I feel that Pleasure Sensitivity Training holds the key to breaking out of the viscious cycle of screen / social media addiction.
The viscious cycle I think works something like this:
Screen usage > Densitizes you to your body
Desensitized body > Seek stimulation externally
Seek stimulation externally > Use screens more
This cycle of numbness and external stimulation then devolves into a self-reinforcing cycle.
Part of the way out of the cycle, I believe, is becoming more sensitive to our bodies.
This can start by simple bodyscanning type meditation techniques.
But I think it is especially powerful when we specifically train ourselves to become more sensitive to the sensations of *pleasure* in our bodies.
This is because often it is pleasure that we are specifically seeking externally.
A very simple technique for doing this is a form of breath meditation.
When breathing in one notices the sense of nourishment and pleasure the body feels from breathing in.
When breathing out one notices the sense of relaxation and pleasure the body feels from breathing out.
Straight away one starts to contact their capacity for pleasure without the need for external stimulation.
Learning to recognize what the feeling of love feels like can be another alternative to breath as the object of meditation for pleasure sensitivity training.
Then if one wishes to go further, one can learn more formal jhana meditation practices.
But to start with, breaking the numbness / stimulation cycle can begin by any exercise that allows us to become more sensitive to the sensations of pleasure available in our bodies.
All addiction, at its heart, is addiction to unconsciousness.
It doesn’t matter if it’s social media addiction or heroin addiction.
The addict is always trying to block out consciousness by covering it in stimulation or numbness.
This means the cure to addiction is always more consciousness.
But consciousness can’t just be willed into existence.
Instead, developing consciousness is closely linked to developing insight.
This is because usually the reason we want to hide in unconsciousness is that there’s something we don’t want to be conscious of.
Something in our world that contradicts the story we want to tell ourselves about the world.
Perhaps we want to believe that we can always avoid pain and only experience pleasure.
So we try to push pain into unconsciousness.
Or we want to believe that the things we love will last forever.
So we try to push any sign of decay or change into unconsciousness.
Or there is some story we want to believe about ourselves and who we are.
So we try to push anything that contradicts that story into unconsciousness.
So the way to overcome our addiction to unconsciousness is to build accurate world models.
When we learn to view the world as a place that includes suffering, is impermanent and is free of stable selves, reality starts to match our worldview.
With this insight in place, we no longer need to push suffering, impermanence, and things that threaten our sense of self out of consciousness.
Consciousness then naturally expands of its own accord.