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Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

theguardian.com

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Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#11

Post by mrweasel »

Someone pointed out in a similar discussion: "It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content."

Yesterday there was a debate locally about screen time, both for adults and children, and how much is to much. It's always about the phone, the iPad or the TV, never about the content. At this point I'm leaning more towards, well, we tried social media, streaming, online gaming and funny meme site and our monkey brains can't deal with it, so let's just kill it off already. Ban the whole thing.

Many companies, especially those supported by ads, apparently can't help themselves, they will exploit any weakness in human psychology to make a quick buck of our attention. So you know what, let's just ban all of it and admit it was a mistake and keep the proven good part. You're not going to be doom scrolling your banking app, your TOTP app or your home automation. Keep those apps and just ban attention stealing algorithms, apps and websites so that we can move on.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#12

Post by politelemon »

mrweasel wrote: post #11

Someone pointed out in a similar discussion: "It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content." Yesterday there was a debate locally about screen time, both for adults and children, and how much is to much. It's always about the phone, the iPad or the TV, never about the content. At this point I'm leaning more towards, well, we tried social media, streaming, online gaming and funny meme site and our monke…

> It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content."

I don't think that's true, at best it's both. It's the phone that enables a more frictionless access to the content. Having a speed bump to access the same content would make a large difference which is why the alternatives in the article are proving effective, the act of accessing something is less mindless, and more deliberate.

I think the point they're making is that not everyone has the discipline or motive to evaluate and remove things.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#13

Post by evrimoztamur »

mrweasel wrote: post #11

Someone pointed out in a similar discussion: "It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content." Yesterday there was a debate locally about screen time, both for adults and children, and how much is to much. It's always about the phone, the iPad or the TV, never about the content. At this point I'm leaning more towards, well, we tried social media, streaming, online gaming and funny meme site and our monke…

What do you mean, I can definitely doom scroll my banking app!

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#14

Post by mschuster91 »

mrweasel wrote: post #11

Someone pointed out in a similar discussion: "It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content." Yesterday there was a debate locally about screen time, both for adults and children, and how much is to much. It's always about the phone, the iPad or the TV, never about the content. At this point I'm leaning more towards, well, we tried social media, streaming, online gaming and funny meme site and our monke…

> Many companies, especially those supported by ads, apparently can't help themselves, they will exploit any weakness in human psychology to make a quick buck of our attention.

The world has a rich history of regulating advertising. Maybe it's time to dig out the old stuff again - treat hyper-personalized ads or services entirely financed by ads like we do with gambling, alcohol or tobacco.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#15

Post by owisd »

mrweasel wrote: post #11

Someone pointed out in a similar discussion: "It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content." Yesterday there was a debate locally about screen time, both for adults and children, and how much is to much. It's always about the phone, the iPad or the TV, never about the content. At this point I'm leaning more towards, well, we tried social media, streaming, online gaming and funny meme site and our monke…

The problem with 'the content' on 'the phone' specifically is that you always have it with you so (a) it's always there for a dopamine hit at a moment's notice whenever you're bored and (b) creates the societal expectation that you're always online. You don't take TV with you when you leave the house.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#17

Post by owisd »

Shout out for "Apple Configurator" for Mac, if a dumb phone appeals to you but can't because there are some apps you really need, I hardly ever see it mentioned in articles like this. It's designed for IT departments to configure all their company phones, but you can also use it to dumb down any iPhone by whitelisting a specific set of apps, it's way better than the parental controls / screen time options.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#18

Post by LoganDark »

redeeman wrote: post #9
mrjh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've never picked up your phone to do one thing and half an hour later found yourself trawling through Instagram, having forgotten what you originally meant to do with your "just a tool", you are in a tiny minority of incredibly focused people. The majority of us, through no fault of our own, find these 'tools' regularly sucking us into a vortex of distractions and time-wasting. The struggle against cheap dopami…

> you are in a tiny minority of incredibly focused people. oh please... > The majority of us, through no fault of our own it is called "personal accountability", I know its very hated on in the modern world, but please... > The struggle against cheap dopamine hits is real Yeah.. try go back 500 years or 1000 years and explain your struggles to the people there.

> > The majority of us, through no fault of our own

> it is called "personal accountability", I know its very hated on in the modern world, but please...

Look, I get the point you're trying to make, but as stated, this is incredibly insensitive. There are plenty of scenarios where someone should be held personally accountable for getting distracted or losing time, but this is not one of them. It's entirely possible and quite common for certain kinds of content to trick and manipulate the brain. It's not their personal fault for falling victim, just as it's not someone's personal fault for getting robbed.

Plus, not everyone can focus or resist distractions the same. Not everyone can expect to even be able to. Many people who suffer from ADHD, for example, have a particularly hard time with this.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#19

Post by RamblingCTO »

Honestly, I don't get why this is a problem. The iPhone has these focus modes that switch automatically. And I disable notifications for everything irrelevant. I just get emails, messenger stuff, X, banking and podcasts notifications. I always have a focus turned on, I don't ever get a vibration or sounds off of any notification.

Re: Turning away from smartphones: 'We need to go places and touch things'

#20

Post by grugagag »

owisd wrote: post #15
mrweasel wrote: post #11

Someone pointed out in a similar discussion: "It's not the phone itself that they issue, it's the content." Yesterday there was a debate locally about screen time, both for adults and children, and how much is to much. It's always about the phone, the iPad or the TV, never about the content. At this point I'm leaning more towards, well, we tried social media, streaming, online gaming and funny meme site and our monke…

The problem with 'the content' on 'the phone' specifically is that you always have it with you so (a) it's always there for a dopamine hit at a moment's notice whenever you're bored and (b) creates the societal expectation that you're always online. You don't take TV with you when you leave the house.

They’re portable dopamine hit machines. We normally take dopamine hits when we do something that we like but periods of low dopamine aka boredom are required for a healthy mind.
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