I love reddit for surfing the internet around specific topics. I subscribe to 30+ topics like /r/cogsci and /r/compsci. I I noticed that reading reddit would change my mood, I would become more anxious and excited reading about certain topics. A lot of my subreddits are technology and science related and so I would get excited reading about the possibilities of combining new technologies which would also make me feel anxious. With having so many different topics, I also felt my mind was jumping around too much.
One of my overarching goals is to always be present and calm. I could have stopped reading reddit, but I do enjoy learning new information from reddit, so what I did is just create another reddit account and used that to subscribe to other topics I am interested in, but all chosen around topics to keep me calm like /r/Fitness, /r/HIIT, and /r/Mindfulness. I use that to be my main reddit account. I also limit the total amount of subreddits I have so I don’t have too many topics. I have 15 now and I feel its too many.
Whenever I want to read about exciting topics, I switch accounts or go to a specific subreddit, but I always switch back to my default reddit account when I’m done. You can do this with any content you consume online. I think it is important to be aware of the kind of content we consume. So how do you want to feel when you are surfing online?