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Going gray for smartphone addiction

gogray.today

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Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#31

Post by diimdeep »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #29
diimdeep wrote: post #21

I think it is bullshit, because black and white slot machine still is a slot machine. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin... [2]: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon... [4]: https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/02/app-makers-its-time-to-st... [5]: https://medium.com/@anamitra/dopamine-hits-and-produc…

Ingrained associations don't die easily. I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter " for months after I quit. After a couple years though, I hardly ever go through that old routine. Check out Nicky Case's game about neuroplasticity: http://ncase.me/neurons/ Just now I enabled grayscale via the Android developer menu. I noticed an immediate reduction in intensity. It di…

Everyone loves placebo, but after browsing for half hour in grayscale and turning back color there is some kind of wow effect.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#32

Post by jf »

Setting my phone to gray scale didn't "cure" me from my smartphone addiction. But it did help. In particular, games stopped being fun to play.

I just finished up one week of only carrying an LTE Apple Watch as a smartphone replacement and it has been incredibly effective.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#33

Post by blurbleblurble »

diimdeep wrote: post #31
blurbleblurble wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ingrained associations don't die easily. I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter " for months after I quit. After a couple years though, I hardly ever go through that old routine. Check out Nicky Case's game about neuroplasticity: http://ncase.me/neurons/ Just now I enabled grayscale via the Android developer menu. I noticed an immediate reduction in intensity. It di…

Everyone loves placebo, but after browsing for half hour in grayscale and turning back color there is some kind of wow effect.

Color really does pop!

By the way, I definitely agree with you that color is not the only way computer applications are addictive.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#35

Post by psweber »

diimdeep wrote: post #21

I think it is bullshit, because black and white slot machine still is a slot machine. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin... [2]: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon... [4]: https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/02/app-makers-its-time-to-st... [5]: https://medium.com/@anamitra/dopamine-hits-and-produc…

It's nowhere near a solution, but it helps a little. Those red notification badges really play tricks with your mind.

Grey-scale + no social media apps + carefully controlling the types of notifications you receive makes a smartphone almost not an unhealthy thing to carry in your pocket.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#37

Post by bmpafa »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #29
diimdeep wrote: post #21

I think it is bullshit, because black and white slot machine still is a slot machine. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin... [2]: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon... [4]: https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/02/app-makers-its-time-to-st... [5]: https://medium.com/@anamitra/dopamine-hits-and-produc…

Ingrained associations don't die easily. I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter " for months after I quit. After a couple years though, I hardly ever go through that old routine. Check out Nicky Case's game about neuroplasticity: http://ncase.me/neurons/ Just now I enabled grayscale via the Android developer menu. I noticed an immediate reduction in intensity. It di…

> I remember when I first quit facebook. I still had the habit of quickly pressing "F, enter" for months after I quit.

Same.when I run a distraction blocker, I often don't realize I'm firing another ’ctrl+t,f,enter' sequence until I hit the blocker.

It's made me realize how devilishly efficient companies are at exploiting our dopamine cycles. Case in poin: I tried to disable in app purchases in Google Play, but short of removing all payment options (which breaks my project fi billing), there's no way.

For as frustrating as I find it, though, it's devastating to think of the impact on ppl living in poverty,for whom every source of daily relaxation is probably some well funded dopamine dealer trying to extract their $11 / hr pay one micro transaction at a time.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#38

Post by huebnerob »

chasing wrote: post #18

Curious how they're planning on technically building the "whitelist apps" and "set grayscale times" features. Are these possible given iOS's sandboxing?

No, definitely not. Apple recently restricted apps' usage of URL schemes to check whether other apps are even installed on the phone.

It's possible they could be doing something really esoteric with an enterprise app (doesn't need to go through app review) or an MDM profile (can touch some deeper system stuff sometimes), but given that they're currently in the teaser email capture phase, I doubt this will ever crystallize into a real iOS implementation.

I think they're just trying to get some message out, which is fair enough. FWIW, you can always manually set your iPhone to greyscale in system accessibility settings, which they do point out themselves.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#39

Post by neogodless »

svenfaw wrote: post #27
ceefan wrote: post #23

In (iOS && iPhone General > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut, select Color Filters, then triple click the home button.

The same can be done on Android (Lollipop and above).

I have a fully updated Nexus - if you search Settings for "gray" you get no results. No "direct access" options under Accessibility. Seems like they may have removed it since 7. They do have some color-blind color correction options, but grayscale wasn't something I could find.

ETA: Ah on the "Go gray" page they describe the steps, including enabling Developer Mode first.

Re: Going gray for smartphone addiction

#40

Post by DashRattlesnake »

diimdeep wrote: post #21

I think it is bullshit, because black and white slot machine still is a slot machine. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/6/8544303/casino-slot-machin... [2]: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-mak... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphon... [4]: https://venturebeat.com/2016/04/02/app-makers-its-time-to-st... [5]: https://medium.com/@anamitra/dopamine-hits-and-produc…

> I think it is bullshit, because black and white slot machine still is a slot machine.

> Turned on grayscale in macOS(System Prefs - Accessibility - Display) before googling this articles, can confirm that still receiving dopamine hits.

It's not a solution to the whole problem, just part of the problem; specifically this part:

> “Color’s not a signal for detecting objects, it’s actually something much more fundamental: it’s for telling us what’s likely to be important,” Mr. Conway said. “If you have lots of color and contrast then you’re under a constant state of attentional recruitment. Your attentional system is constantly going, ‘Look look look over here.’ ”

These companies are manipulating every physiological knob they can. This is one, addictive dopamine hits are another.

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