Back in January I went through a purging exercise to try to limit my screen time for things I don’t really care about. I just went and re-read that post, and figured I’d do a quick recap on how well (or not) it’s working out.
Read more: 2025/2026 Reducing Infinities RecapFirst, the good news. The noisy apps are still gone. The Facebook app is now permanently banished from my phone, Instagram has made some periodic resurgences (see below), but when I want to click through content I largely land on the actual news apps (NYT and LA Times) or Reddit. The downside of this is, of course, the content in the world. But that’s not something that I can solve with my app choices. I don’t miss the News feed (though Google Chrome does insert its own Buzzfeed-esque headlines if you open a blank window, which is annoying and makes me want to use it even less).
Now, the bad news. Facebook is still there, I just have to use it via a browser. And I haven’t quite broken myself of the habit of randomly checking in on things. The other bad news is the advent of (or my discovery of) YouTube shorts. This has unfortunately replaced my Instagram feed with a comparable YouTube feed (though the content base is different enough that I don’t mind it as much). Reddit is also fairly narrow in scope because I simply haven’t added too many things to my list, so I mainly get disc golf and Factorio content. In the past I think I would have had a lot more science content, but the entire Reddit astronomy ecosystem tends to be people asking “What’s this thing I saw in the sky?” and the answer is nearly always “Starlink” or “the pleiades”. And I can’t tell if people are just trolling now or not.
Okay, so what’s my 2026 attempt at reducing the noise? I think at this point it’s got to be changing personal habits. I’ve started reading for pleasure again, so the nights when I’m the last one up in the house I’m going to try to put the phone down somewhere (or just have it playing music or something). One other thing I want to try to do is to avoid having my phone on the bedside table. It’s too easy both at night and in the morning to just roll over and grab the phone. The other is to actually try to be even more active in my content management. Like I said in January, there are some blogs I used to read that I want to try to go find again. I’m currently finding that the news is too depressing and I end up flicking onto Facebook for a palate cleanser. So maybe finding something that’s a little closer to what I actually find entertaining as a starting point is the right thing to do.
We’ll see how things go.
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