This site was designed to help myself spend less time on Reddit. Although I’ve always been conscious that I spend a lot of time on the internet, I never realized the true extent of the time wasted until I installed RescueTime. I was shocked to find that during school terms I managed to spend an average of an hour per day on the site.
What frustrated me the most was how little it provided to my daily life. When I originally joined the site I had active fun browsing through communities and finding people with like interests. However, after five years of browsing Reddit daily, I reached the point where little surprised or challenged me. Most times if you asked, I wouldn’t be able to tell you what I’d read in the last 30 minutes. My browsing was completely mindless. And when it wasn’t mindless, it was anxiety-inducing. I would read threads about political developments and become convinced that impending doom was inevitable.
I found myself able to reduce my usage of all other social media sites with relative ease. I’ve unfollowed practically everyone on my Facebook, to the point where the feed is often completely blank. Twitter I simply logged out of and now only check a few select accounts. For Youtube I installed an extension to remove the “related videos” sidebar and found myself spending 50% less time on the site. But I kept coming back to Reddit, even despite my dissatsifaction with the platform.
Eventually I realized the issue - for all other sites I simply reduced my usage to the point where they could be read in 30 seconds or less. With Reddit, I was trying to avoid the site altogether, and found myself missing the satisfaction of being up to date. With that in mind, I set upon creating a site that could maximize the things I liked about Reddit while preventing it from being a time-waster.
mindfulreddit is designed to alleviate my personal grievances with the platform. The site presents the user with three fields for subreddits, which limits the flood of information that is typically displayed. One has to actively choose the type of content they want to see; an individual doesn’t have to worry about distressing news headlines if they’re having a bad day and only want to view /r/aww. Additionally, the three posts from each subreddit only present the top three comments. I often found that comments past the top three were reiterating points already made or simply devolving into bad faith arguments. Finally, the site’s three hour time limit helps break the cycle of obsessively checking for updates, so one can spend more time doing what they truly love.
I don’t believe Reddit is a bad site, but like most it is monetized by attention. The platform is designed to keep your focus by any means possible; focus that could be spent reading books or learning a new language or spending time with friends. As much as I love the internet, I need it in less sizeable doses. I hope this site can help you if you’re trying to do the same.
The source for this website is available on GitHub. If you’re interested in my other projects or more pretentious ramblings, please see my personal site. Thank you for your time.