Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

journals.uchicago.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 379 posts

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#131

Post by jdashg »

Barrin92 wrote: post #97
phobosanomaly wrote: post #54

Perhaps it's functioning as a substitute for the constant social interaction that was once a facet of living in a tribal society. We always had someone near us we were chatting with, but now that we have eliminated that level of social connection in the modern social environment, we have replaced it with the smartphone. It may just be satisfying a hardwired biological need for constant chit-chat. If you look at it th…

Social Media isn't a substitute for healthy social interaction which becomes very evident when one looks at the psychological outcomes of people who use it heavily, particular say, teenage girls. Most social media interaction isn't genuine conversation between peers but a sort of status contest in which people pull up façades and present idealised versions of themselves, mostly strongly influenced by whatever is tren…

Most in-person social interaction is ingenuine in the same ways, but it's easier to be less genuine (more fake) over low bandwidth media like text. (And actually it's much harder to be genuine at low bandwidth, too)

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#132

Post by m0zg »

More broadly, I think the mere availability of mindless entertainment reduces one's ability to do anything else. I observe this in myself and others. In order to willingly do useful things, I need to be bored. That's when I feel a need to do something, and if that "something" is not Instagram or YouTube, I go for the more salient things. So for me boredom is a very useful state to be in. If I can't get bored (if entertainment is immediately available) I will not do anything useful at all. I have to make a conscious decision to not access entertainment during the day in order to get anything done. Fortunately I can do that without much of a drain on my willpower reserves.

But my son (and his peers) grew up in a world where everyone has Internet at all times, and the problem is more severe there. I'm trying to convince him that the way he's doing things now (basically 8 hours of YouTube and games a day, and lots of missing homework) will cause much regret in the future and will lead to a much worse lifestyle. So far I have failed to convince him of that though.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#133

Post by beefield »

SamBam wrote: post #118
apetresc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically what functionality do you feel is so critical? The only thing I really struggled with at first was: - 2FA codes, but a self-hosted Bitwarden and a Yubikey solved that well enough - Maps. This is a legitimate sacrifice, especially for someone with as poor a sense of direction as I have. But between the mapping application in my car and looking things up before I leave somewhere on my laptop, it's not been…

For me: Maps and WhatsApp. I could probably ditch Maps (by using my spouse's when needed, not sure if that counts...), but I have family abroad and other family here), and kid photos to send etc etc. It's true I could do most of that via email, but the rest of the family is on WhatsApp and I would genuinely feel more disconnected from them then I already do.

You can install whatsapp on a virtual android machine on your desktop/laptop. I did that for a while and used a dumb phone (new nokia 8110) as my main phone and hotspot for a while. I kind of enjoyed it, but a couple of things made me give up for now.: First, abysmally bad battery life when using it as a hotspot (and no auto wifi disable when no devices connected). Second, laughably slow charging. Like, not even net charging when using lots of data via wifi hotspot and even in best case something like 4 hours to charge from empty to full. I am still keen to buy a dumb phone that fixes these.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#134

Post by demosito666 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #97
phobosanomaly wrote: post #54

Perhaps it's functioning as a substitute for the constant social interaction that was once a facet of living in a tribal society. We always had someone near us we were chatting with, but now that we have eliminated that level of social connection in the modern social environment, we have replaced it with the smartphone. It may just be satisfying a hardwired biological need for constant chit-chat. If you look at it th…

Social Media isn't a substitute for healthy social interaction which becomes very evident when one looks at the psychological outcomes of people who use it heavily, particular say, teenage girls. Most social media interaction isn't genuine conversation between peers but a sort of status contest in which people pull up façades and present idealised versions of themselves, mostly strongly influenced by whatever is tren…

> Most social media interaction isn't genuine conversation between peers but a sort of status contest

But exactly the same is true for regular communications, especially for teenagers, whose whole life is making impression on their peers.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#135

Post by wool_gather »

reificator wrote: post #95
Aerroon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same. I look at a map beforehand and try getting there on my own. If I can't then I can always use some navigation assist later.

I'm not ashamed to say I've gotten lost doing this occasionally and either turned on directions or just double checked the GPS. But it's fairly infrequent and it doesn't happen twice in the same place.

Heck, sometimes it can be fun to get a little lost. "Oh, _that's_ where $FOO is!", as you accidentally go by it. Or "That looks like a cool $BAR, I'll have to come back and check it out"

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#136

Post by bonoboTP »

socalnate1 wrote: post #91
joshe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scanned the paper too with sci hub. Nothing remarkable. But we should be dismissive of any new results from psychology, it just doesn't have systems in place to validate claims. There is some cool stuff in psychology that has been replicated 20 times, across different cultures, and over time. But the chances of a headline psychology paper being true are, generously, 5%. To be far to the authors, they are in a bit of…

I think skepticism is warranted, but dismissiveness is not. Honestly it's a little offensive. Also, in this case their findings aren't even counter intuitive or that surprising. They are just measuring something that most of use believe already (judging by the rest of these comment threads).

Being a little offensive is fine. The question and argument should be whether it's a corre t assessment about the field, not whether it will hurt their feelings to read this. If it's false, argue that. It can be offensive to priests to say there's no god. It doesn't by itself make it false.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#137

Post by volkk »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #113
wussboy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your great response. I’ve often considered doing something like this. I wonder if there is a way to accomplish many of these things while still carrying your phone? For example, what if your phone took 5 minutes to unlock? And didn’t give notifications until you unlocked it? Just a thought.

I put my phone in "do not disturb" mode for the entire day. Removing notifications altogether was a great improvement, without getting rid of the phone altogether. You go from responding to picking it up when you decide to.

As someone who has been doing the DND mode for over 8 years now to avoid expecting notifications, it instead has taught me to reach over to my phone every 30 seconds to check the screen for any new ones :(

i've started to just chuck it somewhere if I'm trying to focus

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#138

Post by stevensawtelle »

perlgod wrote: post #37
stevensawtelle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you talk more to the practicalities of getting rid of a smartphone? Have you seriously found that the loss of the conveniences they bring haven't been that burdensome? I am really intrigued by the idea but find it almost inconceivable to work for me (which might speak to an addiction, so I feel compelled to understand this further)

I have not found it to be overly burdensome. I have an indestructible kyocera flip phone, so I'm able to call people (and SMS in a pinch). I have an LTE-enabled tablet, so if I'm going somewhere totally unfamiliar, I'll throw it in my bag just in case I need to look up some information. Otherwise you just have to plan your outings in advance - like we always did prior to 2008 or so. I have a Garmin GPS mounted in car…

Thanks for the detailed reply. I will have to seriously give this some more thought. I saw somewhere else you mentioned you did it as an experiment at first - I think if I do it I will pursue a similar approach.

I appreciate that you mentioned you still have the LTE tablet - one of my biggest concerns was traveling and the HUGE convenience apps have on my life then.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#139

Post by cgriswald »

Jtsummers wrote: post #42
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last week when I was in a hospital waiting room, I knocked out A Brief History of Time in one sitting. That thing's been on my bookshelf for at least ten years untouched. I'm not sure it significantly enhanced my life (though it helped my understanding of the fabric of the universe, I guess?), but it felt like an accomplishment.

I spent a good chunk of the last few years in physical therapy. Before sessions in the waiting room, and during the period of the session where they're applying heat/cooling or electricity I got a lot of reading done. I had a rule, broken recently and I need to restore it, of no electronics in my sitting room. Made it a very productive reading area as well. No laptop, tablet, kindle [0], or phone. At most I listened…

> Part of the problem was I started reading some programming books and wanted to code up things along with the text (like working through math exercises while reading a math book).

I tagged along on my then-girlfriend's business trip to LA because I had never been to California. She had the car and work during the day so there wasn't much I could do until she got back in the evenings. I had brought along a book on perl and learned both perl syntax and regular expressions one afternoon. Having to check everything by hand until I got back home required that I really understood the syntax and helped me retain it in a way that I think would have been more difficult if I just had a computer telling me if it was right or wrong.

Re: The Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity (2017)

#140

Post by falseprofit »

dTal wrote: post #104
nobody9999 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In the case of married couples, the spouse has a moral obligation to satisfy the other sexually within moral and reasonable limits (i.e., sexual abuse or objectification of the other is never admissible). I can't agree with those statements. No one, not your spouse, not your significant other and not anyone else is obliged to provide sexual satisfaction to you or anyone else. What's more, while consent is never opti…

You have interpreted the parent exceedingly uncharitably. If one partner in a monogamous relationship suddenly announces that from that day forth there shall be no more sex, the other partner is certainly within their rights to be upset. Most people aren't signed up to the idea of never having sex again. Consent is never optional, but neither should it be unreasonably withheld in a monogamous relationship in which se…

Their interpretation was fair.

>the other partner is certainly within their rights to be upset.

Obviously. No one here is trying to police people's emotions.

If someone doesn't want sex, then they have every right to "withhold" it from anyone, without being deemed "unreasonable".

Post reply on HN