If I find an app is pulling me in too often, I delete it. If I find a website is distracting me too much, I throw it on my hosts file (and redirect it to 127.0.0.1). If I find myself drinking too much beer, I stop. If I find myself craving anything in a way that feels intuitively bad, it's a good sign that I need to change something.
I feel like a lot of people respond to those impulses by going out of their way to make it normal—everyone has this problem—rather than deal with it before it becomes a monkey on your back. I have a lot of compassion for their predicament, but I also know that the answer is very, very simple: walk away and do something else.
As a personal prescription, this is great, but as a societal one it's like saying "just don't smoke, it's as easy as that!"
On a national or international scale, we don't get to deal with what ought to be, only what is. And it increasingly looks - Facebook averages 50 minutes of use per day - like the average person either doesn't know or doesn't manage to limit their consumption of these things. Super-satiation is a real problem, is in fact most of our problems from obesity to inaccurate news to dishonest politicians. There comes a point where we have to accept that this is going to take some solution larger than personal responsibility.
Yes, I completely agree. I have plenty of vices, and struggle with them all the time. I guess I was trying to convey my own current state of mind after thinking hard about this problem and where it leads...but you're right to characterize that as a personal viewpoint, and not something you can realistically prescribe for others. Everyone has to come to their own enlightenment, and I still have a long way to go.
It's not necessarily just a personal thing. We as a people haven't yet figured out how to value or not value this new deluge of distraction and information. Social rules are doing more to curb smoking now than any health warnings - everyone I know who's quit recently does so because it's seen as a bad thing to do by people. If overuse of media was treated the same way we tread people with any other addiction (social shame, professionals to help) it would be less of a problem. But a huuuge amount of people just spend their time tuning out and going down the information rabbit hole and not spending any time pursuing their goals (myself included)
I think the key phrase in his post is "intuitively bad". If you enjoy programming, gardening, running, watching a bit of tv or whatever then good for you. But I think all of us have reached point with one thing or another (from too much computer Solitaire to overeating) where we realize it's not really making us much happier.
For me, the key is being honest as to when any hobbies or time / attention commitments become distractions i.e. detours. While it is possible a detour can become the shortcut, the likelihood of a "lightbulb moment" happen by refreshing X social media feed is less fertile than dedicated focus on Y.. be it a problem, project, etc.
Of course, everything doesn't need to be a lightbulb moment either. That is also part of this issue. We use all these apps to keep us constantly productive or more efficient in finding things that make us happy. The drive is to read reviews so we don't waste our money on a bad dinner or product or experience, or to follow the right people on twitter so we get lots of high quality content and less cruft. And by and large I actually think the modern consumer ecosystem is good at accomplishing this.
But we have to ask ourselves if that's a worthwhile end goal. Perhaps a bit of detour is actually what we need.
I feel like a lot of people respond to those impulses by going out of their way to make it normal—everyone has this problem—rather than deal with it before it becomes a monkey on your back. I have a lot of compassion for their predicament, but I also know that the answer is very, very simple: walk away and do something else.