It's not just that "smartphones are like tobacco". It's like we're in
a world where doctors tell you that smoking is good, businesses and
government require you to smoke, and we give free cigarettes out to
children to get them hooked.
Like all addictive habits and substances there's a cast-iron
correlation between availability and use, so, sure, creating barriers
like boxes and locks can help.
But I do think articles like this have a "feelgood" disingenuous
message - that you can "just say no" when you want to exercise
individual choice. You still, can, but at some cost.
It misses the complex psychological webs that addictive agents weave
within families and societies. Drugs (digital ones too) are a social
problem as much as an individual issue - as I explored in Digital
Vegan [1].
We've discussed here before something as simple as my reasonable
request for students to voluntarily surrender their phones during an
exam. Many comments were indignant and furious.
Many obsessive things can hijack the mind, even falling in love, or
the rush of exercise. Historically, few except alcohol, had widespread
daily availability. Tobacco was an issue as much about the advertising
industry as the harms of cigarettes. Smartphones fall into a hitherto
uncharted category - damaging agents that society is organising itself
around so as to almost mandate their harms (EDIT: Ok automobiles are a
precedent, and look where that's getting us).
The effects of reduced attention, poor concentration and productivity,
disorganised spending, surveillance fatigue, performance anxiety,
obsessive and compulsive behaviours, accidents due to reduced
situational awareness, e-waste, negative impact on relations with
children, family and friends... are all externalities to a
multi-billion dollar industry that is insinuating itself
structurally into our way of life.
My belief is that it's unnecessary, creates more harms than benefits,
and is dangerous from a social resilience perspective.
That's a different conversation from "put it in a pouch if you don't
want to be distracted", and let's not pretend otherwise.
The elephant in the room is that if you lead a fulfilling life, smartphone addiction is easy to cast off unlike most legal or illegal physiological drugs.
I agree that the disingenuous mindset you are alluding to is a problem. The technological environment we are in has its own logic, and we can't simply ignore that in favor of a fairy-tale about personal responsibility. However, a person that is generally engaged in compelling activities will still not be drawn to the smartphone even in an environment that encourages it. In a sense, the fact that we adopted the smartphone so quickly is a testament to how unsatisfied we collectively were.
This seems right to me. Correspondingly, we need social solutions, like the yondr space the article talks about. It’s not enough for one person to lose their smartphone use - the whole community will benefit if we all do it together. Kids will be outside instead of indoors, which in turn makes it safer for the marginal kid to come out. Other people are available to talk to on the bus or train, which in turn lowers the temptation for me to whip out my phone. And so on.
We’ve had fair trade towns and liveable towns. Maybe we should have some “low phone” towns or neighbourhoods.
>One of the best ways to disconnect from your phone is to get some physical distance from it. “Let’s say you have your little workstation at home—try to keep your phone behind you on the shelf,” Olson advises. Much of our phone use is mindless, so “putting up these little barriers, like keeping it behind you, face down, can be effective.” Keeping your phone in another room while you sleep is another particularly helpful strategy, he adds.
As someone who spends most of the time in front of the computer, I cannot believe how effective this strategy works for me.
I have meant to write out my approach to distraction-free device life. Unfortunately, it is always a work in progress, and I keep finding more straightforward, essentialistic, and lesser ways of getting things done while being extra-device-free.
So, here are the titbits that come to my mind right now. Of course, the shameless plug that I throw at anyone starts with a No Voice Call[1] rule, except the list of people on my earmarked “!DND” group.
A smartwatch (Apple Watch) helped me further my lifestyle. I have not taken my phone on my morning and evening walks. I usually don’t look at text messages, and notifications, so it works for me.
I do not have most of the standard apps, no social media apps, and no notifications except for the health app, which is mirrored on the watch to ping me if I need to walk around, breathe, etc. I wrote an article in 2014 to answer a common recurring question that I fielded, and it still holds to this day - disable all notifications[2].
The other thing I find helpful and am used to these days is that my phone is the most boring. The only thing I use most often is a Camera (this is where I realize that the best-sized iPhone 13 Mini lacks a good Camera). Here is my Phone Home[3] evolution, and you can see the onset of boredom as we progress by the year and versions.
I want my phone to behave as that tool that does its job, then gets out of the way. No, I do not reject new technology innovations; instead, I refuse the ways of the people how they engage with these tools.
See, this is another issues with phones, we all have vastly different use cases. The "No Voice Call" rules is stupid, in my world. That's like one of the two primary functions of my phone. I use text messages way more than calls, but it is the second most important feature. I get maybe three to five calls a week, but those are pretty much always for things that either need immediate action, or it's coordinating something that would take hours via text message.
Outside of work, do people honestly get that many calls that it's overwhelming? I get that the US have an issue with robo-calls, but outside that while would you even get that many call. If anything smartphones have reduce the need for calls, so you should be getting fewer than you would have 20 years ago.
> No, I do not reject new technology innovations; instead, I refuse
the ways of the people how they engage with these tools.
Absolutely. This is a key attitude. It's mature and strong to be
discerning, not to "throw out the baby with the bath-water".
But it's also the friction point, because culture and use is
inseparable from affordance/utility [1]. In different words, how other
people use technology also impacts it's relation to you. Especially
networked technology. So dash2's response to my earlier comment is
spot-on, we need collectively organised "spaces" and groups to
challenge digital imposition.
[1] Not wishing to bore with lots of tech critique literature and
references but Jacques Ellul (New Demons, Empire of Non-Sense), Ivan
Illich (Tools for Conviviality) and Neil Postman (particularly
Technopoly and Amusing Ourselves to death) - all good materials to
understand the difficulty of neatly distinguishing individual
choice/freedoms from context of culture and practice.
> A smartwatch (Apple Watch) helped me further my lifestyle. I have not taken my phone on my morning and evening walks.
I don't understand, are you saying that having a smart watch allows you to leave your phone at home? How so?
Whenever I see a friend with a smart watch I'm under the impression that they look at their notifications more rather than less than when they didn't have one.
When using the Apple Watch, I can happily keep my iPhone in my bedroom the whole day. I don’t feel the need to get my phone cause my watch will notify any calendar appointment or important messages (I block or mute most apps/messages).
Before that, I was always with my phone and was always checking it all the time. Either because I got a notification, was worried I missed a notification, was just bored, or just trying to procrastinate others activities.
The Apple Watch is fortunately still really limit device. I think of it as an old dumb phone. So there isn’t much you can do in it. There isn’t even a whatsapp app for example. So it doesn’t grab my attention for long.
I talk about this elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33139416), but for me, looking at more notifications is still net positive if it leads to less total time spent on the phone.
Without a smart watch, the flow for all my notifications is "notification -> take out phone -> (probably) use phone". With a smartwatch, the flow for the majority of notifications becomes "notifications -> decide it's not urgent -> leave phone in pocket".
IMHO, first and easiest step is to just set your phone to full silent mode (no vibration) and create exceptions only if necessary (e.g. work calls, emergency family calls, ...).
For me that made a big difference. I check my mails/chats etc. when I feel like it and I don't get any notifications that disturb me.
I totally agree. The next step can be to remove most if not all notifications. If that's not enough yet, I think most phones can be switched to some kind of black-and-white-mode, which further cuts down on distractions. Never had your phone been more boring.
I set up timers in Android on Reddit and Instagram. 20 minutes for each is already too much. Never looked back. Now, if I could convince myself to do the same with RSS...
There is a push to get everything to the phone, drivers license, creditcards, bus pass, keys and more. People seem overly happy that they don't need to bring their wallet with them, but given the choice I'd leave my phone at home.
The point about phones not being good or bad, is important I think. It's not the phone as such, but the apps you put on there. The only "social network" I use is LinkedIn, I don't have email setup on my phone, so only calls or text messages is available to interrupt me. My personal issues is with the browser, I hate using it, because the screen is to small, and the on-screen keyboard suck, still I use it to surf around mindlessly. I'd remove the browser completely, if it wasn't so damn handy in many cases.
In 2015, I had my US Business Visa Interview in Chennai (India). Visa embassy had strict rules that disallows almost everything (prior experience in Bombay). So, on that fateful morning, I got just my paperwork, printed air ticket, drove to the Bangalore Airport, flew to Chennai, got the Visa Interview done, watch a movie in a theatre, and flew back home later in the evening, had dinner and slept. I survived the day across two cities and got an important thing done without a watch, no phone, no electronics. It works.
One day I told a customs officer landing in a foreign country that I can't give him my phone for inspection because I do not have one with me, only a laptop (with X11 disabled at login, just to do so before departure). He ask me why and I answer that's because I plan an attack in his country so I need to be a bit less traceable. He almost believe me................
The explanation of "hey, did you think some attackers can be so stupid to expose himself like that?" seems to sound even stranger at his ears.......
USA, but that happen ONLY one time, so perhaps there was something up just one time, still an a bit ridiculous behavior anyway...
Oh, BTW for us from EU to get a multi-entry visa we are asked few questions, one is of the very same kind: if we have participated to the nazi crimes against the Jews EVEN if obviously born after nazi German fall...
I'm a completely naive fan of smart watches (as I don't own one and probably won't any time soon) just because of the possibility to reduce much of what the smart phone provides down to a less attention stealing device. Maybe the notifications are the major problem (I'm naive on this) but I figure that that big screen with an internet behind it is just cognitive cancer. Take the screen away and you're left with music phone calls and an awkward text messaging interface.
Don't know if cellular/network connectivity and battery life can hold up to be practical, but if a device were somewhat larger just to accomodate this I'd think about (less naively).
For me notifications are the main problem, and that's exactly why smartwatches have helped reduce my phone time.
I still carry my phone on me when I have my smartwatch, but even then, it has reduced my phone use. One of the common ways I'd get sucked into my phone was that I'd get a notification, pull out my phone to look at it, and then get distracted by something else. With my smartwatch, I see the notification on the tiny screen, and only take my phone out if it's something that requires a reply/action right away.
Turning off notifications (either for everything or per app) doesn't work for me, because I do want to receive notifications for time sensitive things (ex. "Let's meet at XYZ in 30 mins"), and the classification for immediate action or not isn't based on the app or the sender (one Facebook message might be require immediate action, while another, even from the same person, may not).
It's not perfect; there's still the problem of taking out my phone not due to a notification, but it has solved one major class of problems.
I have - I can happily go without it most of the time. The watch has cellular, and notifications cover most of what I need.
Responding to things can wait till I'm back at a computer. If it's urgent, the watch can make calls, and if you're using a bluetooth headset, it's indistinguishable from a phone.
I don't travel without the phone, though, it is great having easy, fast access to everything (maps, browser, tickets, etc). The watch can do most of that but it's clunkier, and for me it's not a hill worth dying on.
So I do think you can achieve what you're looking for - rely less on your smartphone while still being 24/7 reachable. It is definitely worth looking into.
I have subscribed to https://freedom.to/ for a few years. Basically they give you the tools to block access to time wasting web sites during whatever daily time periods you configure. They also have useful podcasts about productivity, digital diets, etc.
I remove, or don’t install, unnecessary apps on my iPhone. I do install Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, etc. on my iPad.
I also use an Apple Watch with its own data plan to free me from my iPhone, which I often prefer to leave at home. The Apple Watch lets me get/send text message or take a phone call, but, it is not as intrusive
I’ve spent majority of my life addicted to technology and screens.
I wrote a book about my last few years of how I have been managing this relationship knowing it only gets worse for each new generation(I’m a millennial). And I’m proud of how far I have come in a couple years.
Before:
I pickup my phone almost 60 times a day. I hardly trust the news but can’t stop doomscrolling for hours. I buy shit I don’t need because I’m constantly served ads about them.
After:
I pickup my phone maybe 30 times. I don’t even read the news anymore outside of some HN. I haven’t bought any junk in the last year.
There’s no silver bullet to this problem. Especially if you already work in tech. Boundaries are important and also jobs to be done for each device. I think the most effective approach for me was mindfulness. Technology is addictive to me. If I have it easily accessible, I will be obsessed with it.
I earn my money online so having no phone is sorrily not an option anymore. However I have no phone number only internet, and that's off when I am not at home. That locks me out of so many time wasting apps and just allows a handful of useful services and a way to communicate wherever when necessary.
No WhatsApp, no Instagram, no whatever abuses sending notifications to my phone. My main emails aren't attached either. 99% of all notifications are actually relevant to me right now (family, gf or downtime notifications). If anyone asks for a contact I just give them a email that is not attached to my phone.
Telegram. Which does need a number for registration. However you can add an password and don't need to use the number ever again after sign-up, so I can safely use throwaway numbers without getting locked out or hacked. Also people can't randomly find me there because of proper privacy settings.
WhatsApp is not harmless. Too many low priority messages noise. And there is no way to setup a system to only receive important actionable notifications only. Archive, Mute and other features are just not enough.
A couple of friend discover their simultaneous respective cheating each others following their respective macrospy devices, plus some extras like surveilling each others cars, putting connected gpses in some jackets etc... Oh, sure you might say "hey, both have done the same, both have decide to spy the partner, that's karma" but I think it's not so harmless for them.
Anecdotes aside being surveilled is harmful in various ways for various reasons, we have heard of women's period trackers who spy their human users, perhaps to decide if she plan to get pregnant and fire her just before with some legit excuse, potential different insurances prices depending on how you drive, political surveillance, wrong accusations due to wrong phone reporting logs (various news happens from DK to USA, who also involve physical arrests, penal accusations etc) and so on.
While there is nothing wrong in having a PERSONAL computer with us, have no practical control on it, who happen to be not much personal but instead a surveillance capitalism device paid by the surveilled Citizens instead of by those who want to spy on him, having more and more push to de facto mandate them because "you need a craphone to access you banks, recharge your car, ..." it's DEFINITIVELY harmful and the infinite scroll attention-eliciters drugs apps are just a mean to push such systems in the society.
I'm a sysadmin so hardly an IT Luddite, I do my best to NOT use any smartphone, I own some, only one maintained just because my old Nokia can't be used anymore lacking GSM SIM cards and even decent GSM coverage where I live, normally left unseen when at home (WFH) or in sort-distance trips where I do not need decent car navigation etc. People can reach me via mail, various VoIP lines on a home PBX with various filtering/redirection rules and I'm VERY happy of that even if so many crush my ** trying pushing me toward WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, $PickAProprietaryServiceNameAtRandom.
BUT I start seeing more and more third parties "choices" that need to be ANNIHILATED with all the strength needed, nuclear bombs included, forcing me on a mobile:
- banks who pretend a crapplication is needed to access they crappy porcals (portals are another thing) while we have OFX&c since decades so even no need at all of a portal and far more secure physical OTP logins where a time-based attack is just theoretical while the large set of craphones vulnerabilities might easily allow to made a transfer to some exotic place on my behalf and I have nothing to prove that's no me...
- cars, EVs in particular (GRRTRRRRRE£$*"£y$"%"), their public-private charging infra (&$"&t$"£$"£$"!!!!) who do their best to force MULTIPLE crapplications to do absolutely dumb things that does not need nor benefit from such approach at all (except of course for the sake of surveillance capitalism)...
- PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS who do their best to tie public services/mandatory acts like paying taxes, to craphones and crapplications with a craploads of ridiculous excuses...
And so on. Long story short, YES cut the tie to the genital with the macrospy/electronic anklet of the condemned, without being one of them is SOOO good, and it's even easy if we are not so much intoxicated by modern chem-less drugs BUT many do their best to impose such tie, you like it or not and that's the real battle we need to win for the sake of civilization.
I dislike this and similar articles because there is so much poor science in them and yet the authors always write in a very patronizing way. Correlation isn't causation. There is some good journalism but this is not it.
It's very clearly written from the perspective and mindset of someone that grew up without the internet. Asking most people who end up doom scrolling on social media if it's something that makes them happy and they will reply no, they are just bored. There are some valuable tips for people who want to move towards a tech-lite lifestyle. That's great and a personal choice, but it does not mean that people who decide they don't want to give up social media and technology are "addicted".
Your brain doesn't respond to "hits" of "dopamine", if your dopamine system is disordered, you should look into getting tested for ADHD if you haven't. Every one of negative consequences they imply as being caused by an "addiction to a screen" actually go back to something bigger like ADHD.
"It has been proposed that genetic variants of dopaminergic genes and other “reward genes” are important common determinants of reward deficiency syndrome (RDS), which we hypothesize includes ADHD as a behavioral subtype." [1]
Phone usage past reasonable boundaries is a symptom of something bigger, just like binge eating, impulse control disorders, addiction, and every other negative they listed in the article is. Impulse control disorder can cause weight gain which causes low self-esteem which feeds into a toxic cycle that leads to morbid obesity. There's an equally toxic cycle that can happen from using technology for escapism. But we shouldn't blame technology just like we don't blame food as the reason for a binge eating disorder.
Subjective overuse of technology isn't and shouldn't be treated the same way. It corrupts the definition of what an addiction is. As someone that grew up with internet from a very early age, articles like sound like feel good articles written for people who think they are better than others for not using technology.
Generalizing phone usage as "screen time" shows a clear lack of understanding of just how many different things can be done using a phone. Being "practically fused to their phones" isn't a crazy that should be seen as abnormal behavior, it's how to function in modern society. People that grew up without technology or choose to be out of touch, can't understand how much of teenage and young adult culture making happens in via technology.
I have this theory that I have been seeing more and more evidence for, the idea of generations dictated by what you grew up with is not going to be useful for the future. Internet has reached a point where physical distance no longer matters. IRC was ahead of its time with how it allowed people to connect to others across the world in a somewhat anonymous way. We're finally seeing kids grow up that have never experienced a world that wasn't connected. Kids today go on discord and gaming lobbies and can connect to thousands of others across the world just based on shared interests.
The idea that technology separates a parent from their kid is more a reflection on the cultural difference between a parent that decided they don't want to use a lot of technology and a child that embraces technology and understands that's how the rest of their peers are too.
"The internet has also become a crucial meeting place for children to exercise their right to freedom of expression by connecting with others online. Many children surveyed can be considered ‘active socializers’ who take part in a number of social activities online each week – such as chatting with friends and networking with those who share their interests. Our research suggests that children who socialize more actively online are better at managing their online privacy, which helps to keep them safe.
“Online, I can show my true self, there are no rules … I have more than 5,000 friends online.”
- Boy, who identifies as gay, 15, Philippines" [2]
Unicef, office of research-innocenti, has released a fantastic report on the trends and challenges kids growing up in a technology drive world will face. I recommend anyone thinking of using pre-internet mentality as boundaries for their kids read it. Things like not giving a child a phone until their are in high school is going to severely limit their child's ability to socialize.
"But faced with complex and fast-evolving technologies, many parents do not feel confident enough to supervise their seemingly tech-savvy children. Parents may also be influenced by popular worries about ‘excessive screen-time’, ‘internet addiction’ and ‘stranger danger’. The temptation is therefore to restrict children’s internet use rather than to guide them to use the internet safely.
Instead of limiting internet use, parents can get involved in children’s online lives by encouraging them to learn from the internet or suggesting ways to use the internet safely. By taking a more positive and supportive stance, parents can help their children develop resilience while also reducing conflict between parent and child. In most of the 11 countries surveyed, such enabling mediation helps children to engage in a wider range of online activities and slightly reduces their exposure to risk." [2]
Adults aren't different from kids in this way. It's fair to worry. It's understandable that adults who reduce screen time for themselves feel better. But that's not because there's something bad about technology, taking a break gives people room to re-examine their life. It's a personal choice to live a technology-lite lifestyle, but society as a whole is becoming more technology based. During covid the entire workforce and education system became technology based, I didn't hear parents complaining about screen time for virtual classes. I heard parents complaining that they struggled will encouraging kids to want to learn. I tutor on the side and I got non-stop calls from parents reaching out because they want to me help get their middle school-early high school aged kids motivated to learn and care about grades.
Like all addictive habits and substances there's a cast-iron correlation between availability and use, so, sure, creating barriers like boxes and locks can help.
But I do think articles like this have a "feelgood" disingenuous message - that you can "just say no" when you want to exercise individual choice. You still, can, but at some cost.
It misses the complex psychological webs that addictive agents weave within families and societies. Drugs (digital ones too) are a social problem as much as an individual issue - as I explored in Digital Vegan [1].
We've discussed here before something as simple as my reasonable request for students to voluntarily surrender their phones during an exam. Many comments were indignant and furious.
Many obsessive things can hijack the mind, even falling in love, or the rush of exercise. Historically, few except alcohol, had widespread daily availability. Tobacco was an issue as much about the advertising industry as the harms of cigarettes. Smartphones fall into a hitherto uncharted category - damaging agents that society is organising itself around so as to almost mandate their harms (EDIT: Ok automobiles are a precedent, and look where that's getting us).
The effects of reduced attention, poor concentration and productivity, disorganised spending, surveillance fatigue, performance anxiety, obsessive and compulsive behaviours, accidents due to reduced situational awareness, e-waste, negative impact on relations with children, family and friends... are all externalities to a multi-billion dollar industry that is insinuating itself structurally into our way of life.
My belief is that it's unnecessary, creates more harms than benefits, and is dangerous from a social resilience perspective.
That's a different conversation from "put it in a pouch if you don't want to be distracted", and let's not pretend otherwise.
[1] https://digitalvegan.net