Asklemmy

I went back to school. You can find tons of online courses in just about any subject, and some will count for real college credit if you ever want to turn it into a degree. Many are free, but some will cost you and most are worth it. A way to make your addiction productive.

Sewing is a nice thing to learn because you can always touch up your own clothes and if you like you can buy a cheap sewing machine and do your own shirts, pants etc

Fun ways to spend your time:

Walking, running, hiking, cycling, transitting to a nice spot in town you've never been. Fairly cheap, and fun way to get out and forget the rest of your problems for a bit.

Sports and Yoga, cooking and baking, sewing, learning an instrument like guitar, piano/keyboard.

For things that aren't mindless fun but useful long term: Try learning a new language! It's kind of difficult but it's cool when you start to figure out tiny tidbits of other languages.

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Will keep you fit, you won't be able to think about your life problems for 1-hour ... guaranteed, you'll make new friends, you will build mental resilience and you'll learn self-defence. So many benefits as long as you train for the long-term and avoid injury.

You didn't rule it out, so my first thought is: play video games! It's certainly on the line between consuming something and learning to do something. Some individual games can be a whole skill to study and hone for years (eg, learning a fighting game or a speedrun, etc etc)

Spirit of the question though, that would probably be considered content.

Other ideas, most already covered by other comments: art, photography, music, writing, programming, cooking, woodworking, or learning a new language.

going outside, musing around, gazing at the clouds and plants and all

music is life <3

Meta answer.

To me personally any sort of addiction is a symptom of feeling out of touch with life. It's a kind of rejection of what is and slapping a bandaid on that pain by constantly asking for more. More food. More content. More whatever.

It's a desire that can't truly ever be satisfied.

It's important to take a step back when you feel lost in such a stream of more. Instead of trying to change things, try to accept things as they are. You can always decide to change it later. For example when you wake up, just take a few moments to experience waking up, rather than immediately focusing on what needs to be done.

When it comes to doing anything, play around with how much care you put into it. Try doing it quick and badly and without any care. And try doing it with utmost care and perfection. Think of it like training your ability to control the number of fucks you give for any specific thing. That way you can let go of control by giving up your need for change, but also regain it for the things that really matter.

And then it's a matter of trying out many things to see what resonates with your personality. When you find something you can sharpen it by removing the things that don't really matter to you.

For example you might figure out that you enjoy painting. You'll probably come up with lots of unnecessary goals for yourself such as being able to paint realistic portraits with oil. Whereas actually you would have enjoyed art history more, or perhaps drawing childish looking animals with crayons.

If you had held onto the idea that you need to do oil portraits, you would've just saddled yourself with another thing that you only partially enjoy, and so you might just leave it laying around. It's just a disconnect from who you really are. You'd be imprisoning yourself again with a need for more, instead of realizing that you are free by nature and that it's alright to enjoy seemingly unimportant things.

Playing any musical instrument. The feeling of your practice grindings pay off, no matter how still mundane it is to compared to social media professional musicians, is a pretty good feeling.

List of things you would do with friends like going to a bar, to a movie, eating wings/dinner, driving somewhere fun, or going on a trip then do the list alone.

Thrift shopping is great. Window shop at antique stores, goodwill, pawn shops, thrift shops. Even without buying things you can come across lots of interesting finds.

Find your local free community center. Your local library is a good start. There's bound to be countless free activities or events to join and also meet people at to make casual friends while doing new things.

Is reading technically considered consuming content? Fun and it’s a pretty cheap hobby if you have library access or go to used bookstores!

Life is pretty boring, which is why content addiction works... :/

Building things. Legos are super fun.

Go for out to an interesting place and take some cool photos.

I did Taekwondo at one point in my life. It was super fun, because I actually felt like I achieved something (a belt) for my hard work

Drawing and reading are both time consuming, cheap and good stuff that can make you grow too. Can flow over into painting and writing so watch out.

Chess is even cheaper (free online with matchmaking: lichess.org also a gazillion youtubes to get you running like chessbrahs or chesswibes) if you want to be humbled but also like tactics, strategies and history.

Origami I find fun, yes.

Have tried to learn to juggle several times, unsuccessfully.

Doing yoga I have learned to stand on my hands, learning a physical skill like acrobatics is so good for both mind and body.

Live music I love so much. Go see a show!

I guess it's a game too but Pokemon go has actually gained me some casual friends.

Video games might not sound like much of a change, but they’re more active than watching movies. It’s a small step away from that totally passive mode.