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If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

abc15.com

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Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#11

Post by theandrewbailey »

waplot wrote: post #3

Why do people need to be rewarded money to do something like this? Why can't the reward be a better social life or better mental health? As the person says in the article, "Getting away from the smartphone has been freeing, and it has opened my eyes and made me more aware of some of my other bad health habits." That's a pretty good reward for most. I'd take that $100k and use it to spread awareness about social media…

> Why do people need to be rewarded money to do something like this?

Who says they need to? Plenty of people willingly give up smartphones without direct monetary reward.

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#12

Post by wahern »

aerovistae wrote: post #7

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. They have no way of knowing if she did it. They gave her her a flip phone and at the end of a year they're going to have her take a polygraph test. That's the setup. Wow.

Polygraphs work if you believe they work.

https://youtu.be/rN7pkFNEg5c?t=70

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#13

Post by tedivm »

aerovistae wrote: post #7

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. They have no way of knowing if she did it. They gave her her a flip phone and at the end of a year they're going to have her take a polygraph test. That's the setup. Wow.

They didn't even give her the flip phone, she bought that herself.

That being said I think you should reframe your thinking on this- they got over 100,000 applicants and a ton of press. My guess is they were always planning on paying out the $100,000 and the polygraph test is just another way they can throw some marketing around. The Vitaminwater brand has over a billion dollars in revenue for CocaCola each year- rising up from $350 million a year before coke's marketing team got ahold of them. Their marketing department knows what they're doing, and this $100k is a drop in the bucket for the press it's gotten.

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#15

Post by fouc »

aerovistae wrote: post #7

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. They have no way of knowing if she did it. They gave her her a flip phone and at the end of a year they're going to have her take a polygraph test. That's the setup. Wow.

Would you risk $100k to touch a smartphone at any point during a year?

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#16

Post by thrower123 »

hamandcheese wrote: post #6
wott wrote: post #5

I have been doing that for the last 40 years, give me $4M! But if fixing other people's phone counts, I'm out of luck.

Smartphones haven’t existed for 40 years!

If job postings and HR departments can require 10 years of experience using a framework that's only 2 years old, surely there is some wiggle room.

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#17

Post by joegahona »

waplot wrote: post #3

Why do people need to be rewarded money to do something like this? Why can't the reward be a better social life or better mental health? As the person says in the article, "Getting away from the smartphone has been freeing, and it has opened my eyes and made me more aware of some of my other bad health habits." That's a pretty good reward for most. I'd take that $100k and use it to spread awareness about social media…

> I'd take that $100k and use it to spread awareness about social media and its health effects.

I would bet $100,000 that you would spend $0K of the $100K to spread awareness about social media and its health effects.

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#18

Post by danso »

wott wrote: post #5

I have been doing that for the last 40 years, give me $4M! But if fixing other people's phone counts, I'm out of luck.

Much of modern life has been altered by and adapted to the expectation that the average person carries in their pocket a relatively powerful computer and camera. For someone who has grown up and adapted to that world, giving up the smartphone will be a lot harder than for someone who hasn’t relied on one yet.

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#19

Post by Nextgrid »

It's ironic that a mainstream brand which presumably advertises a lot is sponsoring this challenge considering that smartphone addiction is caused by advertising (as it incentivises the social platforms to maximise engagement so they see more ads thus make them money).

Re: If this woman stays off her smartphone for an entire year, she'll win $100k

#20

Post by emptybits »

> a Kyocera flip phone that she can only use to call and text

She should get a Twilio account. ;-)

I say this half seriously, because I know it may not be in the spirit of the challenge, but it would be enriching to cobble together some simple scripts to receive an SMS and proxy things like Google queries, maybe maps directions, Calendar lookups, maybe a Tweet-sender, HN headline fetcher, etc. It would be constrained but educational and fun. (I say "fun" because HN.) Bonus marks: IVR and/or voice rec version.

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