My biggest vice growing up was loafing on the couch and flipping through TV channels. It’s how I spent most of the 90s, even after I got my first couple video game consoles. It was by far the most accessible activity that required the least amount of effort. It was always there, parked in the living room in between an upright Yamaha piano and a long bookshelf, and surrounded by board games and toy boxes. There were so many options available to eight-year-old me, but I, and many others of that era, always seemed to pick TV, which wasn’t an inexplicable thing to do. It just had the quickest dopamine hit at the time, even if the show you were watching was boring as hell and you flipped through the same 10 channels hoping that something interesting would come on eventually.

Remote controls made it SO EASY to do that. Before we got a remote control set, my sister and I would have to sit a foot away from the TV while turning the tuning dial, switching between UHF and VHF while our eyes burned from staring at all the snow. Maybe you’d have to fiddle with the bunny ears if your TV had them instead of a roof-mounted antenna. You really had to earn quality reception. In the worst case, you’d stand next to the TV like a jackass, moving the bunny ears in random directions for 20 minutes, trying to gauge minute changes in clarity just to watch Gilligan’s Island, and you’d end up sweaty and irritated. You’d be just as likely to give up and do something else as you were to watch a show unless you were on a mission to catch the network premiere of Home Alone or Jurassic Park†And even then, it was ‘formatted to fit this screen’ and probably edited for content. The most egregious of these: ‘This is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!’ Look it up.. With a remote, you just kept flipping, click click click, and you had no excuse to get off the couch. Once we got cable with its wired connection and a couple dozen extra channels, it was smooth sailing.

The only reason not to watch TV at that point was if the TV was unavailable - Dad was watching The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, Mom was watching Regis and Kathie Lee, sister was watching Mary Poppins for the 400th time - you were out of luck and had to find something else to do. If you were fortunate, there were two TVs in the house, but we only had one until the late 90s.

Alternatives weren’t as rewarding as TV. There weren’t as many things back then designed to hook you so intensely, so you normally had to exercise some agency and decide what you wanted in that moment. In the absence of an easy dopamine hit, I was forced to decide between activities with a greater mind toward actual fun factor and less toward ease. Whatever you picked wasn’t necessarily the most fun thing, but it was the most appealing of the choices available. I read books, I drew pictures, I got really good at shooting army guys off Lego fortresses with rubber bands, my friends and I played outside with Super Soakers.

I feel like remote controls and cable TV were probably the beginning of the end for me. After that, everything became more stimulating: we got Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, we got video game handhelds to take with us everywhere, multiplayer PC games, AOL chat rooms, the underpinning to all the stuff that is currently driving me bonkers.

With internet perpetually available on every device I own, I can always stream a movie, play a video game, trawl reddit, whatever. I don’t even have to think about what I want. There are ten million activities within arms reach that are immediately rewarding, specifically designed to hook their users into spending as much time on them as possible†Oh, man, when’d it get dark out? I guess I should probably eat something…after this next video…, and which are fully not in my best interest beyond their ability to provide reward.

I really don’t want to spend 45 minutes a day playing video games and another hour surfing reddit and YouTube†Some people spend way more time on this stuff with zero qualms, but there are so many other things I’d find more rewarding if only I made a concerted effort to devote more time to them. I’m at a stage in life where free time is exceedingly finite and therefore exceedingly valuable. Supply and demand is real, folks.. They’re fun, but I always come away feeling like I’ve wasted my time. I want to bring myself back to a state in which my choices adhere more closely to what I consider actually satisfying in a given moment.

My experiment: Cut down on high-reward-low-satisfaction activities. No modern video games with tons of progress trackers and unlockables†Holy crap, The Finals, take it down a notch! - stick with older stuff that still gives me a chance to get bored playing, like Mario Kart and Legend of Zelda, and only after I earn it by doing the better stuff first. No reddit, YouTube, social media endless content scrolling except during the work day†Gotta kill time somehow while Claude is thinking., or unless I’m doing specific research for a piece of writing.

I recently returned from a week’s vacation in the middle of nowhere Maine with no cell service or WiFi. I had detoxed†I guess after my Strata pan BPA anxiety, I seem to be incapable of leaving anything even partially toxed. If I ever mention an elderberry juice cleanse or a coffee enema or some shit, please give me a swift kick in the shins.” and my brain had reset to some degree. I didn’t want to lose the positive momentum, so it seemed like a good time to start. I’ve now been at it for a few weeks and results are promising†I have no objective measure of success. Given that this was based entirely on subjective feeling, I’m pretty sure it’s fine to gauge success subjectively, scientific method be damned.. I’m close to finishing a draft of a new short story, I’ve translated a few pieces of Spanish flash fiction, and I’ve painted several pages of ink and watercolor sketches. I feel a little more even-keeled in the evenings and I’m feeling the pull of reddit less each week.

I’m relatively certain that my brain has more adjusting to do before it fully adapts to the lower levels of stimulation, but so far it feels good. I don’t think I’m ever going to give up video games or reddit entirely, but I do think I have more room to make for rewarding activities. Maybe instead of that, if there’s a next phase, it should be to spend more time out of the house…with…people…shudder.