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Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

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Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#31

Post by powellzer »

david422 wrote: post #24
powellzer wrote: post #18

I recently deactivated Facebook (which I only ever used via web browser) and since then I’ve been counting the number of times I unconsciously end up on the Facebook login page when I’m bored/killing time. I’ve noticed that faced with a “new tab” I’ll often just hit the f key and hit enter without thinking about it, landing me on the Facebook login page. Before I deactivated, this would result in me somewhat unconsci…

That's what I do with Hacker News. Hello :/

Oh I totally do this with Hacker News too, which is why I typically block access during work hours. I feel better about it if I'm consciously giving myself a break to read HN. Right now I'm using the LeechBlock Extension which allows for timed overrides.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#32

Post by Calvin02 »

zahrc wrote: post #14

Social media nowadays is not just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube… I’d even count HN. There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid amount of people way to invested in those See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn’t call that responsible.

Yeah, and if you look at all the engagement tactics that the NPR, NYTimes, or the CNN apps use, they are basically saying: spend your time here and not there.

Most of the internet is vying for your attention and asking you to spend more time on their site than the others.

To truly come up with meaningful solutions, we need to look at the entire problem. Otherwise we're just moving marbles around.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#33

Post by jetrink »

Calvin02 wrote: post #21
tharne wrote: post #4

I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve. It's like telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin and use it more moderately". The only realistic way t…

I think you're cherry picking a bit. How much time do you spend on HN? HN is a social network for folks who are interested in technology and general interest topics -- much like other social networks. Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.

> The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.

I don't think that's entirely fair. For instance, posts with a large number of comments or a high ratio of comments to votes (I can't remember which) are actually penalized, since that is an indicator that the topic is controversial. The flag feature is another example in that it is a way for users to veto low value posts that might otherwise get high engagement.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#34

Post by tharne »

Calvin02 wrote: post #21
tharne wrote: post #4

I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve. It's like telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin and use it more moderately". The only realistic way t…

I think you're cherry picking a bit. How much time do you spend on HN? HN is a social network for folks who are interested in technology and general interest topics -- much like other social networks. Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.

> How much time do you spend on HN?

Too much :)

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#35

Post by wpasc »

Calvin02 wrote: post #21
tharne wrote: post #4

I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve. It's like telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin and use it more moderately". The only realistic way t…

I think you're cherry picking a bit. How much time do you spend on HN? HN is a social network for folks who are interested in technology and general interest topics -- much like other social networks. Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.

I don't think that's an apt comparison. The difference in degree becomes a difference in kind IMO. HN doesn't send you alerts or notifications that are optimally spaced based on A/B testing. HN isn't personalized per user to maximize each individuals HN time. The HN top doesn't refresh on command and provide a fully new page on each refresh (new topics come up but if you refresh the page every 12 seconds you will see very little change vs any engagement app that always tries to give you something new).

HN can be a time draw, but it's based on a somewhat transparent vote/flag system. Features of other social media sites/apps like A/B testing, personalization, variably spaced notifications, daily digests to draw you in are features that are extraordinarily well designed for our dopamine-reward system.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#36

Post by gnarbarian »

Calvin02 wrote: post #21
tharne wrote: post #4

I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve. It's like telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin and use it more moderately". The only realistic way t…

I think you're cherry picking a bit. How much time do you spend on HN? HN is a social network for folks who are interested in technology and general interest topics -- much like other social networks. Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.

hacker News is definitely part of the problem. I've started to use three rules to evaluate habits similar to hacker news. eliminate things that:

1) are unproductive 2) I do not enjoy 3) are pathological (This includes things that float around in your head and create negative thoughts after you do it. coming back to a very negative political argument as an example of this)

I'm not perfect at applying them but it has dramatically improved my life because it has given me a tool to evaluate social media use And I have successfully ramped down use of social media that made my life worse.

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#37

Post by zahrc »

Calvin02 wrote: post #32
zahrc wrote: post #14

Social media nowadays is not just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube… I’d even count HN. There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid amount of people way to invested in those See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn’t call that responsible.

Yeah, and if you look at all the engagement tactics that the NPR, NYTimes, or the CNN apps use, they are basically saying: spend your time here and not there. Most of the internet is vying for your attention and asking you to spend more time on their site than the others. To truly come up with meaningful solutions, we need to look at the entire problem. Otherwise we're just moving marbles around.

I think there is not just one problem, people have different needs and holes to fill.

The social media platforms attract different demographics, because they fit in different niches.

The reason why people are drawn to Facebook, differs from 4chan.

On Instagram people want to be discovered and seen, creating and sharing art and take the credit for it.

While people go to 4chan to be anonymous, which generates questionable content.

I personally go on HN because the community is close to home, but why is that?

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#38

Post by iainctduncan »

I have a couple of hacks I use that, once developed as a habit, have been enormously helpful for me.

1) I never look at a general feed. (Which I means I just never use Twitter as that's kind of all it has) I open FB on my message url, which shows me the three things I want: messages, event notifications, and a search box to go to the four or five dedicated topic areas I use where off-topic posts aren't tolerated. Basically all the "designed to be addictive" shit is on the feed page.

2) I use Stylebot on Chrome, which allows you to add custom css overrides for every page. It's awesome. You can just turn every thing that clamours for your attention or has "suggestions" into empty whitespace.

3) I don't use any of their apps. You can't control the apps the same way.

hth

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#39

Post by grae_QED »

Am I the only one bored by virtually everything on social media? Everything feels like its been curated for either teens or people with exceptionally low attention spans. I find it all very annoying (With Hacker News being the exception).

Re: Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with Social Media

#40

Post by AlwaysRock »

Take social media off your phone. Install a news feed blocker that forces you to toggle on the news feed for your site of choice when you want to scroll. That helped me cut my social media time from 1+ hour a day to less than 15 minutes.
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