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I'm not saying that you can't get addicted, I'm saying that if you are or you think you are, I doubt articles like this will help, because they aren't aimed at

I'm not saying that you can't get addicted, I'm saying that if you are or you think you are, I doubt articles like this will help, because they aren't aimed at you. They're aimed at guilting people who think maybe they spend a bit too much time on their phones and should be doing something else, or validating people who have gone cold turkey. Just look at the other comments here, how does only using your kindle on flights and buying more hardbacks have anything to do with smartphone addiction? Unless we're talking about addiction to screens, or all things electronic, which seems a bit broad. 'If you must, carry a dumbphone' - Is ideal solution to addiction really to aim at not being contactable at all?

Retric 10y ago
Dumbphone is a long way from not being contactable at all. The idea is you can still get in touch with anyone at any time, and anyone can get in touch with you. You simply have a tiny effort filter so you don't see what everyone had for lunch etc. It's like storing cookies in the kitchen instead of having a bowl of them next to you as your reading this. Most people can have cookies in the house without eating them right now. Few people I know can sit next to such a bowl for hours without eating them.
- kraftman 10y ago
  It was more the 'if you must' part. Like it's permissible for now, to wean you off, but of course the end goal is complete disconnection.
noobermin 10y ago
This is probably a strange comment, but this morning, I uninstalled a game called Ingress. It's a mobile game similar to Pokemon Go (made by the same company, Niantic) except you capture the "pokestops" called "portals" in this game and defend them and destroy the other teams' portals. There are two global teams, blue and green. I installed it as a way to play with my gf, and I didn't realize I joined the (globally and locally) losing team, green, to be on her team. In about 11 days since installing it, I've advanced to just before level 7, the level before the last (level 8) with significant powerups. By contrast, my gf reached that level after about a month and a half of play. In these last 11 days, I've tracked around 70 to 80 km (~47 mi.) of walking and I've lost about 3 lbs. While some of that is great for my health (been trying to slim down), I had become quite anxious. Being on the losing team (by a factor of two in terms of control of portals and area in the city, it was a factor of ten the day I started), I had literally become paranoid throughout the day that any moment, a notification would come in that the portals I controlled would come under attack, and I would have to defend them. Given we were on the losing team and the winning team had more resources, it was a challenging but exciting fight. A few of the advanced green players had taken out time to give me rare items when they observed my advance. I'd been thinking of just stopping thus despite how much fun it was and how much I love walking and seeing my city in general. When I saw this article this morning, I kid you not; sure it was kind of cheesy, but it triggered a few minutes of introspection and I eventually decided to uninstall the app for now. So, no, I'm probably not going to turn off all notifications and be crazy like the author (I have ig notifications off for likes and don't get frequent notifications in general), but at least for me, articles that at least raise the awareness of such issues do at least push some people ever so slightly in the right direction. It actually did it for me.

Retric 10y ago

Dumbphone is a long way from not being contactable at all. The idea is you can still get in touch with anyone at any time, and anyone can get in touch with you. You simply have a tiny effort filter so you don't see what everyone had for lunch etc. It's like storing cookies in the kitchen instead of having a bowl of them next to you as your reading this. Most people can have cookies in the house without eating them right now. Few people I know can sit next to such a bowl for hours without eating them.

kraftman 10y ago
It was more the 'if you must' part. Like it's permissible for now, to wean you off, but of course the end goal is complete disconnection.

noobermin 10y ago

This is probably a strange comment, but this morning, I uninstalled a game called Ingress. It's a mobile game similar to Pokemon Go (made by the same company, Niantic) except you capture the "pokestops" called "portals" in this game and defend them and destroy the other teams' portals. There are two global teams, blue and green. I installed it as a way to play with my gf, and I didn't realize I joined the (globally and locally) losing team, green, to be on her team. In about 11 days since installing it, I've advanced to just before level 7, the level before the last (level 8) with significant powerups. By contrast, my gf reached that level after about a month and a half of play. In these last 11 days, I've tracked around 70 to 80 km (~47 mi.) of walking and I've lost about 3 lbs. While some of that is great for my health (been trying to slim down), I had become quite anxious. Being on the losing team (by a factor of two in terms of control of portals and area in the city, it was a factor of ten the day I started), I had literally become paranoid throughout the day that any moment, a notification would come in that the portals I controlled would come under attack, and I would have to defend them. Given we were on the losing team and the winning team had more resources, it was a challenging but exciting fight. A few of the advanced green players had taken out time to give me rare items when they observed my advance. I'd been thinking of just stopping thus despite how much fun it was and how much I love walking and seeing my city in general. When I saw this article this morning, I kid you not; sure it was kind of cheesy, but it triggered a few minutes of introspection and I eventually decided to uninstall the app for now. So, no, I'm probably not going to turn off all notifications and be crazy like the author (I have ig notifications off for likes and don't get frequent notifications in general), but at least for me, articles that at least raise the awareness of such issues do at least push some people ever so slightly in the right direction. It actually did it for me.