You Should Quit Reddit

In recent years, countless books, articles, and documentaries have addressed the negative effects that social media platforms have wrought on their users and society. However, these former works are incomplete — nearly no attention has been paid to Reddit, one of the most popular websites in the world. Reddit is certainly unique among social platforms, but its potential for addiction and darker side of nefarious activity should absolutely not be understated. Additionally, nearly no actionable advice has been provided to users of these platforms. The audience is told that these websites and apps are harming their mental health, wasting their time, and that they are addictive (which would logically make the task of quitting rather difficult), but then provided zero guidance on how to disconnect from them. Over 200,000 users gather on Reddit's /r/NoSurf community to discuss reducing their internet use; the forum is filled with reports of people who want to quit Reddit, but find themselves psychologically compelled to return to the site over and over. For moderate to heavy users of these platforms, quitting is clearly not so simple. You Should Quit Reddit is a paradigm shift in the genre. Jacob Desforges was a Reddit user of over a decade, and a self-admitted Reddit addict who spent on average around three hours daily on the site.

What Hacker News says

linsterAug 2026

Ok article, and has similar points to “You should quit Reddit” (which was a pretty good book).

About 2/3 in, the sentences got choppier and shorter, and you could tell some context rot was setting in.

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crims0nMar 2025

There is a book for this, aptly titled “You Should Quit Reddit”. It got me to quit, highly recommend it.

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codinhoodFeb 2025

This has been my exact issue with giving up reddit. It's really hard to replace very niche topics without it, since many online forums are dead. I also append so many searches on google with "reddit" because the top results are generally SEO spam.

Reading "You should quit reddit" helped a little. The author tries to reframe your hidden beliefs about reddit like "finding useful information" or "it's filled with experts." Helped me to realize I was spending more time reading about my hobbies than actually doing them. Though I understand it's not that simple, doing requires more energy, etc.

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crims0nFeb 2025

Tangentially related, I finished “You Should Quit Reddit” by Jacob Desforges yesterday, at the recommendation of a fellow HN user. Definitely worth a read if you are leaning that way already and just need a few well-reasoned arguments to seal the deal.

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floundyJun 2023

>Comment threads for any even moderately larger sub have turned into cesspools of sniping ad hominem attacks and every form of fallacious argument under the sun.

>And that same mindset is slowly creeping into the smaller niches that are the primary reasons I go there. This growing ooze invariably puts me in a worse state of mind

These and other glaring flaws of Reddit, tracing the degradation of the site's user experience in recent years is the premise of the book "You Should Quit Reddit." It's a self-published book that's been discussed several times on Reddit's /r/NoSurf community. I found it intelligently written and sourced, as the author described his same experience of addiction to Reddit, going back to the site out of habit despite not enjoying it.

I was a daily Redditor since the early days and haven't been on the site in a month. I blocked all DNS requests to Reddit from resolving to break the habit of going on the site. Been lurking here instead and find this place more pleasant and reminiscent of Reddit's early days.

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