Kicking The Habit (Internet Addiction)
 

Are you online for more than 5, 6, 7 or maybe even 8 hours a day? Have you successfully kicked the habit of spending so much time online? If so, how did you do it?

I seem to have less and less time to do more worthwhile things like socializing and doing school work (it's starting to worry me). I need more balance in my life and cutting down on my internet seems like a good first step.

Post any tips/advice/stories related to cutting down internet usage. :)

spend at least one day a week outdoors doing something....anything away from internet access

Leave your internet use to the last thing of the day. Do a lot of planning. Do everything that does not require your computer to be on earlier, and do not touch that power button until you've accomplished everything you wanted to in the day. Once that is done, if you need to do work on the computer, you'll just have to apply willpower to avoid dicking around on the internet instead of doing your work.

This isn't quite the same thing, but when I need to do any kind of real work on a computer, I always use my laptop instead of my desktop. I realize not everyone has this luxury, but my laptop is extremely basic (i.e. I only need it for programs like Office and whatnot). On it, I keep everything recreational off of it, so when I sit down to work (in a room away from my desktop), I won't get distracted. If I try to do anything productive on my main computer, I will inevitably waste SO much time by chatting, surfing, fiddling with games, whatever. So my advice is if you can use a machine for your schoolwork that doesn't have anything fun to do on it, use that to remove temptations.

Also, if you're a huge minesweeper fan like me, make sure you don't plug in a real mouse. This will slow your playing way down and make it impossible to get good times, thus discouraging more play!

What works for me is having a set bedtime, like before midnights on school/job nights. That cuts down on a lot of crap surfing. I purge the bookmarks of pointless time killers every now and then, and promise to never try to find those pages again.
It took a massive power outage for me to realise that I didn't NEED to stay updated on a lot of forums, nowadays there are three that I look at daily and a few more I peek in on every now and then. My biggest problem was fanfiction. I was addicted to all sorts of crappy fandoms and needed to read everything when I could have been reading quality printed literature instead. I don't know... one day I just got sick of myself. I deleted a lot of bookmarks that day. I still read a bit of fanfiction every now and then to get my Snape/Lockhart fix, but if a story sucks I simply stop reading it. Couldn't do that before.
Less crap, more content (and sleep) and schoolwork before super happy online fun time, okay? ^.~

Hmm, well, I spend a lot of time on the internet, but I don't call it an addiction. I've pretty much accepted it as a part of my life. I leave my XP account logged in at all times so whenever I need to access the internet, I just do it like that. It comes in handy. Say I'm having a conversation and we get into an argument about a largely known fact, I just check online. I'm playing a videogame and get stuck, just check online. I'm practicing guitar and want to know how to play "Lonesome Town" by Ricky Nelson, just check online. It's night time and I have absolutely nothing else to do, I sit down in front of the computer and read about news and contact whoever is still up. I buy, sell, and trade basketball cards online. All the while I still find time to have real relationships, play sports, go to work, and do other non-internet related things.

It's just a part of my life, and I'm glad to say a large portion of my internet time is spent right here on the TFP.

Most of the time I'm on the internet is at night.(1:30am and on) I try to get the most out of my day and when the world calms down, I go on. I mostly download music and movies.

I know this one guy (who will remain nameless) spends all his free time online. His reality is the internet. He only leaves his house to go to the grocery store. He has no life. Wasting away on the computer. Alone.

I will never turn out like him. He is inspiration for me to push away from the keyboard and go outside, plant a tree, talk to a person go to the gym, etc.......

I love the internet. I don't know what I would do without it. I have spent eight hours at a time in front of the screen, but its not everday and its when I have absolutley nothing better or anything to do. :thumbsup: