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by WA 2011 days ago
It’s still a random search for new information, distraction, entertainment.
3 comments

Yes, but random search for information is not always a bad thing. There's a time for exploration.
I agree. HN is net positive for me over the many years I’ve been around. But if you want to cut social media, you probably should include HN ;)
At some point I decided that abandoning social media as a whole would be a tremendous task because of years of being 'trained' by tech... Now I separate useful and useless social media. Shaping my perspective this way helps regulate my Internet use a lot.
I think if you're disciplined in your HN use - like, check the front page twice a day, not a few times an hour - then it's basically a community-curated newspaper. And while newspapers may not be particularly healthy, they're probably better than most social media.

HN content tends to be longer-form which I feel is quite different from the typical infinite scrolling for quick dopamine hits on sites like Reddit or Twitter or Facebook.

Isn't reading a book the same, by this definition? You could say that when picking up a book you do control the topic (while in social media it is others), but this is an illusion if you do not read that book for the second time.