A few weeks ago I opened my browser to do some work. Something boring, checking my YouTube studio. Two hours later I was watching a guy drift a car in Forza Horizon. I own that game. I could have played it myself. Instead I sat there and watched, because the algorithm decided that was what I needed right then.
I am not telling you this from some clean mountaintop where I quit the internet. I learned everything I know from the internet. English included. I love technology. I literally play live shows in virtual reality. So when I say a lot of hard things about the digital age here, understand that it comes from someone who is grateful for it and also fed up with one specific part of it. This is how I rebuilt my digital life around a single idea: create, don't consume.
The internet has a creation problem, not a content problem
There is incredible stuff online. People showing you how to build things, how to use software, how to make music. You can genuinely learn anything. The problem is not the content. The problem is that you stopped choosing it.
The algorithm does not show you things based on your interests. It shows you things based on metrics. You can follow five people you love and still spend your evening watching strangers, because a system decided it knew you better than you know yourself. That is not your feed anymore. It is a feed built for you, aimed at one outcome: the next click.
Nobody chooses to get addicted. Everybody does.
Here is the part I really want you to sit with. None of this is an accident. I work with YouTube. I make the thumbnails, I write the titles, I know how they are designed to get the click and keep you hooked. Every feed you scroll was built by people whose job is to make it hard to stop.
So this is not a willpower problem and it is not a character flaw. Nobody is strong enough to opt out of a machine engineered to capture them. Everybody gets caught. That is not the shameful part. The shameful part is the story we tell ourselves afterwards: that we are lazy, that we never get anything done, that something is wrong with us. Most of the time nothing is wrong with you. You are just exhausted by a thing that was built to exhaust you.
And the cost is real, not vibes. A 2026 meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin pulled together 71 studies and 98,299 people and found that heavier short-form video use lines up with worse cognition overall, with the strongest hits to attention (r = -.38) and inhibitory control (r = -.41), the exact mental muscle you use to stop scrolling. You can read it here: Feeds, Feelings, and Focus. On the brain side, an fMRI study on short-video viewing found that watching your preferred clips fires up the amygdala and quiets the control regions of the prefrontal cortex, and the people with less self-control to begin with get suppressed the most. The system literally turns down the part of you that would say no.
I am not sharing this to scare you. I am sharing it so you stop blaming yourself and start seeing the thing for what it is. Because the first step out is not deleting an app. The first step is waking up. Realizing it is happening at all. That sounds small but it is the hardest step there is, and if you are reading this far, you already took it.
Build friction, not rules
I deleted my social media except YouTube, because YouTube is literally how I make my living. Instagram is gone. I never had TikTok. But I am not the guy telling you to delete everything. That is my path. It does not have to be yours.
What I am telling you is to add friction. Right now opening an app is as easy as breathing. It sits on your home screen, you are already logged in, notifications are at zero resistance. So make it harder. Log out every time. Move it off the home screen, bury it on the last page. The goal is not to quit. The goal is to make yourself think twice before you open it, so you do not slip into zombie mode and resurface two hours later. You reach for it, you have to actually look for it, and somewhere in that extra second you realize you do not need it right now.
Curate your own feed
Once you cut the rotten part, you have silence. Fill it with a feed you actually chose.
I keep everything in one place. Notes, links, track recommendations from friends, mood boards, video ideas, even flight tickets. A friend mentions a website, I save it with one click from any device and forget about it until I want it. The tool I use is mymind. It tags everything with AI, so I can search "blue" and find every blue image I ever saved. But the tool is not the point. The point is having one calm place that is yours, that you pre-selected, that you can scroll without a machine steering you. Plenty of software does this. Find the one that fits your brain.
Then clean up the feeds you cannot leave. On YouTube I went into my subscriptions and found 600 of them, half I never even see. So I went category by category. Cooking, music tutorials, hardware. Where five people make the same thing, I kept the one worth my attention. Your feed should be a decision, not an inheritance.
Structure beats motivation
The other thing that changed my life is boring and I am going to say it anyway: a daily plan. I have ADHD, staying on one task is hard for me, and a world that is always full of tasks makes it worse. What fixed it was seeing only today. Three to five things on the plate, not tomorrow, not two weeks out. Do them, and then go play video games with a clear conscience.
Motivation comes and goes. It is a trap to rely on it. A structure shows up every day whether you feel like it or not. Do one task a day for a year and look back: you moved real parts of your life. I built my own app for this because I am that kind of nerd. It is called PunchCard, and it shows me one thing: what is on the plate today, nothing else.
But you do not need my app. A to-do tool, a notebook, anything. Just have a system. Write down today's tasks and actually do them.
Kill the short feed, and use AI like a tool
If you got this far, go one more step: block the bottomless part. I use Unhook, a browser extension that strips the recommendations off YouTube so I only see the video, the comments, and the like button. No sidebar of next things to fall into. I watch one creator start to finish. Good for my attention, good for them. Whatever tool you pick, put a barrier between you and the infinite scroll.
And AI, since everyone asks. I am honestly not a fan of the hype, and big tech doing politics worries me. But refusing to learn it makes you the person who once said the internet was a fad. So learn it, just do not live in the hype machine that wants you rebuilding your whole setup every week. Pick one model, run it in a terminal instead of a browser so it can actually do things on your computer, and use it as a tool. I asked mine to group two clips in my video editor and it just did it, through a small connector that lets the model control the software directly. I also built a little assistant that reads my notes and handles admin work. It is less nerdy than it sounds and it gives me hours back.
Own your corner of the internet
One last thing. When someone interesting shows up online, check if they have their own website before you follow them through an algorithm. Most people have a blog. As artists, we all should. In the age of AI it is not hard to build a simple site, host it, and have one page that is yours. People ask what you do, you say "here," and you embed your music directly. No algorithm, no fear that the right people will not see it. You control it.
Your attention is the most valuable thing you own. It shapes what you make, and what you make is your taste made real. So treat it that way. You already did the hardest part by noticing. The rest is just building the small machine that protects it.
If you enjoyed this, check out Your Environment is Your Art and Daydreaming Is More Important Than Any Trick.