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Articles like this, coupled with my increasing dissatisfaction with how social media makes me feel and how my thought process throughout the day feels fractured

Articles like this, coupled with my increasing dissatisfaction with how social media makes me feel and how my thought process throughout the day feels fractured, really make me want to give up my smartphone entirely. However, I can't bring myself to get over the fear and dread of being "disconnected". Is there anyone here who has given up their smartphone and has any advice on how you did it, and how you are now? Is it even possible to do so working in a tech field?

lfowles 11y ago
A good way to let go of the feeling of "being disconnected" is to measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself. That's basically how I toned down my facebook use, I realized I was skimming and got a few internal chuckles, but I never took action on anything I saw on there, whether it was to write happy birthday, comment on a photo I liked, or try some crafty DIY thing.
- fluxquanta 11y ago
  > measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself I feel like, in general, something like facebook just makes my thoughts MORE negative in general. For instance, I'm a member of some groups for different hobbies, and I've adopted a "one strike and you're out" policy with regard to what people post to the group. If I find a post to be irrelevant to the topic at hand or in any way annoying -- boom, "Ignore all posts from [user]". I'm saying to myself, "Hey stranger, you tried getting involved in the discussion by posting this, but it didn't live up to my standards, and therefore I never want to see anything you say ever again." While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy.
  - lfowles 11y ago
    > While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy. I've taken the same kind of attitude (towards vitriolic and stupid posts), because when I looked at my reactions to all sorts of those posts, it's inevitably not the way I want to be spending my time. I don't get on Facebook to fulfill my "balanced world view" quota ;) ! Realize that we now have more exposure to other people's opinions than we've really ever had before... IMO it's a healthy way to cope.
beachstartup 11y ago
> However, I can't bring myself to get over the fear and dread of being "disconnected". fwiw, this is basically the same feeling that alcoholics and other drugs addicts feel when considering giving up alcohol/drugs. "how will i ever cope? i'll be missing out on so much. i won't be able to socialize." like literally, the same sequence of thoughts. the. exact. same. the 'craving' is the same also. for those of you who don't have addictive personalities, just imagine the feeling when you get up in the middle of the night, thirsty. that feeling of desperately wanting water is what you are fighting with addiction. it's the same mechanism, hijacked by a substance/activity and sent into overdrive. that helpless compulsive feeling that only has one resolution... yeah. same shit different day. addiction is some pretty fascinating stuff. i always get a kick out of the people who say it's easy to stop whatever you're addicted to. lucky bastards, and they don't even know it.
zzalpha 11y ago
There's an alternative: use your smartphone for productivity only and drop all the social crap. This begins by uninstalling all the apps you struggle with (Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc). Now get used to putting your phone down and forgetting about it. My phone exists on demand for me, not the other way 'round. So it might sit on my desk or on my coffee table but it's almost always on silent/do-not-disturb (with the except of a few key contacts like my wife who are allowed to bug me). A smartphone is an incredible tool. Having access to the internet wherever you are has immense value. Being able to communicate with folks on-demand is very useful. But it shouldn't control your life. So learn to use the tool as just that, a tool, rather than a tether. It can be done!
- scholia 11y ago
  "how frequently a user recharges the phone’s battery, how many incoming text messages they receive, how many miles they travel in a given day or how they enter contacts into their phone — the decision to add last name correlates with creditworthiness — can bear on a decision to extend credit." That's more than social media use....
  - zzalpha 11y ago
    I was responding to the commenter, not the article. The reality is, the smartphone is just another in a very very long line of ways to gather information about folks. Before the phone, there was credit rating agencies, who have access to your entire financial history, including credit card purchases, bill payments, bank loans, etc (for decades, now, Experian, Acxiom, etc, have known more about you could possibly imagine). Then we got the loyalty/reward cards, where people traded their purchase history for low low prices. Then we saw the rise of the internet and cloud services of all kinds (Google and Facebook). Frankly, I wouldn't even put the phone at the top of my list of concerns, as at least my phone is on my person, and I have some level of control over it...
    - scholia 11y ago
      Agreed. Except you left out travel cards ;-) > Frankly, I wouldn't even put the phone at the top of my list of concerns, as at least my phone is on my person, and I have some level of control over it... Well, up to a point. A lot of info is leaking through apps, which can be hard to control. http://jots.pub/a/2015103001/ http://jots.pub/a/2015103001/ Also, you have to remember to turn off Wi-Fi or companies will use that to track you. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/how-tracking-customers-in-store-will-soon-be-the-norm http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/h... Obviously you can still be tracked via cell towers, but it's not much of a phone if you turn that off as well ;-)
ThrustVectoring 11y ago
I've given up my smartphone. I take care of email and other social media-ish stuff in batches. Basically, it's setting expectations that a dumb-phone text or phone call is how to get you if it's urgent, otherwise you'll follow up sometime in the next 24 hours. If I use a smartphone again, it's going to be exactly for Uber, Facebook Messenger (basically texting for people I don't want to give my phone number to), and Spotify. As far as how to wean yourself from your smartphone, I suggest blocking out some time and putting your phone on airplane mode or powered off entirely.
dudul 11y ago
My answer won't be very satisfactory, but you just have to do it. I was the same, I hated this reflex I had of pulling out my phone automatically on the T. I hated the fact that I was unable to stay 10 minutes with myself without having to be entertained by some stupid articles, like I used to before smartphones. One day, my tablet and my phone were both getting kind of slow after an Android update. I wiped them both back to factory settings, and when I was about to re-install all my apps, I paused for a minute and thought "fuck it, let's not". No more twitter, no more Chrome, no more Slack, no more anything on my phone. And seriously, I don't miss it. For a while I still had the reflex of pulling out my phone, realized that I didn't have twitter installed, and put it back in my pocket. Now, I don't even think about it, and sometimes even forget it at home. Another thing I do, I sometimes deliberately not plug it, it dies during the night and I can't use it for a while. Sorry, I don't think there is a magic recipe here.
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
For me personally, I never even desired one to begin with for the purposes it's actually used in practice (social media and the miscellaneous service). My line of reasoning went in that I'm buying a general-purpose computing device that has been deliberately constrained to make it as undesirable as possible to actually use like a general-purpose computing device. Why would I want it, when I have a perfectly good IBM PC-compatible/Wintel box at home? For telephony purposes, I've always used dumb cells running some Java ME bare-bones interface or similar. And so I continue to do. It's not like I get cravings to check my feeds if I'm away for a few hours. On the other hand, the fact that I also feel no need to use any applications associated with the "sharing economy" probably helps, too. Is it even possible to do so working in a tech field? Absolutely.
darrmit 11y ago
It's possible in the tech field if you set expectations properly. I've done it for weeks and months at the time but always ended up back with some variety of smartphone primarily because of so many things you lose by giving one up. I use social media very little, and only Twitter for sports and other news. I read a lot on my phone (Pocket, HN, Feedly), and I use it as my sole GPS, my sole camera, and my only physical phone. I hate that I tend to use every idle minute reading or fiddling with it, and it's something I try often to be cognizant of. But, admittedly, I don't do well with it. I'm fairly addicted to using it to stave off boredom. I would be curious to know if those who have succeeded in giving up their smartphone for a long period of time just replaced their idle time with something else - iPad, laptop, video games, etc. or did they genuinely reduce their "connected" time?
sbizzy 11y ago
I gave up cell service when I left my job for an extended international backpacking trip. I attached my cell number to google voice (along with my parents' house phone) and started receiving messages and making calls when I had wifi. Over time, I got used to this and realized that I had been using my smartphone almost entirely for time-wasting activities. When I re-integrated into professional life, I got a pay-per-minute burner smartphone to cover me for the infrequent cases when I need to make a call or get directions, and I don't have wifi. Wifi is so ubiquitous for me now (at work, at home, at restaurants/bars/etc) that adding a cell phone does nothing more but give me opportunity to be distracted when I out in the world, living life. When I had a smartphone that was always connected, I would turn to it for novelty at the faintest hint of boredom. Not having it available has unconditioned that behavior. So yes, while I still maintain a smart device that has my music and that I can do things with through wifi, eliminating my constant connection to the digital world has been a net positive for me.
carsondk 11y ago
I didn't like the way I was behaving with my social media accounts and smartphone: basically just consuming like crazy. So back in 2011 I deleted the facebook account and got a dumb phone. As facebook was just taking off when I finished high school, I had never really lived my adult life without it. Just trying to give you some background to frame the rest of my response, I never started using facebook again. Nothing against the company, I know many people with use cases where having an account is valuable, and I have often thought of going back. Just hasn't been worth it to me yet. Introducing some challenge is a good way to figure out what is really important to you. If you are willing to charge through obstacles to have something, then it probably does actually off value to your life (barring addiction, etc). Then later, take the obstacles out of the way of the good, and stop doing the bad. Learning there actually are a bunch of people living without smartphones (or leaving them in their pockets) was interesting to see. I didn't really notice there were as many people connecting with each other when I was looking at my screen. Breaking completely from smartphone use for an extended period was necessary for me to start experiencing the value of looking around instead of taking every moment of free time to find some "interesting" new piece of information. However, having the dumb phone was really annoying when it came to texting (T9!), managing contacts, saving messages, viewing voicemail, and obviously no apps. There is a reason basically anyone who has the means wants a smartphone. From my experience, the only benefit of a dumb phone is more time to do what is important to you. I live in the bay area and work in tech, so it is definitely possible. Now I have a smartphone again, but like other posters, I barely have any apps compared to standard user, and turn almost all notifications off. At the time, I got a "feature" phone for $20 and a $6 per month no contract plan. It is a very cheap experiment to run if you want to try! Just leave your smartphone at home for a week...
- gtk40 11y ago
  I like the idea of abandoning the smartphone. Probably the killer feature for me is GPS. I live about ~20 miles from work, but traffic is very unpredictable and I take different ways home several days of the week, which I determine with Google Maps and realtime updates. It's the single most useful smartphone feature I have. However, I also use it in many ways that I am less proud of that are not good uses of times. I guess it should really be a matter of discipline, since I have a "free" (work provided) phone anyway.

lfowles 11y ago

A good way to let go of the feeling of "being disconnected" is to measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself. That's basically how I toned down my facebook use, I realized I was skimming and got a few internal chuckles, but I never took action on anything I saw on there, whether it was to write happy birthday, comment on a photo I liked, or try some crafty DIY thing.

fluxquanta 11y ago
> measure what actions you take based on "being connected" that you feel improve yourself I feel like, in general, something like facebook just makes my thoughts MORE negative in general. For instance, I'm a member of some groups for different hobbies, and I've adopted a "one strike and you're out" policy with regard to what people post to the group. If I find a post to be irrelevant to the topic at hand or in any way annoying -- boom, "Ignore all posts from [user]". I'm saying to myself, "Hey stranger, you tried getting involved in the discussion by posting this, but it didn't live up to my standards, and therefore I never want to see anything you say ever again." While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy.
- lfowles 11y ago
  > While it's relegated to facebook, I feel like having that kind of attitude in my life can't be healthy. I've taken the same kind of attitude (towards vitriolic and stupid posts), because when I looked at my reactions to all sorts of those posts, it's inevitably not the way I want to be spending my time. I don't get on Facebook to fulfill my "balanced world view" quota ;) ! Realize that we now have more exposure to other people's opinions than we've really ever had before... IMO it's a healthy way to cope.

beachstartup 11y ago

> However, I can't bring myself to get over the fear and dread of being "disconnected". fwiw, this is basically the same feeling that alcoholics and other drugs addicts feel when considering giving up alcohol/drugs. "how will i ever cope? i'll be missing out on so much. i won't be able to socialize." like literally, the same sequence of thoughts. the. exact. same. the 'craving' is the same also. for those of you who don't have addictive personalities, just imagine the feeling when you get up in the middle of the night, thirsty. that feeling of desperately wanting water is what you are fighting with addiction. it's the same mechanism, hijacked by a substance/activity and sent into overdrive. that helpless compulsive feeling that only has one resolution... yeah. same shit different day. addiction is some pretty fascinating stuff. i always get a kick out of the people who say it's easy to stop whatever you're addicted to. lucky bastards, and they don't even know it.

zzalpha 11y ago

There's an alternative: use your smartphone for productivity only and drop all the social crap. This begins by uninstalling all the apps you struggle with (Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc). Now get used to putting your phone down and forgetting about it. My phone exists on demand for me, not the other way 'round. So it might sit on my desk or on my coffee table but it's almost always on silent/do-not-disturb (with the except of a few key contacts like my wife who are allowed to bug me). A smartphone is an incredible tool. Having access to the internet wherever you are has immense value. Being able to communicate with folks on-demand is very useful. But it shouldn't control your life. So learn to use the tool as just that, a tool, rather than a tether. It can be done!

scholia 11y ago
"how frequently a user recharges the phone’s battery, how many incoming text messages they receive, how many miles they travel in a given day or how they enter contacts into their phone — the decision to add last name correlates with creditworthiness — can bear on a decision to extend credit." That's more than social media use....
- zzalpha 11y ago
  I was responding to the commenter, not the article. The reality is, the smartphone is just another in a very very long line of ways to gather information about folks. Before the phone, there was credit rating agencies, who have access to your entire financial history, including credit card purchases, bill payments, bank loans, etc (for decades, now, Experian, Acxiom, etc, have known more about you could possibly imagine). Then we got the loyalty/reward cards, where people traded their purchase history for low low prices. Then we saw the rise of the internet and cloud services of all kinds (Google and Facebook). Frankly, I wouldn't even put the phone at the top of my list of concerns, as at least my phone is on my person, and I have some level of control over it...
  - scholia 11y ago
    Agreed. Except you left out travel cards ;-) > Frankly, I wouldn't even put the phone at the top of my list of concerns, as at least my phone is on my person, and I have some level of control over it... Well, up to a point. A lot of info is leaking through apps, which can be hard to control. http://jots.pub/a/2015103001/ http://jots.pub/a/2015103001/ Also, you have to remember to turn off Wi-Fi or companies will use that to track you. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/how-tracking-customers-in-store-will-soon-be-the-norm http://www.theguardian.com/technology/datablog/2014/jan/10/h... Obviously you can still be tracked via cell towers, but it's not much of a phone if you turn that off as well ;-)

ThrustVectoring 11y ago

I've given up my smartphone. I take care of email and other social media-ish stuff in batches. Basically, it's setting expectations that a dumb-phone text or phone call is how to get you if it's urgent, otherwise you'll follow up sometime in the next 24 hours. If I use a smartphone again, it's going to be exactly for Uber, Facebook Messenger (basically texting for people I don't want to give my phone number to), and Spotify. As far as how to wean yourself from your smartphone, I suggest blocking out some time and putting your phone on airplane mode or powered off entirely.

dudul 11y ago

My answer won't be very satisfactory, but you just have to do it. I was the same, I hated this reflex I had of pulling out my phone automatically on the T. I hated the fact that I was unable to stay 10 minutes with myself without having to be entertained by some stupid articles, like I used to before smartphones. One day, my tablet and my phone were both getting kind of slow after an Android update. I wiped them both back to factory settings, and when I was about to re-install all my apps, I paused for a minute and thought "fuck it, let's not". No more twitter, no more Chrome, no more Slack, no more anything on my phone. And seriously, I don't miss it. For a while I still had the reflex of pulling out my phone, realized that I didn't have twitter installed, and put it back in my pocket. Now, I don't even think about it, and sometimes even forget it at home. Another thing I do, I sometimes deliberately not plug it, it dies during the night and I can't use it for a while. Sorry, I don't think there is a magic recipe here.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

For me personally, I never even desired one to begin with for the purposes it's actually used in practice (social media and the miscellaneous service). My line of reasoning went in that I'm buying a general-purpose computing device that has been deliberately constrained to make it as undesirable as possible to actually use like a general-purpose computing device. Why would I want it, when I have a perfectly good IBM PC-compatible/Wintel box at home? For telephony purposes, I've always used dumb cells running some Java ME bare-bones interface or similar. And so I continue to do. It's not like I get cravings to check my feeds if I'm away for a few hours. On the other hand, the fact that I also feel no need to use any applications associated with the "sharing economy" probably helps, too. Is it even possible to do so working in a tech field? Absolutely.

darrmit 11y ago

It's possible in the tech field if you set expectations properly. I've done it for weeks and months at the time but always ended up back with some variety of smartphone primarily because of so many things you lose by giving one up. I use social media very little, and only Twitter for sports and other news. I read a lot on my phone (Pocket, HN, Feedly), and I use it as my sole GPS, my sole camera, and my only physical phone. I hate that I tend to use every idle minute reading or fiddling with it, and it's something I try often to be cognizant of. But, admittedly, I don't do well with it. I'm fairly addicted to using it to stave off boredom. I would be curious to know if those who have succeeded in giving up their smartphone for a long period of time just replaced their idle time with something else - iPad, laptop, video games, etc. or did they genuinely reduce their "connected" time?

sbizzy 11y ago

I gave up cell service when I left my job for an extended international backpacking trip. I attached my cell number to google voice (along with my parents' house phone) and started receiving messages and making calls when I had wifi. Over time, I got used to this and realized that I had been using my smartphone almost entirely for time-wasting activities. When I re-integrated into professional life, I got a pay-per-minute burner smartphone to cover me for the infrequent cases when I need to make a call or get directions, and I don't have wifi. Wifi is so ubiquitous for me now (at work, at home, at restaurants/bars/etc) that adding a cell phone does nothing more but give me opportunity to be distracted when I out in the world, living life. When I had a smartphone that was always connected, I would turn to it for novelty at the faintest hint of boredom. Not having it available has unconditioned that behavior. So yes, while I still maintain a smart device that has my music and that I can do things with through wifi, eliminating my constant connection to the digital world has been a net positive for me.

carsondk 11y ago

I didn't like the way I was behaving with my social media accounts and smartphone: basically just consuming like crazy. So back in 2011 I deleted the facebook account and got a dumb phone. As facebook was just taking off when I finished high school, I had never really lived my adult life without it. Just trying to give you some background to frame the rest of my response, I never started using facebook again. Nothing against the company, I know many people with use cases where having an account is valuable, and I have often thought of going back. Just hasn't been worth it to me yet. Introducing some challenge is a good way to figure out what is really important to you. If you are willing to charge through obstacles to have something, then it probably does actually off value to your life (barring addiction, etc). Then later, take the obstacles out of the way of the good, and stop doing the bad. Learning there actually are a bunch of people living without smartphones (or leaving them in their pockets) was interesting to see. I didn't really notice there were as many people connecting with each other when I was looking at my screen. Breaking completely from smartphone use for an extended period was necessary for me to start experiencing the value of looking around instead of taking every moment of free time to find some "interesting" new piece of information. However, having the dumb phone was really annoying when it came to texting (T9!), managing contacts, saving messages, viewing voicemail, and obviously no apps. There is a reason basically anyone who has the means wants a smartphone. From my experience, the only benefit of a dumb phone is more time to do what is important to you. I live in the bay area and work in tech, so it is definitely possible. Now I have a smartphone again, but like other posters, I barely have any apps compared to standard user, and turn almost all notifications off. At the time, I got a "feature" phone for $20 and a $6 per month no contract plan. It is a very cheap experiment to run if you want to try! Just leave your smartphone at home for a week...

gtk40 11y ago
I like the idea of abandoning the smartphone. Probably the killer feature for me is GPS. I live about ~20 miles from work, but traffic is very unpredictable and I take different ways home several days of the week, which I determine with Google Maps and realtime updates. It's the single most useful smartphone feature I have. However, I also use it in many ways that I am less proud of that are not good uses of times. I guess it should really be a matter of discipline, since I have a "free" (work provided) phone anyway.