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The average person is fighting teams of phds at Facebook, Google, and Amazon that are finding more and more ways to capture an maintain your interest, and to en

by tfha 7y ago

The average person is fighting teams of phds at Facebook, Google, and Amazon that are finding more and more ways to capture an maintain your interest, and to ensure that you can't put your phone down for more than a few minutes. Honestly I think a comparison to cigarettes is fair. Between the anti-patterns, the machine learning, the A/B testing, and the behavioral engineering, modern phone apps are more addicting than niccotine, and it's no more a person's fault for not being able to control themselves than it is for a smoker craving another cig. The problem cuts a lot deeper than people having no self control. They are actively fighting intelligent, well resourced adversaries who have a long term goal of getting you hooked.

nothrabannosir 7y ago
A comparison to cigarettes is not fair because I can quit cigarettes without any ramifications beyond the withdrawal itself. Trying to quit overuse of mobile phones while not losing access to their good features (maps, calendar, actual phone) is like trying to quit smoking while constantly walking around with a lit cigarette in your mouth. "Hey man what are you doing with a cig behind your desk?" - "I'm trying to quit smoking."
- excalibur 7y ago
  Use some sort of parental controls app, lock the phone down so it can do exactly the things you want it to and nothing else. If necessary you can have a spouse or other trusted person set a password on it that you don't know, so you can't just turn the restrictions off.
  - slantyyz 7y ago
    I consider a big part of the problem to be notifications, and their respective default settings. Before smartphones (generally speaking), the majority of your notifications were on your computer. If you walked away from it, you were no longer getting them. Today, you've got a notification blaster in your pocket/purse, which is bad enough for work stuff, but if you participate in social media, it's a FOMO machine too. By default, all of your notifications are artificially urgent. I'm a little older than the average HN'er, so my attitude in life has been closing my social circles to be a very small group of people with richer interactions, as opposed to enlarging it to a large group with less rich interactions. Because of that, it's been pretty easy to wean myself off of FB (not that it was ever a big part of my life in the first place), and I've never considered Twitter, Instagram or anything else to be that interesting. I will admit that I enjoy Reddit - those cute animal gifs are quite relaxing after a stressful day, but I don't use Reddit the way most people use FB or other social media. When it comes to notifications, I turn a lot of them off. I keep my work notifications on during the hours I consider myself available (for urgent stuff, people know they have to call me), and tightly restrict other notifications that can be distracting.
    - jgroszko 7y ago
      A lot of my smart phone usage lately seems to be around managing how much attention my phone can grab from me. I let very few apps send me notifications on my phone. I check it enough without it making noises at me. And if an app doesn't let me disable notifications then I just uninstall it. Facebook Messenger was awful about this, when I saw there was no "Disable notifications", only a "Turn notifications off for 24 hours" option I immediately uninstalled it. Facebook was even worse, ostensibly you could turn notification types off individually, but whenever they added a new type of notification you'd have to go in and turn that off too, or it'd just forget what other notifications you had turned off and you'd start getting them again. Amusingly uninstalling the Facebook app gave me a nice battery performance boost too. Another thing I've found handy is in my IM app I have notifications for everyone turned off by default, and only allow notifications for close friends and family. Why should any random person on the internet be able to grab my attention like that?
      - wutbrodo 7y ago
        One regrettable casualty of this is that I've noticed that almost everyone I know is super unresponsive to texts now. I'm not expecting a fully-interrupt-driven ability to grab someone's attention at any time, but ive even seen cases when you're actively in conversation with someone about something concrete (eg details of a plan) and they drop off in the middle of it. I still think this is pretty rude, but its understandable given that they haven't bothered to make their notifications higher granularity (for my part, I've disabled notifications at the Android level for most of the abusive apps, like Facebook) > Another thing I've found handy is in my IM app I have notifications for everyone turned off by default, and only allow notifications for close friends and family. I figure the next step in the evolution of norms will be this understanding of granularity filtering down to the non-tech-savvy masses.
        slantyyz 7y ago
        Call me old school, but for conversations relating to something concrete and time sensitive, I prefer to do a voice call. I don't trust any text based medium for that. I use a hierarchy when it comes to prioritizing communications and notifications: Voice > sms > work im/email > personal im/email Based on that hierarchy, I have different sets of rules as to the types of notifications I get and when I get them.
- hos234 7y ago
  It has to be done as a group. Both at family/work/friends circle. It started with my team at work getting together one day (almost a year and half back - some Trump BS was unfolding) and saying, if it gets too bad lets decide as a group to block ports/sites/apps etc on the company network. Slowly the list of things to block started growing. It was really surprising how easily one could get consensus, that something specific was too distracting, effecting people and group productivity. Nobody wants to be the guy who says HN is addictive. But once someone says it at a meeting everyone starts nodding. News sites were the first to go. Then video. Then social media and most instant messaging/irc. We have moved to Signal to avoid some of the dark patterns in other IM/chat apps. And everyone is using the google/apple well being apps. Almost everything is done on email or face to face these days. And almost 70 people now in what we call the noise cancellation club. Right now things get unblocked during lunch time for 30 mins and after 5pm. There are common areas where things are unblocked, but they are intentionally pretty public spaces. People of course can use their phones, but the fact that there is this environment available where it has become socially acceptable to be phone free, has definitely made a difference.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  A good comparison is to junk food addiction, which I've heard described as "an alcoholic trying to quit but being required to have just a couple drinks a day"
- wtetzner 7y ago
  Can't you just not sign in to social media sites on your mobile phone? If you don't want to delete social media accounts, maybe change your passwords to something you can't easily remember, and only login on a particular computer at home or something. Honestly, I didn't even need to go that far. Just turning off notifications for Facebook was enough for me to completely stop using it.
nradov 7y ago
Well then the next generation will lack the attention span necessary to earn a PhD and get jobs on those teams. So in the long run the problem will be self correcting.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  Or the bar would be lowered to accomodate for that
- excalibur 7y ago
  The PhDs will probably be replaced by AI before that happens, to the extent that they haven't been already.
randycupertino 7y ago
I just screenshotted the text of your comment and set it as the homescreen and desktop wallpaper of my phone as a reminder to stay vigilant about minimizing my phone usage. Thanks!
saiya-jin 7y ago
I hate sophisticated approach to creating addiction in modern apps just like the next guy here, BUT... you know you can just uninstall the apps, right? You know you can set the phone on airplane mode when you come home, right? You know you can block FB or any other server on network level, right? Pause notifications from WhatsApp for a year... and so on and on and on. Self-training in a bit of discipline is one of the most valuable things one can do with their life. I've removed FB 2 years ago and couldn't be happier, the idea of being spammed with notifications like I was before is so alien now. I've paused notifications on noisy WhatsApp groups and go there maybe 1x a month. Removed most chat apps. Life is good. Try it. I mean, if you want to drop nicotine addiction, you don't keep a 12-pack of cigarettes lying around, right?
- overthemoon 7y ago
  Speaking as someone who did quit smoking two years ago, of course you shouldn't keep a (20) pack around, but the difficulty in making the decisions that kill the addiction is the whole crux of addiction. Buying a pack of cigs is easy. So is downloading an app, as easy as deleting it, or throwing a pack in the garbage. Breaking an addiction is keeping the app deleted, it's not buying another pack, and that's the hard part.

by tfha 7y ago

nothrabannosir 7y ago

A comparison to cigarettes is not fair because I can quit cigarettes without any ramifications beyond the withdrawal itself. Trying to quit overuse of mobile phones while not losing access to their good features (maps, calendar, actual phone) is like trying to quit smoking while constantly walking around with a lit cigarette in your mouth. "Hey man what are you doing with a cig behind your desk?" - "I'm trying to quit smoking."

excalibur 7y ago
Use some sort of parental controls app, lock the phone down so it can do exactly the things you want it to and nothing else. If necessary you can have a spouse or other trusted person set a password on it that you don't know, so you can't just turn the restrictions off.
- slantyyz 7y ago
  I consider a big part of the problem to be notifications, and their respective default settings. Before smartphones (generally speaking), the majority of your notifications were on your computer. If you walked away from it, you were no longer getting them. Today, you've got a notification blaster in your pocket/purse, which is bad enough for work stuff, but if you participate in social media, it's a FOMO machine too. By default, all of your notifications are artificially urgent. I'm a little older than the average HN'er, so my attitude in life has been closing my social circles to be a very small group of people with richer interactions, as opposed to enlarging it to a large group with less rich interactions. Because of that, it's been pretty easy to wean myself off of FB (not that it was ever a big part of my life in the first place), and I've never considered Twitter, Instagram or anything else to be that interesting. I will admit that I enjoy Reddit - those cute animal gifs are quite relaxing after a stressful day, but I don't use Reddit the way most people use FB or other social media. When it comes to notifications, I turn a lot of them off. I keep my work notifications on during the hours I consider myself available (for urgent stuff, people know they have to call me), and tightly restrict other notifications that can be distracting.
  - jgroszko 7y ago
    A lot of my smart phone usage lately seems to be around managing how much attention my phone can grab from me. I let very few apps send me notifications on my phone. I check it enough without it making noises at me. And if an app doesn't let me disable notifications then I just uninstall it. Facebook Messenger was awful about this, when I saw there was no "Disable notifications", only a "Turn notifications off for 24 hours" option I immediately uninstalled it. Facebook was even worse, ostensibly you could turn notification types off individually, but whenever they added a new type of notification you'd have to go in and turn that off too, or it'd just forget what other notifications you had turned off and you'd start getting them again. Amusingly uninstalling the Facebook app gave me a nice battery performance boost too. Another thing I've found handy is in my IM app I have notifications for everyone turned off by default, and only allow notifications for close friends and family. Why should any random person on the internet be able to grab my attention like that?
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      One regrettable casualty of this is that I've noticed that almost everyone I know is super unresponsive to texts now. I'm not expecting a fully-interrupt-driven ability to grab someone's attention at any time, but ive even seen cases when you're actively in conversation with someone about something concrete (eg details of a plan) and they drop off in the middle of it. I still think this is pretty rude, but its understandable given that they haven't bothered to make their notifications higher granularity (for my part, I've disabled notifications at the Android level for most of the abusive apps, like Facebook) > Another thing I've found handy is in my IM app I have notifications for everyone turned off by default, and only allow notifications for close friends and family. I figure the next step in the evolution of norms will be this understanding of granularity filtering down to the non-tech-savvy masses.
      - slantyyz 7y ago
        Call me old school, but for conversations relating to something concrete and time sensitive, I prefer to do a voice call. I don't trust any text based medium for that. I use a hierarchy when it comes to prioritizing communications and notifications: Voice > sms > work im/email > personal im/email Based on that hierarchy, I have different sets of rules as to the types of notifications I get and when I get them.
hos234 7y ago
It has to be done as a group. Both at family/work/friends circle. It started with my team at work getting together one day (almost a year and half back - some Trump BS was unfolding) and saying, if it gets too bad lets decide as a group to block ports/sites/apps etc on the company network. Slowly the list of things to block started growing. It was really surprising how easily one could get consensus, that something specific was too distracting, effecting people and group productivity. Nobody wants to be the guy who says HN is addictive. But once someone says it at a meeting everyone starts nodding. News sites were the first to go. Then video. Then social media and most instant messaging/irc. We have moved to Signal to avoid some of the dark patterns in other IM/chat apps. And everyone is using the google/apple well being apps. Almost everything is done on email or face to face these days. And almost 70 people now in what we call the noise cancellation club. Right now things get unblocked during lunch time for 30 mins and after 5pm. There are common areas where things are unblocked, but they are intentionally pretty public spaces. People of course can use their phones, but the fact that there is this environment available where it has become socially acceptable to be phone free, has definitely made a difference.
wutbrodo 7y ago
A good comparison is to junk food addiction, which I've heard described as "an alcoholic trying to quit but being required to have just a couple drinks a day"
wtetzner 7y ago
Can't you just not sign in to social media sites on your mobile phone? If you don't want to delete social media accounts, maybe change your passwords to something you can't easily remember, and only login on a particular computer at home or something. Honestly, I didn't even need to go that far. Just turning off notifications for Facebook was enough for me to completely stop using it.

nradov 7y ago

Well then the next generation will lack the attention span necessary to earn a PhD and get jobs on those teams. So in the long run the problem will be self correcting.

onemoresoop 7y ago
Or the bar would be lowered to accomodate for that
excalibur 7y ago
The PhDs will probably be replaced by AI before that happens, to the extent that they haven't been already.

randycupertino 7y ago

I just screenshotted the text of your comment and set it as the homescreen and desktop wallpaper of my phone as a reminder to stay vigilant about minimizing my phone usage. Thanks!

saiya-jin 7y ago

I hate sophisticated approach to creating addiction in modern apps just like the next guy here, BUT... you know you can just uninstall the apps, right? You know you can set the phone on airplane mode when you come home, right? You know you can block FB or any other server on network level, right? Pause notifications from WhatsApp for a year... and so on and on and on. Self-training in a bit of discipline is one of the most valuable things one can do with their life. I've removed FB 2 years ago and couldn't be happier, the idea of being spammed with notifications like I was before is so alien now. I've paused notifications on noisy WhatsApp groups and go there maybe 1x a month. Removed most chat apps. Life is good. Try it. I mean, if you want to drop nicotine addiction, you don't keep a 12-pack of cigarettes lying around, right?

overthemoon 7y ago
Speaking as someone who did quit smoking two years ago, of course you shouldn't keep a (20) pack around, but the difficulty in making the decisions that kill the addiction is the whole crux of addiction. Buying a pack of cigs is easy. So is downloading an app, as easy as deleting it, or throwing a pack in the garbage. Breaking an addiction is keeping the app deleted, it's not buying another pack, and that's the hard part.