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People going 'monk mode' to limit social media use
- xchip 3y agoYet another newspaper talking about a new trend (that they possibly made up by cherry picking).
- salad-tycoon 3y agoNot a new phenomenon, lots of influencers and movements like the stoicism movement and trad wife movement and etc just as some recent examples but the urge for young virulent people to “get back to the roots” goes as far back as I can tell. Safari hunt anyone?
- LewisVerstappen 3y agoWish there was a better way to do this that didn’t just let you delete the app. Apple’s screentime UI is really limited and poorly designed IMO.
- nothingnew2 3y agoI've succesfully rolled out a (IMHO) better version of the "Freedom" app, that comes with a load of other benefits like being cheaper and even more effective. My phone can only make calls and texts because it's a dumb phone, and I have to go to my computer if I want to waste time on the internet.
- samfar90 3y agoCan we have a look at it ? / Give it a try ?
- nothingnew2 3y agoSure. https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?&_nkw=nokia+105&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?&_nkw=nokia+105&_sacat=0 YMMV, depending what cellular bands are available in your country.
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- liotier 3y agoIn his Chaos Manor column, in Byte Magazine, in the late 90's, author Jerry Pournelle used to mention the “monk cell” where he went to write, upstairs his house - on a PC with no Internet access and just enough software for writing.
- helloplanets 3y agoI wonder what percentage of successful authors have a comparable habit. I'd imagine it could be surprisingly high. The famous WordStar habit of George RR Martin comes to mind. [0] [0]: https://jamesclear.com/george-rr-martin https://jamesclear.com/george-rr-martin
- darkclouds 3y ago[dead]
- cph123 3y agoHow many of us are currently distracted checking HN rather than concentrating on our work?
- CafeRacer 3y agoMe, for sure.
- softg 3y agoWhelp at least I'm not currently distracted checking reddit
- lopis 3y agoJust waiting for CI to finish running. It's the new "compiling" [0]. [0] https://xkcd.com/303/ https://xkcd.com/303/
- benterix 3y agoYeah the problem with these (pipelines, compilations) is they last long enough to take some of your time but not long enough to, say, read a full article, complete a tutorial, watch an educational video from the beginning to end etc. So HN somehow falls nicely in there.
- pimlottc 3y ago> not long enough to, say, read a full article > So HN somehow falls nicely in there. Yeah, I don’t read the article way too often too :/
- arccy 3y agohttps://function.xkcd-excuse.com/media/4c4f504953-57414954494e4720464f5220434920544f2046494e495348-4349.png https://function.xkcd-excuse.com/media/4c4f504953-5741495449...
- cmcaleer 3y agoExactly this, but my model is training.
- baz00 3y agoThis smells like a thinly veiled attempt at marketing for Freedom, rather than solving the problem. Sort of like "it's ok to binge drink all weekend because of this app, but not on a work day!" sort of mentality.
- weweersdfsd 3y agoNobody prevents you from using Freedom in your free time as well. I have it blocking addicting sites 24/7 on all my smartphones, it has worked fairly well.
- sambazi 3y agoidk sounds kinda fucked up to need an app that turns a smartphone into a dumbphone.
- robertlagrant 3y agoI just uninstalled the Facebook and Twitter apps. I can still log into the website if someone sends me a link, but there's more friction and there are no notifications pulling me in. Highly recommend.
- Gareth321 3y agoI found disabling notifications and moving the app off the Home Screen did the trick for me. I unintentionally weaned myself off Facebook. Facebook did this to themself. When they started throwing irrelevant push notifications at me I couldn’t turn off, I just disabled ALL of them. That was a dumbass invasive move on their part which I’m sure hurt more than it helped their engagement.
- bossyTeacher 3y agoIt's possible that they found out that the vast majority of users don't disable the notifications so you would fall in the minority who do. Still worth it for them
- Gareth321 3y agoYou’re probably right, but these decisions compound over time. Each time they lose x% of users. Eventually they’re left with a much smaller, very active (and profitable) user base which has endured enshittification of their service for so long that they’re inches away from leaving. At that point a light breeze can topple it. It’s the normal business life cycle, and I think Facebook is well into the product decline phase.
- amenhotep 3y agoBased on pretty much every screenshot of a person's phone I've ever seen posted on the internet, I would bet a fair amount of money that this is the case. I'm not even convinced the vast majority of users know that disabling notifications is possible.
- hermitcrab 3y agoI uninstalled social media from my phone (I still have them on my desktop PC). I still have wahtsapp, but I turned off the notifications.
- ikedeno 3y agoCalling it that feels wrong to me. They're putting a label on people who ignore their manipulative trash. Plenty of people don't use social media, or watch news and movies, they're not in "monk mode"
- randomcarbloke 3y agoEverything has to be a mode now, humans all have states.
- corobo 3y agoArguably the difference there is that the monk mode has made a sacrifice (did have, now does not) rather than not having in the first place. Depends on how you define 'monk' I guess :)
- psychlops 3y agoThe article unironically explains where the term originated: >The term has gone viral on TikTok, where videos marked with the hashtag #monkmode now have more than 77 million views, up from 31 million in May.
- corobo 3y agoI was talking about the definition, the parent commenter's definition at that, not the origin. I'm not sure how that information fits in here, sorry.
- ikedeno 3y agoThe authoritive BBC are saying in short "your peers will call you a monk if you switch off" - they are branding those who choose to ignore media. I don't care where they say it came from, they are perpetuating it. (Also seems disrespectful to actual monks? I don't know)
- furstenheim 3y agoWhat works best for me. Leaving phone at home when I meet people. It's not always possible, obviously, but if I know the address, I might take a db phone for emergencies. Or even, just a paper with the phone number.
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- m-i-l 3y agoToday I learned that people pay money for an app that stops them from using a (probably expensive) phone. And not just a few people, but enough for the Freedom app to have 2 investment rounds and 11-50 employees[0]. Is it just me, or does that sound like something has gone horribly wrong somewhere? Why not just mute all notifications, or put the phone on silent or airplane mode, or switch it off, or even just replace it with a dumb phone? And as an aside, I have a theory that the attention/distraction economy is not exclusively the fault of Big Tech spending billions working out how to "steal" people's attention, but also has an element of people being much more easily distracted nowadays thanks to rise of pointless jobs, unfulfilling personal lives, etc. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/freedom-2 https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/freedom-2
- foogazi 3y ago> Why not just mute all notifications, or put the phone on silent or airplane mode, or switch it off, or even just replace it with a dumb phone? Why indeed - apparently people are aware and choose something else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- flandish 3y ago> pointless jobs, unfulfilling personal lives, etc.. Basically distraction cycles in human nature are, imho, focused on as a natural byproduct of capitalism’s desire to keep workers from realizing they are distracted and therefore from realizing they are exploited.
- Izkata 3y ago> or even just replace it with a dumb phone? They're not easily available anymore. My provider only has Android and IPhone, even the flip-phone that looks like a dumbphone is running Android. Edit: Ah they do still have one brand of non-smartphone. It costs several times as much as the Android flip-phone, so I didn't see it at first.
- dharmab 3y agoSonim sells "dumb" phones for professionals as well. As well as ruggedized Android smartphones with physical buttons.
- ChatGTP 3y agoThe Apple watch with cellular has been awesome for limiting social media use. I frequently leave my phone at home and while I don't use Social Media that much, it's great to never be tempted but still be contactable, have all the useful info I like (stocks, weather etc) while not having anything from Meta anywhere near me. Not having browser is wonderful.
- p0nce 3y agoApps shouldn't be able to "notify" you (by default), in the same way your home appliance are not interrupting you.
- rco8786 3y agoThey can’t. But they are very clever at getting you to opt into it.
- davidthewatson 3y agoI think you need an absurdist lens to not get lost here. Camus had a point. Think about it, I could say I'm going to adopt a modal diet, which is really what monk mode is, a modal diet of information attention. How would my modal diet work? One day, fasting, the next day, a steady stream of alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, and processed food. Consistency is key. As technical people, we know this from reading the history from Pirsig (ZMM) to Nielsen-Norman: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/modal-nonmodal-dialog/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/modal-nonmodal-dialog/ Asceticism has never scaled, much like the hacker news post today about intimacy not scaling, or the fact that modality in design was more about making it easy for implementors than making it easy for consumers. Monks have been and will always be ascetic. There's nothing ascetic about taking a time-honored tradition and using it to mis-label the behavior of people who are overwhelmed by water they cannot breathe but cannot ignore.
- pimlottc 3y ago> How would my modal diet work? I imagine you just eat whatever pops up in front of you.