I have come to realise that the internet has been ruined for me. It use to be a space where me and my friends from around the world hung out, chatted, built websites and guessed spoilers for HP. We had our own language and jokes. Now it seems everyone else has arrived at the party, taken over and ruined it. I can barely stand social media or the news these days. Its so filled with pointless twaddle and nonsense, grandstanding non-celebs screaming ’look at me I’m special’. The things I’m reading around gender identity, politics, religion, it’d be laughable if it weren’t so frightening for its impact on RL. The sheer lack of common sense or understanding of science and fact is scary. It feels like the only way to get any peace is to switch off. Has anyone done that? Gone cold turkey on the internet? How did you find it?

not the internet but news, i havent watched in over a year i rarely open email headlines unless AFL related the most i get is what i read in forums, if i open the thread i love it, much less worry/stress. I didnt even know we were in lockdown first time until dd got off the school bus and told me

I think when COVID first started I totally freaked out to the point I could barely get out of bed, I was just exhausted trying to keep up with information thinking I had to know everything might happen to feel I had some control. There was a lot of helpful info around at the time on how to manage feeling overwhelmed and one of them was trying to maintain perspective, so learning what you could control and what you couldn’t, and reducing social media and what you read etc. I basically deleted all my news sources and refilled it with just basic fun channels and little hobbies and point blank stopped reading any news. Even on old eb I just went into the memes thread and nothing else. I pulled my whole world down to just basically what was happening in the kids school and our local community and that was it. Doing that really helped as it made me stop feeling helpless and angry and worrying. I think I did it for only three months or so but it made a huge difference because it helped me relax and feel safer. Just rewatched old tv comedy shows, read a few books, tried out some new hobbies. A social media detox is pretty enjoyable actually, I might start another one soon!

In a funny way, Essential Baby closing down was probably good for me. It had gradually become really joyless and meanspirited - people’s language being policed when they were in a state of distress in relationships is one thing I started seeing that didn’t sit well with me. There are women from there that I think are amazing and I’m so glad I found them (most of them are here now) but the overall tone had shifted so it wasn’t great for me anymore. Edited to add: the Covid threads there were unbearable for me, I had to stop reading them because I felt it was affecting me negatively watching the posters in there constantly freaking out.

Those covid threads were horrendous! I do switch off at times and opt out of the news. I can’t really give up the internet though… just another of my issues…

Yep during Covid I limited my social media, as I don’t watch the news anymore, I would get on in the morning for a quick check than again later in the day.. I think it really did help me.

Do you switch off?