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How to overcome Phone Addiction

cognitiontoday.com

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Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#281
post #221
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it bad to feel rewarded for legitimately engaging your brain? Is it bad for something to be a "dopamine slot machine" if it's only because it actually allows you to consume knowledge more rapidly/efficiently?

Addiction is sometimes described as something that is done repeatedly and is harmful. I can't get by without breathing, so I need to do that pretty often, but as it's not harmful, it's not an addiction. The answer to your question is it depends... I don't think there is anything wrong with playing a dopamine hitting game on a 10 minute bus ride home from work (it's no different than the buzz from a shot of espresso),…

Listening to music is essentially a drug in that it releases pleasurable neurotransmitters. I think we need to understand the positive and negative impacts to ourselves like you suggested.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#282
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it surprising that there's no push for regulating engagement algorithms similar to tobacco and gambling. The same kinds of bad behaviours are being done by companies to profit off of addiction

Not only that, but loot boxes in games targeting children is just rampant.

LOL Surprise and other surprise eggs are very terrible targeting toddlers

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#284
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely have a browsing addiction. Learning things as an information junkie is addictive. What’s funny is that when I go for trips in the mountains with little to no internet I do fine. It is less like a chemical addiction and more like a habitual craving. If I have more interesting things to do I will not browse. If I’m bored though...

Are you learning specific things for a passion, hobby, or job or learning random facts and TILs?

Some of it definitely is TIL triggered reading, but most of it is news related ”keep up with the world”.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#285

Is there anyway to get rid of my phone, in a reasonable way? It feels like a requirement.

I came to the conclusion that it's really impossible to cut out a smartphone altogether. There are many 2fa sites which are app only: my bank, my credit card, DigiD (Dutch single sign-on for everything government related).

Another group of apps for me are the ones I use to interact with smart devices around the home. I replaced many of them by setting up Home Assistant and Mycroft voice assistant.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#286

Created an app for myself to have a clear intention before using a phone. https://acture.app Works well for me.

>>1. Do you collect any data? >At the moment, we do not collect any user data from apps. On this portal Google Analytics is used. Also you can check privacy policy page. Great app idea that I would be interested in using, but this isn't very reassuring. I'll have to pass.

The app itself still does not collect any kind of data from user. It works without internet at all.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#287
post #112

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")…

Thank you for mentioning urge surfing! Googled it up, sounds interesting, never heard of it before; assuming it helps others maybe it will help me too! Certainly worth trying.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#288
post #112

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")…

I wouldn't say I was addicted to Phone to start with as my job involved interacting with phone all the time, but after I had to shutdown my startup due to health issues I made some deliberate lifestyle changes which has reduced my phone interactions to negligible levels/day and some of which can help overcome phone addiction too. • Notifications I have a smartwatch mounted to my desk[1] which displays notifications a…

I did the opposite from you with emails: Stopped reading them for a couple of years as they had become too stressful. I couldn't face my inbox.

It was because of a small number of overly demanding people that I worked with, I ended up in perpetual fear of overload from having to deal with yet another dreaded message, and the stress stuck after that.

During that time I was still happy to talk with people face to face, phone calls, via chat, etc. It was only emails that I avoided.

Eventually I returned to emails because the people stressing me had disappeared and because I'd found better tools to help filter my inbox; smart real-time filtered views essentially, to help with mental health. It turned email from something to be dreaded to something useful again. It wasn't just filtering out particular people. It was filtering by time and task with some automation.

Now I don't find email stressful, but it's still secondary for me. I'd much rather have a voice call or video chat.

I still don't understand people who love "async only" for work communications. Async is cool for some things, and I relate very much to the joy of not being interrupted. I will happily go for days without talking to anyone, focused on my tasks.

But my email experience had people writing long and argumentative emails that seemed to require hours to reply to thoughtfully (or else consequences), and the back and forth felt like slow-motion difficult meetings where everything took much longer to be said than in a conversation. The adverse effect of those email on flow was much larger than some small interruption from a brief chat.

My favourite thing now if something needs rapid iteration is scheduled voice or video calls about a single issue. I always liked them, but recently they have been rare, so they're a bit of a highlight.

I keep telling myself to get back into being more involved with mailing lists, because that's where I used to be very active. E.g. on linux-kernel a long time ago, I scanned about 1000 mails a day, which was a little tiring but it was ok.

But nowadays when I look at new projects, a lot of them have moved to various chat-like media, which doesn't stress me but seems to require an annoyingly large number of different tools to interact with, and have effectively more limited UI that lacks functionality because it's harder to make custom tooling to handle them.

I like text chats when working with someone on a technical issue, for example debugging some code or a running system with them. Voice chat on headphones is pretty good too, as I can concentrate on things on screen at the same time, like pairing with someone.

I don't like text chats when there's nothing else to do except the conversation itself though, as the timestamps show they go very slowly for what's covered compared with voice, yet just fast enough that it's not possible to pay proper attention while doing something else.

I prefer faster conversations that cover more ground. For those, my favourite is voice, via headphones while going for a long walk.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#289
I browse social media for hours sometimes. It leaves me feeling extremely empty and worthless. Get some hobbies. There are plenty of things to learn during lockdowns that you don't need to be glued to a phone for:

  1. Walking and exploring
  2. Working out
  3. Cooking
  4. Build something
  5. Go meet other people
Sure, browse Facebook in the morning but I can't imagine having to be glued to it for hours every day anymore. If I find myself in that position, I try to do the above things. There's just too much to do and too much learn to be glued to social media.

Re: How to overcome Phone Addiction

#290
post #280
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, except when people start jumping from buildings. I know two people, one of whom successfully jumped from the 3rd floor of a building and another that had to be restrained from doing so. It's a real risk, although I personally have done psychedelics many hundreds of times and never felt the urge to jump even when climbing trees, building exteriors, etc.

I want to do it on the beach, I'm afraid of running into the ocean and drowning. What would you say is the probability of this scenario occurring for a first time trip?

I've been with dozens of people on their first trip with acid that I knew was acid. And I've had dozens more experiences with people thinking they were taking acid when it was really 25I or something even worse (if it tastes like something, it's not acid). When I was younger taking any drug anyone could get their hands on, I was usually in the latter camp. And I think very few people are privileged enough to not be in the latter camp as you don't tend to have much control over the drugs you get. Most normal people might get like one "acid contact" their whole life and they're taking whatever he has to sell them.

If you're in the former camp (taking real acid), I have a truly hard time believing the anecdotes of bad things happening. And I think most anecdotes are actually stories from the latter camp. Just take a small dose and know that you can take the edge off with a beer if you really needed to.

But if you're in the latter camp where you don't even know what you're taking, I'm not particularly surprised if something bad happens.

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