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How to overcome Phone Addiction

cognitiontoday.com

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Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#141
post #112

Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once you leave those carefully constrained conditions, you are more vulnerable than ever. Not to mention the contradiction with the core issue that it's a symptom rather than a cause. 2. Turning abstinence as an ongoing status condition (e.g. "X days since I did Y")…

It could be argued that #5 is just another form of distraction. Any form of "rich life" is mostly keeping the death anxiety at bay.

By a rich life, I'm referring to something that needs no further justification. When you are in this state, the need to contextualize, criticize, or philosophize about your experiences almost disappears. Think of a young child in a state of playful flow. Even if you fully take on the anti-natalist conclusion, the experience still justifies itself on its own, as an end in itself.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#142
post #112

Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once you leave those carefully constrained conditions, you are more vulnerable than ever. Not to mention the contradiction with the core issue that it's a symptom rather than a cause. 2. Turning abstinence as an ongoing status condition (e.g. "X days since I did Y")…

> The eventual goal is a rich life where you no longer feel the need to distract yourself

Indeed. When you're feeling anxious in your environment or depressed about the state of your life, the phone is a very convenient artifical void filler and one that's often well attuned to an individual's pycholgocial patterns of habit.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#143
post #112

Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once you leave those carefully constrained conditions, you are more vulnerable than ever. Not to mention the contradiction with the core issue that it's a symptom rather than a cause. 2. Turning abstinence as an ongoing status condition (e.g. "X days since I did Y")…

I definitely have a browsing addiction. Learning things as an information junkie is addictive. What’s funny is that when I go for trips in the mountains with little to no internet I do fine. It is less like a chemical addiction and more like a habitual craving. If I have more interesting things to do I will not browse. If I’m bored though...

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#145
I’ll repeat a recommendation I’ve made before: reinstall your smartphone’s OS, don’t restore from a backup, and install as few apps as possible. Start bare. Then get on with your life and see how little you can get away with on your phone.

A lot of apps I still had on my phone were installed in my “enthusiast” stage of iPhone living, and they never went away. Once I started over, I was just fine minimal-ing my iPhone life.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#146
post #112

Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once you leave those carefully constrained conditions, you are more vulnerable than ever. Not to mention the contradiction with the core issue that it's a symptom rather than a cause. 2. Turning abstinence as an ongoing status condition (e.g. "X days since I did Y")…

Few more ideas:

1. When I quit Facebook, I first started disabling my account but that didn't work, at all. It just brought me back. Every time. I realized it wasn't a feature for deleting account, it was a pressure relieve valve for people who need a quick break because they felt the service had taken control of too large a portion of their lives. FB didn't want people to quit and they didn't offer such feature.

I started by unfollowing my friends. In the process I saw FB's algorithms get more and more desperate in giving me dopamine spikes via the notifications earth symbol. "Friend of a friend is attending an event". Really FB? I then deleted all of the chat histories, sent my phone number to peers and asked them to contact via Signal/WA in the future. I then removed the friends and finally when I got enough of the few public groups I discussed in it was easy enough to let go.

I first changed the email to some 10minutemail account, and then changed the password to something I didn't know. When I then hit "disable account", it was hard for FB to guilt trip me with "X Y and Z will miss you :((" -- there were no friends to recommend. All this sounds like a lot of work, and especially deleting FB's chats histories was, because the web client was buggy or "buggy". The chats kept coming back. But that made me want to delete them even more.

Quitting FB made a huge difference in the quality of my life as it removed 99% of FOMO and envy wrt. my peers' lives.

2. Add the Leechblock extension to your browser. Set the tab to close every time you type the time wasting URL. It's a nice instrumental conditioning.

3. Quit services cold turkey when you can. "Use in moderation" sets you up for failure. This is because the services learn about your habits every day and they become extremely good at guessing what content keeps you in. E.g. youtube has recently switched to a new search function that improves its search results based on your previous searches. It's scarily accurate. Many of my peers said they noticed it too but didn't think too much of it.

4. You are being actively manipulated. The companies deliberately design the applications as addicting as possible. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11dYx_rW_Ks

No wonder a smartphone -- that's a collection of such apps -- is so addicting. Realizing this and the fact the dopamine spikes are artificial, helps you a long way.

This also applies to games. Every "headshot +100 points" is such a tiny dopamine spike. Games didn't used to have those. Your AoE villagers didn't announce "+1 wood" when their axes hit a tree. Consider such features in a game an attempt to manipulate you. If you can't disable the them in game, think of it as the insult to your intelligence it is, and uninstall it. If necessary, once such features are disabled, it's easier to see if the content of the game is a good way to relax and balance out the day's hard work.

5. Disable notifications from every app on every device. Notifications are a massive distraction. "I'll be reachable when it's convenient for me" is a good way to think about it.

You'll be surprised how much stuff you can get done when you don't hang around in group chats, reading headlines, arguing to get Reddit internet points etc. for the entire day.

6. Catch up on the big news via Wikipedia's "In the news" section, not via news sites littered with celebrity gossip, craving for your clicks. It's dry for sure, but there's no better source in catching up with e.g. the ongoing conflict in Tigray. It's also easier to avoid trivial propaganda when majority of stuff is sourced, and people are keen in adding "citation needed" when there is no proper source.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#147
post #13

Is it the phone people are addicted to, or the media available through it? Especially Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter. All of which seem designed to cultivate obsessive compulsive behavior in their users with social proof, intermittent rewards and a builtin hedonic treadmill.

We didn't have these issues back in the early 2000s. Cause of price and the average person didn't use a computer as often as they do now. That's because there was barely anything to soon them then.

Hi there, millennial here. I spend hours and hours on live journal, flash game sites, and various web comics in the mid-2000s. I think I spent basically the same number of hours per day on the internet I do now. Just now some of it is work instead of teenage entertainment/dithering, and a lot of it is on a phone.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#148
post #112

Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once you leave those carefully constrained conditions, you are more vulnerable than ever. Not to mention the contradiction with the core issue that it's a symptom rather than a cause. 2. Turning abstinence as an ongoing status condition (e.g. "X days since I did Y")…

#4 is so on the money. Well put.

Yeah, phone is just a way of going on browsing-autopilot-mode. Without the phone I'd be wasting time on a desktop web browser scrolling through HN/Reddit, and many years before it was Digg and Slashdot. I like the advice of being intentional about your reading but eh, I enjoy passive browsing a lot.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#149
post #145

I’ll repeat a recommendation I’ve made before: reinstall your smartphone’s OS, don’t restore from a backup, and install as few apps as possible. Start bare. Then get on with your life and see how little you can get away with on your phone. A lot of apps I still had on my phone were installed in my “enthusiast” stage of iPhone living, and they never went away. Once I started over, I was just fine minimal-ing my iPhone…

Can’t remove the browser though and this is my biggest timesink.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#150
post #69
post #51

Given this is Hacker News, I await the solution of LSD-assisted therapy to counter phone addiction to be proposed soon.

Yes, but LSD is only effective when coupled with fasting.

I am doing n-back cold water swimming to convert white matter into gray matter.
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