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What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

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21–30 of 62 posts

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#21
post #17

I think we're at the tail end of a unique cultural moment where "phone addiction" is even a conceivable idea. They are already arguably the human tool, and in a decade or two the devices will be so firmly a fixture of interaction that "phone addiction" will seem as quaint an idea as "book addiction."

[deleted]

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#22
On ios, you can set the accessibility shortcut to enable/disable greyscale quickly. Useful for when you need colour.

Settings --> general --> accessiblity --> scroll to accessibility shortcut at bototm --> choose colour filters

Enabling greyscale itself is in the display accomodations --> colour filters section of accessibility

Once enable, just triple tap home to turn greyscale on/off

At least some android systems have a similar setting.

I am not sure if this is actually affecting my usage, but I only figured this out a couple days ago. My compulsive usage is mostly text, which grayscale has little impact on.

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#23

>I asked myself how many people already see the whole world like this by default. >... >As a designer, I depend heavily on color... I'm a little surprised that a visual designer wouldn't already be applying basic accessible design practices - but I guess it's not something most people think about day-to-day. Still, at the very least, consider running your palettes through a simulator such as: http://www.color-blindne…

If you're doing things on the web, this extension can simulate the various types of colorblindness on any page you visit:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spectrum/ofclemegk...

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#24
post #22

On ios, you can set the accessibility shortcut to enable/disable greyscale quickly. Useful for when you need colour. Settings --> general --> accessiblity --> scroll to accessibility shortcut at bototm --> choose colour filters Enabling greyscale itself is in the display accomodations --> colour filters section of accessibility Once enable, just triple tap home to turn greyscale on/off At least some android systems h…

On Android, under Accessibility, you can set color mappings for various types of color-blindness, but (at least on 7.0) you have to enable Developer Options to get access to the "simulate color space" option, which provides monochromancy.

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#25
post #20

On one hand, configuring my phone to grayscale is to me a very intriguing "lifehack". But for better or worse, my phone is also my primary camera, and I tend to think that setting it to grayscale would impair my ability to take photos.

Not at all. You’ll develop an eye for tonal contrast with your hip black and white camera!

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#26
I've been on this for a few weeks now and has made a huge difference in compulsively checking email and twitter.

Pro tip: add it to the triple home button click (Settings>General>Accessibility>Accessibility Shortcut (all the way at the bottom)>Select 'Color Filters') for easy switching for color/grayscale.

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#27
post #17

I think we're at the tail end of a unique cultural moment where "phone addiction" is even a conceivable idea. They are already arguably the human tool, and in a decade or two the devices will be so firmly a fixture of interaction that "phone addiction" will seem as quaint an idea as "book addiction."

I would compare it to sugar instead. At some point in the last century, food companies figured out that they could leverage the sweet tooth inherent in us using refined sugars. Dental health declined rapidly and obesity went up. It took a couple of decades for society to catch up and put in place countermeasures. To me it seems it's getting better, although at a pretty slow pace; people generally know more about the issue, sugar taxes are being put in place, and there's now some social stigma around excessive candy eating.

Similarly, we're beginning to wise up around the exploitation of our attention. The dopamine hit is real, just like with sugar, but we can also learn to override those impulses by focusing on longer-term goals (being in shape, having a healthy social life).

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#29

I wish I could try this! I doubt there are many others here, but if anyone is still using a Windows Phone, I just submitted a suggestion for greyscale options to the MS Feedback Hub, so you can search "greyscale" there to upvote the suggestion.

At this point do you really think Windows Phone is getting new features?

I thought it was already abandoned as a failed project by Nicrosoft?

Re: What the Grayscale Challenge Taught Us About Phone Addiction

#30
post #3

I'm currently going greyscale and have not noticed many differences in my habits. In the past week I've been using YouTube less but my YouTube habits have always ebbed and flowed. I'm reading the news apps on my phone slightly more.. greyscale makes articles have a dead tree newspaper feel with the black and white photos. Google maps is noticeably more difficult to use and so is Google calendar, which categorizes eve…

I'm wondering if personally keeping track of it somehow skews the statistics. Maybe the change is significant but overall not that big something like ~10%

I would be interested in cranking through the data myself to see how my phone statistics change vs others. If there was a way to time activities spent in apps...

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