correlation does not equal causation. Phone addiction or internet addiction is a symptom not a cause. People are escaping to the internet becuase of the world we live in is cold. There is a new US marine commerical out that shows a kid wandering the street kind of lost in hyper interactive world. The commercial plays off of this internet addiction and data mining product selling. Then clips to them becoming a Marine…
> Marines do have an answer, although with a great cost. Do you mean an individual cost or societal cost? I think one of the ironies about the human condition is that we value things that we’ve sacrificed toward much more than the things we have not. E.g., Marines have esprit de corps in part because of their sacrifices not despite them. The strongest connections are often made through hardship. To think we can have…
How to overcome Phone Addiction
161–170 of 325 posts
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#162I basically discourage addiction by making things “difficult” for myself on my phone: - Minimal web bookmarks (i.e. I have to type in most web sites I want to visit; this is just enough of an encumbrance that I won’t flip open things like Reddit every 30 seconds). - I never install apps meant for content consumption, I use their web sites. (This is usually a better experience anyway, since the vast majority of them a…
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#163Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
The marines come with an individual cost that is frequently less valued than service in the army or airforce.
What do you mean less valued? My impression is that the Marines are the most respected of the services. (I am not serving nor a veteran of any armed service).
https://youtu.be/UMoLKLM8SMg Fun story time by an ex-air force guy who was going to join up to the marines (4:30).
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#165Some 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")…
To some degree. But they do give space for alternatives to start to fill the gap.
For me, a behavior modification strategy called narrowing antecedent control has worked well: restricting my phone and Internet usage to a specific spot in my office. I found I was reaching for my devices automatically throughout the day and night and would waste hours surfing without realizing it.
Obviously, removing the distraction doesn't automatically resolve whatever underlying issue caused the user to compulsively seek it out. But you find you can't just do nothing, so you start to get creative, and alternatives start to appear.
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#166One thing I've done to combat this is to aggressively tamp down on things that vie, or worse yet, call for my attention. I leave my phone permanently on do not disturb mode (pagerduty and immediate family are the only exemptions). I use greyscale settings to limit my interest in phones in the evenings. And, if you send me push notifications for ANYTHING I didn't expressly request (like a status update on a pending ub…
If on Linux: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/ko29dw/mono...
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please invest in my new startup - we provide an app that recommends LSD microdoses to address your milliphone exposure count.
Tomorrow on Ask HN: Which PAAS (psychedelic-as-a-service) would you pay the most money for?
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Marines do have an answer, although with a great cost. Do you mean an individual cost or societal cost? I think one of the ironies about the human condition is that we value things that we’ve sacrificed toward much more than the things we have not. E.g., Marines have esprit de corps in part because of their sacrifices not despite them. The strongest connections are often made through hardship. To think we can have…
The marines come with an individual cost that is frequently less valued than service in the army or airforce.
As the child of an enlisted Air Force solidier who served for 20 years, I always thought the Air Force got the worst rap of the branches. The "chair force" moniker didn't help.
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So the perfect distraction?
You could argue for solipsism, that everything is a distraction from death, and all sorts of masturbatory ideas whose only logical conclusion is immediate and collective suicide, but this all tends to be short-circuited once your state is subjectively good enough to be self-justified.
Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction
#170Some 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")…
Once I moved the phone to another room at night, I was forced to fall asleep without being distracted. Being alone with my thoughts was extremely uncomfortable the first few nights, but it got better. Now I'm used to falling asleep without distraction and am more in touch with how I feel. So my phone was causing me to become out of touch with my thoughts/feelings which would in turn make it even more uncomfortable to confront them, so I would turn to my phone for distraction and this reinforcing cycle continued until broken. The phone was both a symptom and cause of my sleeping problem, so removing the phone removed the cause and fixed my sleep.