That’s what we call it still right, I’m not old, right? Anyway I’m horribly addicted to ragebait on reddit and despite being permabanned sitewide (can’t even make new accounts) I still keep going back to it. It’s obviously depressing and angering. It’s not fun!
I’m not sure how applicable this advice is, but I had a similar problem with short form content. I would scroll for hours and hours everyday and just felt really unproductive. So, to fix it, I deleted Instagram and got Lemmy! Instead of using software with an abundance of short form content, I forced myself to use software that has limited long form content. By intentionally putting limitations on myself, I was able to correct my behavior. However, I didn’t completely go cold turkey; I allowed myself to consume long form content that I viewed as more “intellectual,” “mature,” or worth my time.
If I were in your situation, I would need something to add some resistance into the process of opening Reddit. For me, that resistance was deleting an app so I had to go out of my way to reinstall it. For you, maybe you could automatically delete Reddit cookies so you have to log in every time? Maybe add parental controls to your router to block it? And as an alternative, maybe block political communities on Lemmy? Maybe read articles or the news instead?
