Writer Issy Beech used to enjoy "hate-watching" clips of the Kardashion family online... until she discovered she could no longer get away from that content.
"I realised I'd actually built a world for myself where I was seeing the thing that I hated the most day in day out and it was all completely my own fault."
The self-confessed "reformed device addict" gives us tips from her new book How to Be Online and Also Be Happy.
New Zealand writer Issy Beech Photo: VICE
Beech says she was a generally contented and confident person until she found she was "hanging a lot of her moods and feelings" on what happened or didn't happen on Instagram.
"I was more critical of myself and hung a lot of my self-worth on notifications or whether I was liked online or how I saw certain posts performing."
In the last few years, the internet has changed, she says.
Once a place where we had control over the content we engaged with or the connections we made, the internet is now a place where we ourselves are the product.
"We've kind of all just slowly been convinced to become a brand… a person that needs to be marketed in some way. And I think that's a really unhealthy way to think of ourselves."
For a long time, she was online 15 to 18 hours a day - nothing out of the ordinary among her friends - but now she's aware of how much that was affecting her physically and mentally.
The internet can feel like a very safe and validating sort of place, Beech says.
"Not a lot is asked of you online. It's very non-participatory if you want it to be. You can go on there and be super-passive and really just consume. A lot of us feel solace in that… sometimes it's nice to scroll mindlessly."
But the idea that going online offers us time out from responsibility - as we've been convinced to believe - is simply not true, Beech says.
"You do feel compelled [on the internet]. You feel compelled to feel guilt, you feel compelled to feel shame, you feel compelled to post, have certain relationships. It's not as relaxing or as rewarding as we tell ourselves it is. It's often actually a little bit more gruelling than the real world."
People seem to take out a lot of pent-up negativity on the internet, she says, which can feel very cathartic for them individually but doesn't work when everyone else is doing the same thing.
"If we think about the internet as a room, maybe, where we all hang out together and we just go there and shout about what makes us really angry, all the things that are happening on the planet and the ways people are letting us down, authorities or friends or culture… maybe what we're doing is creating this really awful room where everyone is in a terrible mood and everything sucks and you leave feeling crappy."
It's time we all knew more about how apps like Instagram and Facebook take advantage of their users, Beech says, i.e. how notifications are designed to heighten our addiction to the app and how the action of refreshing your feed is designed to mimic the reshuffling of casino icons in a slot machine.
"Once we look at those truths and are honest about them and accept how bad they make us feel or how depressing they are, it's really functional to get you to spend less time with those apps. Or even turn off your notifications."
It's not so much about putting down your device, she says, as investigating why you're picking it up so much.
"What am I doing online? What is the purpose of it? How does it make me feel? What doesn't feel good? Why do I get there? What do I get out of fit?
"And how do I stop thinking of myself as a commodity that I'm trying to sell people?"
