12 ms·

Cigarettes are a flawed analogy. There is no such thing as a "healthy" use of cigarettes. But I would argue that smart phones can be used in a healthy way. A

Cigarettes are a flawed analogy. There is no such thing as a "healthy" use of cigarettes. But I would argue that smart phones can be used in a healthy way. And I would also argue that the phone itself is not the problem. The problem is the reliance on the endorphin hit that comes from a new IM, like, post, etc. Some app makers have optimized their platform for engagement and have consequently made this highly addictive for many people. But this addiction is much easier to break for most people than an addiction to something like say cigarettes (or even sugar).

DisruptiveDave 8y ago
> But this addiction is much easier to break for most people than an addiction to something like say cigarettes (or even sugar). Physically? I presume you're right. But here's the problem; you don't need cigarettes to accomplish any other expected, daily task in your life. You need your phone for a whole bunch of useful tasks that aren't health-depleting. I once read someone explain eating disorders in a similar way. You still need to eat, so you can't simply kick the root of your problem out of your life forever.
- everdrive 8y ago
  > You need your phone This is debatable. What can you really do on your phone that you can't do on a PC?
skilled 8y ago
Ah, yes -- the "healthy" card. Good one! Makes you wonder what if "healthy" meant no phones at all... dang! I was fortunate to have a childhood without phones, and if I ever have kids myself I want to give them the same experience no matter what it takes.
- keerthiko 8y ago
  the classic "we didn't have nice things when I was a child, so I shall socially constrain my children's options in a completely different era in the same way arbitrarily" style of parenting. I'm sure your kids will be grateful and excited /s
  - skilled 8y ago
    And why wouldn't they be excited about living someplace remote, in a nice jungle either in Peru or in Costa Rica? I mean, it's my home, after all, is it not?
- monkeynotes 8y ago
  > no matter what it takes Hopefully by the time you have kids wisdom highlights why the above is a destructive mentality. So many children are set up for anxiety and pain by their parents imposing so much of their own bullshit on them. By all means adopt principles that align with your beliefs, but for the love of god numb your ego a touch and realize if you love your children you have to let go of yourself and free them as much as corral and influence them. Be reasonable, understanding, compassionate, loving and unselfish, and see how 'no matter what it takes' holds up when considering those virtues.
  - hombre_fatal 8y ago
    Edit: overshared
    - skilled 8y ago
      Cringe huh...
  - skilled 8y ago
    I think you misunderstood what I meant. > no matter what it takes That's an effort on my part to sort out of my life to a point where I feel comfortable raising kids. I live a very humble/spiritual life and have no intention of imposing bullshit on my kids or anyone else for that matter. I do know how that works though because a lot of it happened to me personally in my own family during my upbringing. If my home is a remote village someplace in South America, then that's just how it is going to be for my kids. I guess, right?
- RegBarclay 8y ago
  Technology, culture, society, and ourselves -- they all change. I have children born over a period of 12 years. What was appropriate and worked for my oldest may not fit or work with my youngest. And that's just one decade. The space between my teen years and my youngest child's teen years is closer to four decades. What was appropriate and worked for me just isn't even possible for my kids. You'll understand better when you have kids. I hope.
rauhl 8y ago
> There is no such thing as a "healthy" use of cigarettes. I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. The fundamental problem with cigarettes is that they are addictive, and convenient (at one time very convenient), and so it’s easy to smoke more and more. That’s actually very similar to smartphones: their use is addictive, and convenient (you can get a hit at work, in line, in the car, at the store, walking down the street, in bed). As with tobacco, I believe that the answer is to responsibly use smartphones. Chain-smoking is bad; so too is constantly getting a hit from your smartphone. Smoking a pipe a couple of times a week (or a cigar a couple of times a month) isn’t a problem, and neither is using a smartphone intentionally & deliberately.
- cmiles74 8y ago
  I wonder if some people are built such that they can't just put the phone down, similar to how many people really struggle to quit smoking. For those people there may be no "healthy" was to use the product.
  - johnkpaul 8y ago
    Interesting! This is very similar to how I feel about carbohydrates. Some people get addicted but an extremely small portion of the population. I never thought about there being analogues to other non-nutrition related addictive things.
- throwaway413 8y ago
  > I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. Is this true? Can you provide a source? Brb running to the corner store...
  - oarabbus_ 8y ago
    I think you'll find a hard time finding any source which will claim cigarette smoking under some threshold is not bad for you. But keep in mind cigarette studies use the metric "pack-years" where 1 pack-year means smoking 20 cigarettes a day, for a year. "Heavy" smokers are generally considered as 2+ pack-year smokers. And it's not like _every_ heavy smoker gets lung cancer. In fact "only" 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer, 5% of "former smokers", and 0.5% of non-smokers get lung cancer. And 40 cigarettes a day is a LOT! So you can do an extrapolation with the numbers above to estimate a conclusion. I'd be hard-pressed to believe that 1 cigarette per WEEK is even as harmful as living in a big city like NYC or SF.
skohan 8y ago
Actually there are a lot of therapeutic applications for Nicotine. Nicotine can be beneficial for a wide range of psychiatric disorders, and there's evidence it might help with Parkinson's symptoms as well.
- lm28469 8y ago
  afaik nicotine is the addictive substance in cigarettes but it's not the most dangerous. + Inhaling any burned matter / fumes will have an impact the lungs. "Cigarette smoke contains over 7,000 chemical compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, nicotine, carbon monoxide, acrolein, and other poisonous substances. Over 70 of these are carcinogenic." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette
  - skohan 8y ago
    Yes that is absolutely true, nicotine is not meaningfully toxic on its own as far as I'm aware. That said, it doesn't mean it's not dangerous. For instance, Opiates were once thought of as a "perfect anesthetic" because they achieve the desired effect with little to no toxicity, but we've all seen how that played out over the last few decades.
    - Pharmakon 8y ago
      Nicotine is quite toxic at moderately high doses, ask any farmer who works with nicotinoid pesticides, or any ER attending. Nicotine is a potent neurotoxin, it’s just that typical use from smoking and food falls below the threshold for poisoning your nAChRs receptors. However with vaping, that’s no longer the case, especially when people spill their vaping liquid on clothing or skin.
      - jpttsn 8y ago
        Is tolerance also a factor? My daily average nicotine dose is likely above LD50.
snarf21 8y ago
Right, early smartphones without social media were far less addictive. Games were less addictive because it was things like Snake not Fortnite. The other missing piece is "What would people do instead?". If you get rid of your smartphone and replace it with six hours of Netflix, you are probably not any healthier or better off.
- billfruit 8y ago
  OTOH, snake can be played without much effort, where as it requires much patience and effort to play Fortnight. This is something that most of the critical discussion on games seems to be missing. Most computer games require lot of effort and time investment to play, they aren't actually an avenue for instant gratification.
j-c-hewitt 8y ago
Not totally true. Cigarettes are a very effective appetite suppressant. That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much. Obesity has skyrocketed as cigarette and other tobacco use has declined. Obesity also increases the risk for most types of cancer, so it is just trading increased lung cancer risk for some people for increased risk of both heart disease and cancer. In general nature does not like free lunches. There are costs and trade-offs in everything and smart phones are not an exception to that.
- lm28469 8y ago
  Do you have any source for "That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much." ? As far as I can tell most low wage / manual labor jobs are plagued with cigarette smoking because it allows more breaks / and it's a way to kill time. Here in germany a lot of 30s people picked up smoking during their mandatory military service (cigarettes were free to avoid creation of black markets, people who smoked had more breaks + herd behavior)
  - jpttsn 8y ago
    You’re saying it’s not even one of the reasons?
    - lm28469 8y ago
      I don't know, I have a hard time thinking someone would go: "I better start smoking these cancer inducing sticks, I've read studies proving they reduce appetite". I doubt people go out of there way to start new addictions voluntarily, but maybe I'm too hopeful.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    Kitchen work is also extremely “crunch-y” with high stakes blocks of time where any mistakes you make have compounding costs. A stress relief drug like nicotine can help you regulate your mood around that cycle. There are better ways to regulate mood and stress but most of them can’t be packaged and sold for $5, which makes them unlikely to proliferate under capitalism.
drilldrive 8y ago
I like to think of smartphones as the "devil's gadget", alluding to the original conceptualization of Satan: the being of natural tendency.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Idle hands...

DisruptiveDave 8y ago

> But this addiction is much easier to break for most people than an addiction to something like say cigarettes (or even sugar). Physically? I presume you're right. But here's the problem; you don't need cigarettes to accomplish any other expected, daily task in your life. You need your phone for a whole bunch of useful tasks that aren't health-depleting. I once read someone explain eating disorders in a similar way. You still need to eat, so you can't simply kick the root of your problem out of your life forever.

everdrive 8y ago
> You need your phone This is debatable. What can you really do on your phone that you can't do on a PC?

skilled 8y ago

Ah, yes -- the "healthy" card. Good one! Makes you wonder what if "healthy" meant no phones at all... dang! I was fortunate to have a childhood without phones, and if I ever have kids myself I want to give them the same experience no matter what it takes.

keerthiko 8y ago
the classic "we didn't have nice things when I was a child, so I shall socially constrain my children's options in a completely different era in the same way arbitrarily" style of parenting. I'm sure your kids will be grateful and excited /s
- skilled 8y ago
  And why wouldn't they be excited about living someplace remote, in a nice jungle either in Peru or in Costa Rica? I mean, it's my home, after all, is it not?
monkeynotes 8y ago
> no matter what it takes Hopefully by the time you have kids wisdom highlights why the above is a destructive mentality. So many children are set up for anxiety and pain by their parents imposing so much of their own bullshit on them. By all means adopt principles that align with your beliefs, but for the love of god numb your ego a touch and realize if you love your children you have to let go of yourself and free them as much as corral and influence them. Be reasonable, understanding, compassionate, loving and unselfish, and see how 'no matter what it takes' holds up when considering those virtues.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  Edit: overshared
  - skilled 8y ago
    Cringe huh...
- skilled 8y ago
  I think you misunderstood what I meant. > no matter what it takes That's an effort on my part to sort out of my life to a point where I feel comfortable raising kids. I live a very humble/spiritual life and have no intention of imposing bullshit on my kids or anyone else for that matter. I do know how that works though because a lot of it happened to me personally in my own family during my upbringing. If my home is a remote village someplace in South America, then that's just how it is going to be for my kids. I guess, right?
RegBarclay 8y ago
Technology, culture, society, and ourselves -- they all change. I have children born over a period of 12 years. What was appropriate and worked for my oldest may not fit or work with my youngest. And that's just one decade. The space between my teen years and my youngest child's teen years is closer to four decades. What was appropriate and worked for me just isn't even possible for my kids. You'll understand better when you have kids. I hope.

rauhl 8y ago

> There is no such thing as a "healthy" use of cigarettes. I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. The fundamental problem with cigarettes is that they are addictive, and convenient (at one time very convenient), and so it’s easy to smoke more and more. That’s actually very similar to smartphones: their use is addictive, and convenient (you can get a hit at work, in line, in the car, at the store, walking down the street, in bed). As with tobacco, I believe that the answer is to responsibly use smartphones. Chain-smoking is bad; so too is constantly getting a hit from your smartphone. Smoking a pipe a couple of times a week (or a cigar a couple of times a month) isn’t a problem, and neither is using a smartphone intentionally & deliberately.

cmiles74 8y ago
I wonder if some people are built such that they can't just put the phone down, similar to how many people really struggle to quit smoking. For those people there may be no "healthy" was to use the product.
- johnkpaul 8y ago
  Interesting! This is very similar to how I feel about carbohydrates. Some people get addicted but an extremely small portion of the population. I never thought about there being analogues to other non-nutrition related addictive things.
throwaway413 8y ago
> I don’t think that’s really true. The health effects of a cigarette a week would be indistinguishable from background noise. Is this true? Can you provide a source? Brb running to the corner store...
- oarabbus_ 8y ago
  I think you'll find a hard time finding any source which will claim cigarette smoking under some threshold is not bad for you. But keep in mind cigarette studies use the metric "pack-years" where 1 pack-year means smoking 20 cigarettes a day, for a year. "Heavy" smokers are generally considered as 2+ pack-year smokers. And it's not like _every_ heavy smoker gets lung cancer. In fact "only" 25% of heavy smokers get lung cancer, 5% of "former smokers", and 0.5% of non-smokers get lung cancer. And 40 cigarettes a day is a LOT! So you can do an extrapolation with the numbers above to estimate a conclusion. I'd be hard-pressed to believe that 1 cigarette per WEEK is even as harmful as living in a big city like NYC or SF.

skohan 8y ago

Actually there are a lot of therapeutic applications for Nicotine. Nicotine can be beneficial for a wide range of psychiatric disorders, and there's evidence it might help with Parkinson's symptoms as well.

lm28469 8y ago
afaik nicotine is the addictive substance in cigarettes but it's not the most dangerous. + Inhaling any burned matter / fumes will have an impact the lungs. "Cigarette smoke contains over 7,000 chemical compounds, including arsenic, formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, nicotine, carbon monoxide, acrolein, and other poisonous substances. Over 70 of these are carcinogenic." [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette
- skohan 8y ago
  Yes that is absolutely true, nicotine is not meaningfully toxic on its own as far as I'm aware. That said, it doesn't mean it's not dangerous. For instance, Opiates were once thought of as a "perfect anesthetic" because they achieve the desired effect with little to no toxicity, but we've all seen how that played out over the last few decades.
  - Pharmakon 8y ago
    Nicotine is quite toxic at moderately high doses, ask any farmer who works with nicotinoid pesticides, or any ER attending. Nicotine is a potent neurotoxin, it’s just that typical use from smoking and food falls below the threshold for poisoning your nAChRs receptors. However with vaping, that’s no longer the case, especially when people spill their vaping liquid on clothing or skin.
    - jpttsn 8y ago
      Is tolerance also a factor? My daily average nicotine dose is likely above LD50.

snarf21 8y ago

Right, early smartphones without social media were far less addictive. Games were less addictive because it was things like Snake not Fortnite. The other missing piece is "What would people do instead?". If you get rid of your smartphone and replace it with six hours of Netflix, you are probably not any healthier or better off.

billfruit 8y ago
OTOH, snake can be played without much effort, where as it requires much patience and effort to play Fortnight. This is something that most of the critical discussion on games seems to be missing. Most computer games require lot of effort and time investment to play, they aren't actually an avenue for instant gratification.

j-c-hewitt 8y ago

Not totally true. Cigarettes are a very effective appetite suppressant. That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much. Obesity has skyrocketed as cigarette and other tobacco use has declined. Obesity also increases the risk for most types of cancer, so it is just trading increased lung cancer risk for some people for increased risk of both heart disease and cancer. In general nature does not like free lunches. There are costs and trade-offs in everything and smart phones are not an exception to that.

lm28469 8y ago
Do you have any source for "That is one of the reasons why people who work in the food industry all smoke so much." ? As far as I can tell most low wage / manual labor jobs are plagued with cigarette smoking because it allows more breaks / and it's a way to kill time. Here in germany a lot of 30s people picked up smoking during their mandatory military service (cigarettes were free to avoid creation of black markets, people who smoked had more breaks + herd behavior)
- jpttsn 8y ago
  You’re saying it’s not even one of the reasons?
  - lm28469 8y ago
    I don't know, I have a hard time thinking someone would go: "I better start smoking these cancer inducing sticks, I've read studies proving they reduce appetite". I doubt people go out of there way to start new addictions voluntarily, but maybe I'm too hopeful.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Kitchen work is also extremely “crunch-y” with high stakes blocks of time where any mistakes you make have compounding costs. A stress relief drug like nicotine can help you regulate your mood around that cycle. There are better ways to regulate mood and stress but most of them can’t be packaged and sold for $5, which makes them unlikely to proliferate under capitalism.

drilldrive 8y ago

I like to think of smartphones as the "devil's gadget", alluding to the original conceptualization of Satan: the being of natural tendency.

Apocryphon 8y ago
Idle hands...