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My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

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Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#111

Post by user_7832 »

ellopoppit wrote: post #87
user_7832 wrote: post #64

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this can also be a classic case of ADHD. If you also resonate with the post, ask yourself - do you have issues planning and completing long projects? Time management and procrastination issues? Lacking motivation? (Dis)organization problems? (Bonus: frustrated with yourself/your progress!) If (like me) you say "damn that's a lot of things I have to a significant degree" then you sh…

Could it be that smartphones and TV can cause ADHD? Before such electronic media, books were the main media, and inherently required and trained users to concentrate on one thing at a time for extended periods. TV and smartphones do the exact opposite

Unfortunately I'm not a doctor or researcher to be able to give a definitive answer, but I don't think these things can cause ADHD - though they can likely worsen symptoms, for both people who have it and those who don't. But I suspect such an effect would be reversible, unlike (genetic components of) ADHD.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#112

Post by user_7832 »

graeme wrote: post #75
user_7832 wrote: post #64

At the risk of sounding repetitive, this can also be a classic case of ADHD. If you also resonate with the post, ask yourself - do you have issues planning and completing long projects? Time management and procrastination issues? Lacking motivation? (Dis)organization problems? (Bonus: frustrated with yourself/your progress!) If (like me) you say "damn that's a lot of things I have to a significant degree" then you sh…

How would you distinguish between ADHD vs modern distractability? Especially if someone showed no ADHD symptoms before smartphones Everyone has some distractability so curious about threshold

To add on to the other answer, for folks with ADHD symptoms it was likely there before smartphones too - you/they just didn't realize it (like I didn't myself). A doctor however is far more capable of this judgement.

Another simple test - after a week long (say) tech detox, do they (permanently) improve, or are the benefits very little (tending to perhaps even being distracted during that week)?

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#113

Post by unethical_ban »

codemonkey-zeta wrote: post #59

> When I pulled up at a stoplight waiting for the light to change, I would instinctively reached for my phone (mounted on my dash) to check my email (personal + work), check ESPN, look up something on Amazon, etc. While pumping gas in the car, I’d whip out my phone while waiting. Stuck in line somewhere? Time for my phone. Waiting in an elevator? The phone. Riding the train? The phone. Going to the bathroom? Make sur…

>The crazy part is, not one single person I know thinks of it as a bad thing

I bet they don't think of it at all. It's addiction. It's a habit that sneaks up on you.

I'm not attacking you, but have you mentioned it to them as a bad thing, or challenged them to not do that?

I say this as a 30-something that does the same, but today installed minimalist.phone to work on the struggle.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#114

Post by unethical_ban »

drewcoo wrote: post #45

Tom Johnson appears to be the poster child for ADHD. He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't bother to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction everyone's been talking about for over a decade now. And then he blames his inability to focus on some externality instead of realizing it's his condition.

>He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't bother to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction everyone's been talking about for over a decade now.

What?

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#115

Post by nonrandomstring »

thenerdhead wrote: post #2

I had a similar awakening moment about 5 years ago. Felt like I wasted my 20s on consuming content and only playing video games outside of work. I had a similar journey. I’m even writing a book on it. I have found that the one thing that has helped bring enlightenment to this problem is reading books and thinking each day on how to apply them or just simply observing those around me instead of being glued on a device…

> I had a similar journey. I’m even writing a book on it.

I'd be interested to hear more. Do ping me if you have time.

> While there’s a number of titles talking about internet or tech addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem rather than taking actual steps to improve our character to rid ourselves of these things to begin with. This problem is only going to get harder for the individual, and it’s up to each one of us to battle our own battles. No amount of reform will solve it for us.

You might be interested to read Digital Vegan [1]. The food metaphor goes quite a long way. I really see it as a public health issue.

[1] https://digitalvegan.net (can send you a review copy of you like)

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#116

Post by Waterluvian »

I’m developing a personal opinion that being on a phone all the time is like being high all the time.

Eventually you look back and see thousands of hours you could have spent building something or learning an instrument or whatnot.

Instead you just kinda pissed it away on gossip and getting anxious about events you have no control of.

My most productive time on this phone is when I’m learning new stuff here on HN. But even that can probably be curbed a lot.

I’m thinking about how I break this cycle. One main issue is that I want to create using a laptop. But I have young kids who rightfully demand my attention often. That’s why social media fills the thousand little gaps so well.

I’m thinking I need to learn how to write code in short segments of as little as 15 minutes. At work I need to build up context and state in my mind. But I can’t do that in such short bursts. So I need to learn how to do “stateless programming” per se.

This leads me to wondering: if I had the memory of a goldfish, how would I go about writing an application? Some way to spend 15 minutes breaking a big problem into self contained 15 minute tasks. I’m convinced the software architecture will reflect this and as a result I’ll discover different paradigms for how to write software.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#117

Post by themadturk »

At this point in my life, digital detox is an alien concept to me, and I say that as a boomer who gets antsy when he's more than ten feet away from his phone. Yet, according to my reading diary, I've started over 30 books this year, finished 22 of them (a couple I'm in the middle of, several I've abandoned already), and I still occasionally check in on Reddit, have a bunch of email newsletters and a number of RSS feeds (including some people I follow on Twitter, meaning I don't have to actually open Twitter).

I've read a lot ever since I was a kid, and a couple of years ago when I felt I wasn't reading books as much as I used to I decided to turn the habit around, with what I consider minimal change in what I followed, instead changing how I followed. More than anything it's a matter of ruthless curation. I think it helps that I have a Kindle and the Kindle apps on my tablet and phone. I'm literally never without a book.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#118

Post by jmt_ »

dumpsterlid wrote: post #51
kristianc wrote: post #43

Although the attention span myth is one of those things that is taken to be almost idiomatic, there’s actually very little empirical evidence for it. There’s no such thing as an ‘average’ attention span, and even for those individual tasks it would be very much context dependent (where I’m sitting, what I’m doing at the time, my general opinion of the author, the mood I’m in). It’s a nice story, and it will invariabl…

This is an extremely crucial point. Though I do think social media apps are designed to be addictive in a negative way, the narrative that they are destroying our attention spans has absolutely no backing in science and yet it is taken almost as common sense.

Totally agree with both of you. I don't see this issue in terms of "attention span" per se, rather we now have an ever-present device that most often contains software engineered to grab as much of our attention as it possibly can. I can't think of anything similar past generations had that was close to this in terms of magnitude and accessibility. We all know the rat in a box will tap the dopamine button as many times as it can and now, unprecedentedly, we carry that button in our pocket every day.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#119

Post by alexalx666 »

asdfqwertzxcv wrote: post #38
alexalx666 wrote: post #12

Quitting Facebook and Instagram as well as getting Nokia phone from 90s + iPad was the best decision of 2022

which phone did you get? Do you tether the ipad to it when out and about?

I got iPad with Cellular, magic keyboard and the cheapest prepaid SIM card with 4Gb of data so I know I can not just browse forever. I got Nokia 6510 and I absolutely love it. New Nokia feature phones don't have the same level of attention to detail and quality of plastic. I don't take my iPad anywhere usually. If I want to take photos I use Pentax ME Super, for reading - Kindle. For music I got iPod Video and upgraded it to 120Gb sd card, new battery, sounds magical with Marshal Mode earphones, I also had iPod Classic 7g but the sound quality was much worse, its like components of music track were decoupled. It sounded consistently worse to me for all genres.

Re: My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

#120

Post by oblak »

jb1991 wrote: post #79

Anyone here try switching to a flip phone?

I did but it died on me. I've been with a candy bar ever since. Been a decade since I gave up on smartphones. Only took me about two months. These days I check my phone once or twice a week, sometimes not at all. Good thing the battery lasts for many days
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