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

My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span

idratherbewriting.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 231 posts

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

#191

Post by teddyh »

schw1804 wrote: post #80
wwilim wrote: post #62

Judging by the article I'm not doing terrible at all for someone under 30, despite the fact that I use my phone for continuous glucose monitoring, which means I can't live without it in a nearly literal sense. I can't remember what it was like 3-5 years ago though, it was probably worse, but after reading a few articles about the attention economy I started paying much more attention to what I was doing. The most ter…

I just wish organizations would quit pushing two-factor authentication on people who don't want it. If I have a 30-character passphrase (inspired by "correct horse battery staple") that I'll never need to write down, then do I really need additional protection for my accounts? (…yeah, probably I do and I'm just being naive; maybe someone will look over my shoulder in a coffee shop.) I miss the good old days when ther…

Sites get hacked all the time, and some either have bad hashing, or get so thoroughly hacked that the clear-text passwords get exposed. You shouldn’t re-use passwords.

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

#192

Post by markvdb »

Feature phone user here. I had a smartphone for about a year in 2009. I gave it away after seeing four people in a row waiting for the train consumed by their pinging devices.

I can't recommend the feature phone experience warmly enough. About the only thing I really miss is a decent camera in my phone. Lugging a camera along is a bit of a nuisance.

All of this doesn't completely free me from the attention economy though.

Firstly, I distract myself. I still read the news more than is good for me. From time to time, I'll even play silly computer games excessively. FOSS games, but still quite distracting.

Secondly, as the article describes, there's the profound cultural shift I have to cope with. Many people, even friends, don't even think about asking me for permission to let Siri, Alexa or Google overhear our conversations. Just because they want to be plugged in.

When we are discussing what year Greg Lemond beat Laurent Fignon in the Tour de France, is the goal knowing some useless trivia? No, it's the conversation. The social process is the goal.

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

#193

Post by tiffanyh »

xerox13ster wrote: post #4

I did a digital detox in July of 2020, I had become overwhelmed with Discord and Reddit moderation and trying to Keep Up. I burned out hard. I turned off all electronics for a month and uninstalled the apps and restricted my phone use to calls and responding to 3 close friend's texts at a set time each day--I didn't keep it on me at all. No video games, no TV, no watch or music streaming. I had my library of local mu…

How does reading & commenting on HN fit into that digitial detox?

Genuinely curious.

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

#194

Post by D13Fd »

winternett wrote: post #101
xerox13ster wrote: post #4

I did a digital detox in July of 2020, I had become overwhelmed with Discord and Reddit moderation and trying to Keep Up. I burned out hard. I turned off all electronics for a month and uninstalled the apps and restricted my phone use to calls and responding to 3 close friend's texts at a set time each day--I didn't keep it on me at all. No video games, no TV, no watch or music streaming. I had my library of local mu…

Now that app makers have realized we're muting our phones and disabling app notifications, they're doing them within the apps... It creates dependency and anxiety. The best way I've found to deal with the constant prodding is to simply leave my phone at home or in the car nearby whenever I want to enjoy a day or moment. It's a device I paid for, it shouldn't cause me stress. Google and Apple can easily set up reasona…

Why don’t you just delete the apps that are causing that level of anxiety?

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

#195

Post by koiueo »

I did great and finished this only in two sessions

This is a great article.

I learned to disable all but important notifications. But I still suffer many symptoms the author has described.

IMO, an overwhelming amount of the content on the internet adds nothing on top of its title. You eventually learn to consume all the content without putting too much effort, by skimming quickly, otherwise it's exhausting.

I don't know what could be a solution here. Some sort of filtering for the content is needed, but how to implement it exactly?

Perhaps one should put more focus on reading books instead of free articles on the internet. But this does not solve the problem completely. Many books suffer from the same lack of sense.

Does anyone have any ideas or any related experience regarding the content moderation for consumption?

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

#196

Post by prashaantt »

spookybones wrote: post #29

I agree with most of the points in this article and try to practice them, but I wish the author would have waited before offering his take. There are too many bloggers who read a self-help book or two, get really energized, and then, before testing the long-term results, suggest their readers to follow suit. Often, a few entries later, the blogger will then modify their take, which gives them more content for the blo…

Heh, that’s exactly what he did here - https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/returning-to-smartphones/.

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

#198

Post by GekkePrutser »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #147
_abox wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I don't understand why someone would willingly use a 6" screen when they have a glorious 24" and actual input devices available.

Because computers are for nerds (the bigger it is, the MORE computer it is); only boys should be nerds; therefore, girls select against using computers. It sucks.

I still find it weird.

Using a mobile is like reading while looking through a toilet roll, and typing by using a straw in my mouth :P

I often get questions from people on WhatsApp saying "How can you reply so quickly??". Well duh... I use a real computer :) Anything I can do on the mobile I can do twice as fast on the computer.

For me it just 'hurts' when my brain cycles are forcibly wasted. Not just with this, also with those stupid mandatory trainings in work where the narrator is so slow to make sure even the most mediocre non-native numbnut can keep up. It just frustrates me so much when I'm forced to listen to that (usually I spend my time looking through the javascript to find a way to turn off the non-skip setting :P )

I actually got caught out by that once when an intern noticed I had only spent 1 hour on a course everyone else spent at least 3 hours on :P But I told her I was on a plane so when I finished it I was in a different time zone :D

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

#199

Post by permo-w »

To take a cynical viewpoint, based on the examples given by the author, it could equally be that he's just lost interest in what I would describe as lowest-common-denominator action novels. He was able to fully listen to the book about focus.

I find that I can pay attention to the things I'm interested in as well as I ever could, but interests change and develop over time. I still avoid smartphones, but I don't think they've actually done anything to my attention span

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

#200

Post by pastaguy1 »

xerox13ster wrote: post #4

I did a digital detox in July of 2020, I had become overwhelmed with Discord and Reddit moderation and trying to Keep Up. I burned out hard. I turned off all electronics for a month and uninstalled the apps and restricted my phone use to calls and responding to 3 close friend's texts at a set time each day--I didn't keep it on me at all. No video games, no TV, no watch or music streaming. I had my library of local mu…

What's heat based SAD?

I always feel like garbage during the summer, but always chalked it up to allergies, some kind of low level chronic dehydration, or poor schedule discipline (used to be, when classes ended, my bedtime became about 3 am almost immediately. I'm older and that doesn't [can't] happen anymore, but since the sun sets very late now, I still get a minor version of it).

There are a lot of external factors that I thought might contribute also. For one thing, every weekend of the summer is pretty much booked up, which becomes exhausting. Back in college, I also remember feeling kind of bluesy in the summer. I guess I didn't have the to activate my brain by myself, so I looked forward to fall/learning time again.

I'm rambling, but interested to hear a little more about what you mentioned.

Post reply on HN