It’s 16:00 and I woke up around about 15:00 after a terrible night of procrastination and existential dread, and the first thing I did was get up and go over to my already se up calculus books, and just started reading and doing practice questions. My dopamine levels feel absolutely perfect right now, they’re not euphoric or anything, but they feel extremely stable and sufficient.

I noticed that as soon as I was done, I got a very minor suggestion in my mind to check my phone, and I noticed the immediate dopamine prediction that occured and how it would completely throw this balance away no matter what. Phone usage seems to invariably throw away my balance, more specifically, social phone usage, and since my phone is primarily a means of connecting with other people, it is almost directly associated with social usage.

I dont like cheap social interaction, but I very deeply value and seek spontaneous social interaction and silly fun and laughter with people I genuinely enjoy being around. I think this is a perfect example of “Too much of a good thingis a bad thing”. In this case, it’s contact with your friends and loved ones. There’s a balance, and theres sort of an event horizon (except it’s not inescapabale like that of a black hole) which you can cross without knowing and still feeling superficially fine, but start to have the internal quality of your bonds break away, erode into something else, with a digitised extension forming onto them which just doesn’t feel right.

Something feels off about the digital world, and the less time I spend on it, the better I feel. And yet, when I go too long without it, the cravings to come back get stronger and stronger, that’s seriously concerning. Who in the modern day and age can really stay off the social grid? Why is it so damn hard to quit? Even though the things on the other side bring me so much satisfaction and fulfillment?

It’s not the internet and computers as a whole, cause I can enjoy coding, reaserching, or hacking perfectly fine without it feeling corrupting, even gaming alone to some extent is fine. The issue comes when you add social networks into the mix. What’s so bad about them? Is it kind of like being in a constant never ending party where everyone is constantly on display for everyone to interact with, to approve or disapprove or ignore? Is that why it’s so addicting? Because it itches that insatiable itch in our brain which wants to be seen and be approved at a rate unimaginable in the real world?

How do you have a balance of this party? Is it best to just leave it forever and find others in other places? Sitting outside hte party house, having a real meaningful conversation? Is the cost of being in the party greater than any potential upsides it may have?

I think the main argument my mind makes for the party is that there are some people I want to interact with who are easiset to reach in that party house, and doing so externally is a lot of effort or plain impossible.

But what if I was told that having access to talk to those people was costing me my own time and dopamine balance? That makes the insight blatantly obvious. Social networks are a tool, just like almost everythign else, that an intelligent person with a mission should use when they need something exact out of it, when they have an exact use for it. You don’t leave a truck running in the background in case you need to quicklly go somewhere and don’t want to have to start the engine on every time. That costs you fuel and is extremely loud and annoying. Social media is the same. It is a loud fast truck of social connection, but you don’t need to be socially connecting all the time, and especially not meaninglessly. Do it when there’s a specific reason, when it’s the road from point A where you are to point B. Don’t just keep it running in case someone magically reaches out to you accross it, unless that is really the one of the things you need the most right now, at the cost of your dopamine balance.

But that will almost never be the case. The party is really damn fun as far as the primal part of your brain is concerned, and it will come up with every excuse under the moon to get you back online. You just have to resist that temptation if you value your mental balance and mission.

For anyone who may be interested, my solution to this has been to deactivate my main instagram account that has all of my awesome reels and friends on it, and instead give out my secondary one whenever I need to exchange instagrams with a new cool person I meet, which does happen here and there, and used to be my main excuse for coming back online. I do not log into this secondary account, I do not keep the password autosaved, it has to be a manual concious decision to check it. I stay logged out of my discord account cause that’s just a shithole, I use Signal for close friends and family communication, and try to keep Whatsapp deleted too whenever possible unless I need to talk to a groupchat of friends. The best way to contact me if you need me is to call me directly, or message me directly thorugh sms, which has basically 0 dopamine association wiht it, as the only people who message me on there are my network provider, google OTPs, and my dentist, neither of whom are very conversational.

The biggest tip I have is to simply remember to delete any of the apps you use temporarily as soon as you’re done needeing them, don’t stay on for one for reel, or finishing one more conversation. If they’re really your friends, they’ll understand, or you can simply explain it and risk sounding a little autistic. In my opinion, it’s worth it.