Overcoming Internet and Information Addiction

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Bruce Keener

I recently wrote about being flooded with information, a condition that many of us have. But, I recently realized that the problem is bigger than that for me: I have become addicted to the internet and/or to acquiring information.

By internet/information addiction, I mean that I have allowed the internet and my interest in gaining information to have more control over me than I have over it. Sometime during the past few months I developed a “need” to frequently check my feed reader for new headlines, to check Twitter to see what people were talking about, to check Facebook to see if there was anything new there, to check my BlackBerry for new messages, and so on.

I had loaded up my Twitter account to follow what several of the top bloggers are saying, and many of them are extremely talkative. I had loaded up my feed reader to have 320 feeds in it: that is, I was monitoring the stories being written on 320 blogs.

And what value did I get out of this? Pretty much none. The vast majority of the Twitter information was just egotistical rantings, pointers to self-promotional links, and other worthless dribble. And most of the blogs in my feed reader were talking about the same stories, and often giving the same old “advice” packaged in a new way.

So, I am getting control of it. I have reduced my Twitter followings by half, to where I now follow mostly people that I actually know and like and a few top bloggers that I particularly like. I sent the following message to those I “dropped” and who were also following me:

Twitter is too noisy for me, so I am unfollowing a lot of people including yourself. You will probably want to unfollow me too

And, I have reduced my feeds from the high of 320 to the current total of 82. The final number will be lower, probably closer to 50.

As to Facebook and FriendFeed, I don’t plan to use them much at all. I may check them once a week for a while, but suspect I will ultimately kill those accounts completely.

I feel better already.

Any of you fighting this battle?

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  • Brian Darvell

    I have been having similar feelings lately. I have about 80 RSS feeds too but if even half a day goes by without me checking my Google Reader it is impossible for me to catch up to them anymore. I will join you in cutting my feeds back.

    Fortunately, I may sound obnoxious here but I really have never seen the point of or had any use for microblogging services such as Twitter. I mean, really, how tied down to your computer do you have to be for something like that to work? I don’t really get it I guess but then again I’m not on the Internet nearly as often as many others are.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Hi Brian,

    Good luck in trimming the feeds … I am confident you will feel better when you have it “right sized.”

    Like you, I initially thought the microblogging services were stupid. But, I decided to go ahead and try Twitter and found a few friends in doing so, with shared interests and who have interesting things to say. Unfortunately, they are in the minority and most of the stuff I see on Twitter is dribble. If not for the few friends, I’d give it up in a heart beat.

  • Brian Darvell

    I thought I’d let you know that I found cutting off some excess feeds easier than I thought it would have been. I’m down from near 90 to 52 and realistically this isn’t much because some of the remaining ones might make only a couple posts per week. I do feel that this is a much more manageable amount.

    It surprises me however that people claim to have hundreds (a couple people even over a thousand) feeds and that they somehow manage to sort through them. I guess they barely read the titles of almost all articles in these cases in order to process. I prefer to read most, like yours for instance ;) , except the ones with titles that will obviously not be of any interest.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Good deal, Brian. Cutting the stuff is not too hard to do once you commit to doing it. And, like you note, I don’t worry about the ones that only have one or two posts per week … those are often worth reading anyway as they tend to have a bit more thought behind them.

    Thanks again for the input. By the way, back to Twitter. I just placed a message on Twitter that said “I am unfollowing everyone who tweets >= 10 times per day. You will probably want to unfollow me too.” Have already stopped following one person as a result of this, and there are couple of others that are close. That’s another way of cutting down on the dribble.

  • Susan aka gasusan2005

    Twitter can be informative (links) or dribble (what someone is doing)…and I have found myself enjoying the dribble more lately… because I have gotten to know more about people I have met online….

    and feeds…. I have decided to take a break from my normal routine of checking google reader …. for many reasons…. I haven’t checked google reader in days….

    and I have more time to do other things now….. hmm…..imagine that!

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Hi Susan,
    I should clarify a bit about Twitter. Like you, I enjoy hearing what friends are doing and enjoy your tweets for that reason. Same with many of the other tweets I see. By dribble, I mean that constant flow of stuff from people like Scoble, with 10 – 20, or even more, tweets per day. When you have a few people who are doing that, it washes out everything else. Interesting things get buried in the noise.

    I love where I am at right now with Twitter … following about 30 people, and none of them do the constant communication routine … just often enough to keep things interesting. Twitter is back to being enjoyable for me again, now that I have trimmed out the noise makers.

    Thanks for the comment!

  • http://scott.stawarz.com scott

    I have to say. I’m in this boat. I read and read. I love reading and acquiring knowledge. As a Computer Trainer and Consultant, my role is always to stay one step a head of the bulk of constituent users. Often times, my internet reading can be chalked up as research and business development, but sometimes it creeps into the addiction realm. As a web consultant, turning off the internet is often difficult to do due to the nature of my work, but can sometimes be the best productivity hack I do. Great to hear your examples by culling the heard. As GTD reducing inputs, can be a great productivity hack.

  • http://www.keenerliving.com/ Bruce

    Hi Scott, Thanks for the comments. Sounds like your awareness of the addiction potential keeps it from swallowing you up … good for you!