131–140 of 325 posts
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.
If the headline were about television addiction would you question if it’s the TV set or the shows?
Given this is Hacker News, I await the solution of LSD-assisted therapy to counter phone addiction to be proposed soon.
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")…
When I was growing up, before computers were in your pocket, the computers were big and under the desk. The big and under your desk computers had connections to BBSes via a modem and a landline, and later, the Internet. It's the same thing, except the big computer doesn't fit under the pillow at the bedstand. There was addiction to that in a similar way and for similar reasons.
It's a social tool being exploited. There were people addicted to the landline phone and talking for hours every day, it was just nothing remotely as harmful by comparison to craning your neck down as you look at some attractive person's video in their bathing suit from their palace in the Caribbean and feel envy and hollow when comparing your circumstance.
It would be more useful to break down more specific problems: anxiety from not checking notifications, mental health from comparing your life to perfect social media, etc. Those can be targeted and fixed.
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.
I 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…
I did the bookmark thing too and all I found out is that it’s a bitch to spell yxombinatoe on an iPhone keyboard.
Been using this low tech phone with good results: https://www.thelightphone.com/