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> Know that you likely have a problem. > Do you own a smartphone? > That's it. I disagree. I think a better question might be "Do you own a smartphone and u

> Know that you likely have a problem. > Do you own a smartphone? > That's it. I disagree. I think a better question might be "Do you own a smartphone and use social media?" A lot of the comments I see around this - especially on the comments here on this page - is around feeds from Instagram and Facebook and the like. Yep - groomed social media posts are an unrealistic view of society. Just like movies and magazines are an unrealistic view of society too. "Man, everyone else is running around blowing up cars and shooting bad guys, but I am just a loser sitting here in the movie theatre." I guess people need to get a literal reality check. Personally I just turn notifications from email off (and I dont use social media), and have the Do Not Disturb feature in Android on so that only calls & messages from starred contacts (wife etc) makes a noise. Zero issues about feeling like I am being disturbed by my phone. I dont think I am in denial about this...

princekolt 8y ago
> and use social media? I'd argue it is not that straight cut. Just like you can tune do not disturb to allow important people to reach you, most social media sites allow fine tuning of notifications (except facebook, they don't give a shit[1]). For example, I use twitter to interact with other developers from around the world, and after configuring twitter to only notify me about interactions with people I follow, I'm never bothered by notifications from it either. [1]: Perfectly satirised by The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/new-facebook-notifications-alert-users-when-they-not-cu-1819577354 https://www.theonion.com/new-facebook-notifications-alert-us...
- ehsankia 8y ago
  You have a problem if, multiple times per day, you open the feed and just scroll through not looking for anything in particular. As you mention, it seems like your workflow is very action oriented. You use it to communicate with people. But if you ever find yourself just scrolling through the feed for more than 10-15m per day, then you probably have a problem.
dmortin 8y ago
That's right. The phone is only a tool and it's only up to you how much you let it intefere with your life. Though, I guess for some the issue is willpower. E.g. if they use Facebook then they can't stop checking it.
runamok 8y ago
Our smartphones are dopamine triggering skinner boxes. I don't use social media on my phone at all unless you would term reddit and hacker news social media. I consider them news aggregators. But the content I get from them is addictive and instead of keeping focus for longer form content like books, etc. I am reading hundreds of bite size content chunks.

princekolt 8y ago

> and use social media? I'd argue it is not that straight cut. Just like you can tune do not disturb to allow important people to reach you, most social media sites allow fine tuning of notifications (except facebook, they don't give a shit[1]). For example, I use twitter to interact with other developers from around the world, and after configuring twitter to only notify me about interactions with people I follow, I'm never bothered by notifications from it either. [1]: Perfectly satirised by The Onion: https://www.theonion.com/new-facebook-notifications-alert-users-when-they-not-cu-1819577354 https://www.theonion.com/new-facebook-notifications-alert-us...

ehsankia 8y ago
You have a problem if, multiple times per day, you open the feed and just scroll through not looking for anything in particular. As you mention, it seems like your workflow is very action oriented. You use it to communicate with people. But if you ever find yourself just scrolling through the feed for more than 10-15m per day, then you probably have a problem.

dmortin 8y ago

That's right. The phone is only a tool and it's only up to you how much you let it intefere with your life. Though, I guess for some the issue is willpower. E.g. if they use Facebook then they can't stop checking it.

runamok 8y ago

Our smartphones are dopamine triggering skinner boxes. I don't use social media on my phone at all unless you would term reddit and hacker news social media. I consider them news aggregators. But the content I get from them is addictive and instead of keeping focus for longer form content like books, etc. I am reading hundreds of bite size content chunks.