There was one final visit to the counselor I managed to fit in.  He gave some excellent suggestions to cut back social media use.  While most of these could be found in a self-help book, the value from this guy involved how he tied all this to the broader context.

He agreed with my views that phone use and social media addiction is a serious problem, and he also said not to feel bad as we're all victim to it.  In fact he said I was being pretty light in my synopsis of the problem.  Basically his take is that smartphone addiction is far worse than we can imagine.  It is slowly destroying society.  Those were his words.

We talked for over 30 minutes on just this topic alone and especially how kids have lost all their creative thinking abilities.  As a teacher, I could vouch that what he just said was 1000% true.  There is also the volume of information on social media, it is just too much.  No human brain can deal with it, and as a result we're moving to AI and slowly allowing ourselves to be enslaved by machines.   It's also no surprise that politicians can use this information deluge to spread misinformation, i.e. the classic Russian interference in elections.

With that backdrop in mind, he gave solutions  thatwere highly motivating.  I felt by doing them, this was my way of saying no to what everyone else does.

 All he said were simply these things:

1.  Turn off notifications.  No buzzing or beeping, all social media apps would be on silent mode.  

2. Set up times to check messages or chat groups.  Say every hour or two hours or something.  He said don't feel the need to respond to messages right away.  People can always email.  These chat groups make you feel on call 24 hours a day and there is no time to relax because of all that false urgency.  Scrolling through messages is like a slot machine.  Most of what you see is useless, but then all of a sudden there's an interesting message which is like a payout that gives a dopamine hit.

3.  Use software to limit how much time each app gets used.  For example, if you have only 1 hour on Youtube a day, then you're more selective about what to watch.  He suggested making a super long password to unlock it, then hide the password in a difficult place to find.  That way it's too much trouble to bother and you just stick to the time limits since it's easier.

4.  Use a dumbphone for talk and text during the day.

5.  Put the smartphone in a hard to find place and use the free time to just let your mind wander, maybe go for walks, read a book, do some writing, talk to people, and generate some creative ideas.  It is amazing what can be done instead.

Interestingly enough, the last point brought me back to Pattaya.  Most of the time I did not find people sitting around staring at their phones.  It is a place where most people are outdoors, whether it's on the beach, or talking to friends in a community, or even the countless open air restaurants and bars.  Forget about everyone hating on men talking to bargirls, at least they're outside talking to people and not inside on their phones.