitive eye towards your Internet use.

How to Beat Internet Addiction: 5 Tactics to Help You

So after read this, you’re now aware of the effect that Internet addiction is having on you or will eventually have on you.. It’s stealing your time, stealing your energy, and stealing your focus. You now want to stop.

These tactics will help you get started, but the real work begins after you read this. It’s up to you to change your habit patterns and eventually substitute healthier ways of being in place of your Internet addiction.

1. Time Your Use

One of the ways to prevent forming a habit is to engage less in an activity. So naturally, the easiest way to prevent Internet addiction is to not engage in it in the first place. This is easier to do if your job doesn’t involve a lot of Internet use (outside sales, blue-collar work) but those of use who make our living from the Internet need to be more discerning.

One way is to create social accountability. Tell your parents, your friends, or your roommates that you will not be on a social media site or even the Internet in general from this hour to this hour. Let them keep you accountable and build in a punishment (such as paying them $50 or $100 every time you don’t follow through) so you can stick to that commitment.

You need to have off hours where you use the Internet very little or not at all. That way, your brain will be able to recharge.

One of the easiest ways to limit your use is to get an Internet blocker.

Freedom is a great choice for anyone who seriously wants to increase their productivity and peace of mind. Right now, they’re offering a 25% discount on their yearly and lifetime plans, so now is a great time to join if you haven’t already.

2. Morning and Evening Routines (Protocols)

Every person should have a wake up and bedtime routine. It should be something that powerfully rouses you from the depths of sleep and something that puts the day into context and winds it down.

Many people pick up their phones first thing in the morning and then – BOOM. Off to the races. Even worse off, they finish off their day with a phone in hand or looking at some sort of screen. Never before has someone been surrounded by so much “stuff”, unable to put attention on the goose that lays the golden eggs – themselves.

In a routine to begin or start the day, you focus on yourself and aligning yourself or recharging yourself. You can do this through a yoga session, meditation, working out, reading a physical book, goal-setting, or journaling.

3. Embrace Boredom

Boredom is one of the most painful things any human being can experience.

Why?

Because it’s hard to be alone with yourself or your thoughts.

When untrained, the mind is like a wild dog that won’t stop barking. At its worst, it is like a merciless judge who only seeks to condemn.

In order to hopscotch past the rigorous process of disciplining the mind, many people turn to distraction. Today, this distraction is in the form of mindless Internet addiction.

When there’s a “gap” in which the mind is not active, the mind will want to latch onto anything it possibly can in order to keep itself occupied. If you train your mind to embrace the present moment no matter what it brings, there will be no tension because you are accepting what is. Meditation is a great way to develop this skill along with gaps of time where you just do “nothing”. You mind needs idle time to synthesize and piece together information and doing “nothing” is a great way to start that process.

4. Engage Offline

As I said before, the best way to not develop a habit is to lessen engagement or not engage in the first place. When you do “offline” activities, you take away time that would normally be used for Internet browsing. Contrary to what many people (especially Generation Z) think, there’s many things that you can do offline that are much better than doing them online.

You can go biking, swimming, meet people in a Meetup, read physical books, go to a park, talk to someone, etc. There’s just so much stuff out there to do. Finding an engaging hobby and becoming better at it just might be the thing that breaks your Internet addiction. Find something that speaks to you and throw yourself into it.

5. Start the Dopamine Detox

This last one is a bit controversial and that’s ok. I don’t expect everyone to do it. In the past couple of years, many people in various self-improvement niches have been calling for and pushing for a concept known as the “dopamine detox” or “dopamine fast”. This is a mode and state of being where you limit or completely eliminate sources that stimulate an unnatural dopamine response.

Of course, this is a lot of things that involve the Internet in some way such as social media, gaming, or mindless Internet browsing. The real purpose of this is to get you motivated and get you hooked on things that don’t involve unnecessary stimulation. This is how people in the past lived and how they were motivated to do things in the real world. People today might find it unnecessary (or even torturous) and just will not do it.

In Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit, he speaks of certain habits being activated by certain “triggers” and cues.

For example, your alarm clock rings – you either get up out of bed or hit the snooze button. Your alarm clock is a “trigger”.

Since the brain is a large network of interconnected nodes, neurons, synapses, and axons, that makes the brain similar to a chain. One thought triggers another thought, which triggers another thought. This creates a series of related actions. This is largely subconscious, once it reaches the point of habit.

With this rationale, if you can eliminate other bad habits, and change their triggers and cues – you can weaken the hold Internet addiction has on you. Your Internet addiction most likely has a foundation stone that brings up other related habits. Find out what that is and start removing it. If you take out one link, the chain breaks.

I’ve written a deep dive into the dopamine detox, check it out if that interests you.

Conclusion + Wrapping Up

As the world becomes smaller and more connected, many people turn towards the Internet to connect, play, and discover information. With any population of people, you will inevitably have some that have an adverse reaction to a behavior or stimuli and that’s what’s being seen with the Internet. The Internet is novel because it stimulates almost all of our desires in endless ways, meaning that addiction is an inevitability for many people.

Internet addiction exists on a spectrum of behavior, with mild to severe effects. However, even a mild Internet addiction can produce disproportionate lifestyle effects such as lack of productivity leading to job loss or sporadic engagement with erotic imagery leading to a sexual addiction.

In order to beat, overcome, or prevent an Internet addiction you need a custom combination of time away from the Internet, blocks of time where you do not use the Internet at all, and removing similar bad habits that coincide with Internet use. That will give you the best shot to use the Internet responsibly and make it your servant rather than your master.

Do you have an Internet addiction? What are you doing to beat it? Let me know in the comments.