I have been doomscrolling on-and-off again ever since I had Facebook, Instagram or the sorts. The last streak of mindlessly watching short-form videos every night lasted 14 months. I knew I had to quit. Watching all this dopamine laden videos had done a number on my attention span, and now I sometimes find myself switching between the tasks I was supposed to do every 5 minutes, without actually getting anything done, and inevitably resulting in me swiping on Facebook Shorts for 3 hours straight. 1 1 I think we can all agree that shortform video is digital crack 

It’s undeniably an addiction, one that I need to cut out. There will be two parts to this bettering-my-life endeavor.

  • Stop the habit
  • Do something positive instead

Stop doomscrolling 🔗

The social network that I’m using the most is Facebook. In the past I had always shied from fully deactivating Facebook in fear of missing out on some important stuffs. Or just “what if I need to use it” sort of thoughts. Gradually, I realize that there are some main positive use cases of Facebook for me

  • I need to use Messenger to communicate with a bunch of close friends & people I know
  • I sometimes use Facebook to find shops, vendors, or people that sells something I need: computer parts, motor parts, mechkey stuffs, etc.

Luckily, I can still use Messenger without having an active Facebook account. On the second matter, Facebook had made it pretty clear to the world that you won’t get those benefits without being dangerously close to the digital crack cocaine of short form videos, so I have to make do in my life without that social networking capability. Deactivating my Facebook account is now a very sound decision for me, one that I intend to uphold for as long as it is logical to do so.

Of course, keeping you on their platform and watch as much ads as possible is pretty much the whole business model of Facebook now, that’s why they are making it as hard as possible for you to even find this settings. As of this moment (2025), you need to navigate to their “Account Center”, look for “Account Management”, then find the deactivate option. Remember not to pick the “temporarily deactivate” reason, as the platform will pester you comeback to activate it after a while.

Do something positive instead 🔗

Now is the time for the good kind of content consumption. What is better than the OG of content feeds: a RSS reader. So I get to install Miniflux on my homeserver.

In case you hadn’t been acquainted with Miniflux, it is a killer application for management of RSS feeds. It act as an aggregator that pull in new blog entries from all your RSS feeds, then allow you to read it from your devices, through the browser. Miniflux is on the far side of the minimalism spectrum, employing a clean, simple web UI without frill. It doesn’t have mobile application, instead uses a PWA that you can pin on your mobile homescreen.

The best thing, but also arguably most time-consuming thing about RSS is that you need to curate your own feeds. No more automatic content curation for you, with algorithmic recommendation that just give you what you desire to read. You have to find blog sites from writer that you care about and subscribe to their feed. But if you — like me — have woken up from a doomscrolling session, in a daze, asking yourself “why the fuck am I reading about this person that does not concern me in anyway, about a topic that I absolutely do not care for”, then you will appreciate how you are in control of the content stream you consume. So I urge you, with haste, start your own RSS adventure.

The value of re-reading 🔗

A problem with fast content platform like Facebook is how you are not conditioned to read deep into each article and contemplate about it. Everything is designed to give you that quick dopamine injection then varnish from your memory. Nothing of value is left, no lasting impression. A core condition for deep understanding is re-consumption and contemplation, because it will be for sure that you will not understand everything on the first read through. So the second component for my new content consumption journey, is a read-it-later app.

A read-it-later app should help me collect articles, links, and then save it, so I can consume it later at my own discretion. A good read-it-later app will also comes with facility for organization, note taking, highlight, so I can record my thoughts and ideas.

I tried several options, but thus far I found Readeck to be the most suitable for me personally. The open source app is no-nonsense, simple to install & operate, lightweight and works really well. The links sent to Readeck is crawled & stored, so you can read an article even if it is not available anymore (which it will due to link-rot). Other contenders that you can also try out in this area including Linkwarden, Karakeep.

After installing Readeck, you can also try out its browser extensions or mobile app, so you can quickly save links from both your phone or your browser.

Fin 🔗

In this age of information-weaponization, exposing yourself to an endless stream of mostly useless information will literally rot your brain. Fight for your attention span, and curate what you consume.

P/s: I had to reactivate my Facebook account, again. Still there are some apps & groups on the site. But after a period of giving doomscrolling, let’s hope I’m strong enough to keep it going. For now, only Facebook on my laptop.