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People don’t want to quit smartphones, they want to quit what’s in them and that can be hard. Sometimes you just have apps that are a time sink. You can obvious

People don’t want to quit smartphones, they want to quit what’s in them and that can be hard. Sometimes you just have apps that are a time sink. You can obviously delete them and call it a day, but sometimes you want to keep it around for a small use case, but then want to limit your usage to a minimum, which can be hard because these apps are literally designed to make you spend as much time on them as possible.

XorNot 3y ago
This triggers my "learn some self-discipline" instinct. It's such a learned helplessness statement "oh no, I can't possibly not open the reddit app 30 times a day. Save me from myself." Like, I get it, it's not easy but it's also a pretty basic part of being an adult. Like brushing your teeth, eating healthily or doing exercise (which is to say: if you think "I have problems with those too" then the problem really isn't your smartphone).
- lethologica 3y ago
  This is like saying to addicts “Just stop smoking crack”. Everyone knows smoking crack is bad for you. A lot of people want to quit but are unable to no matter how much “self discipline” they have. And app developers have teams of people dedicated to making sure you stay on these apps longer and longer. Now imagine your dealer is in your pocket 24/7.
  - skidd0 3y ago
    Except crack and other drugs form physical dependencies which leads to withdrawal. Smart phone addicts have a more psychological battle. That's the willpower/self-discipline part. How do you build discipline? Practice! So, yeah, it can be as simple as telling yourself "just stop using the apps" as often as you can to build up the skill.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - vonjuice 3y ago
      If you think addiction is about chemical dependence you need to deepen and broaden your knowledge on the subject.
      - skidd0 3y ago
        Addiction has many factors. I was pointing out that crack and other drugs can form chemical dependencies that apps and screen time cannot.
        vonjuice 3y ago
        Conversely there's aspects of screens that are not present in crack, such as widespread acceptance and even encouragement, hijacking of our most prioritized sense organ, etc. If you were to design a visual drug, as a concept, you wouldn't get very far from the current state of affairs.
        skidd0 3y ago
        Completely agree.
    - Erratic6576 3y ago
      Psychology takes place in a physical organ or network of physical organs
  - XorNot 3y ago
    Your smartphone is in absolutely no way like smoking a physically addictive hard narcotic. Again: learned helplessness. You've picked a comparison to ensure that you have maximally separated any notion of your own culpability. Drug addicts who get clean start by recognizing that they made the choice to start, and need to be mindful of the choice to quit, outside the physical addictions which drive it. The answer for them isn't "I need the crack dealers to all go away first".
    - lethologica 3y ago
      You can substitute it with any addiction. Try replacing it with porn instead. It doesn’t matter. Your analysis is cruel and lacks empathy into how addiction actually works. You wouldn’t tell a depressed person to just stop being depressed either and that they lack the discipline to be happy.
    - darth_avocado 3y ago
      Addiction to smartphones, porn, shopping, eating, coffee, gambling etc. all work on the same neurological pathways. While it’s not the same as a drug addiction, “just don’t do it” isn’t that straightforward. People have to go to therapy and rehab to get rid of some of these, but somehow when it comes to smartphones, the opinion is that “it’s not that hard”.
      - XorNot 3y ago
        People can go to therapy and rehab for being addicted to their smartphones, but all of those things are voluntary activities. You have to choose that you want to get better. Externalizing the locus of your problems is itself a pathology: "I receive too many notifications from social media apps" in a normal person leads to "so I just silenced them all" or "that's why I don't install social media apps, who needs that?". The first thing anyone does in this topic though is externalize the problem: it's not a problem with them, it's a problem with the broadest possible generalization of a thing. They're not incapable of having a smartphone, everyone is. People fail therapy and rehab all the time because of that expectation mismatch: you don't go in and "they fix you", you go in and put in the work to fix yourself, with some assistance.
- yunwal 3y ago
  I’m not sure what your point is here. The adult thing to do if you’re an addict is to move as far away from your addiction as possible. That is what self discipline looks like.
- phs318u 3y ago
  It's now well known and accepted knowledge that "addictions" have heritable elements (specifically in the transition from initial to problematic use). This has been proven by repeated studies of families and twins. The preponderance of substance abuse addicts in recovery that "swap the witch for the bitch" and adopt behavioural addictions also support the genetic basis for addictability (my word). I am a behavioural addict in recovery (4442 days today) and when I consider my siblings, parents, their siblings and their children (my first cousins), there's a >50% incidence of addiction to either smoking (>2 packs/day), alcohol, sex, food, gambling, or drug use. Half of that cohort have more than one addiction and among those almost all share a substance addiction with a behavioural addiction. I appreciate that this is just one family and is statistically irrelevant. However because I've been around people dealing with their addictions for so long and spoken to so many, this is not an uncommon familial pattern among addicts. I'd also add that in my clan there are many instances where one sibling is an addict and another isn't. This is not learned behaviour (though the introduction to addictive pathways/behaviours etc is often as a result of environmental and psycho-social factors).

XorNot 3y ago

This triggers my "learn some self-discipline" instinct. It's such a learned helplessness statement "oh no, I can't possibly not open the reddit app 30 times a day. Save me from myself." Like, I get it, it's not easy but it's also a pretty basic part of being an adult. Like brushing your teeth, eating healthily or doing exercise (which is to say: if you think "I have problems with those too" then the problem really isn't your smartphone).

lethologica 3y ago
This is like saying to addicts “Just stop smoking crack”. Everyone knows smoking crack is bad for you. A lot of people want to quit but are unable to no matter how much “self discipline” they have. And app developers have teams of people dedicated to making sure you stay on these apps longer and longer. Now imagine your dealer is in your pocket 24/7.
- skidd0 3y ago
  Except crack and other drugs form physical dependencies which leads to withdrawal. Smart phone addicts have a more psychological battle. That's the willpower/self-discipline part. How do you build discipline? Practice! So, yeah, it can be as simple as telling yourself "just stop using the apps" as often as you can to build up the skill.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    If you think addiction is about chemical dependence you need to deepen and broaden your knowledge on the subject.
    - skidd0 3y ago
      Addiction has many factors. I was pointing out that crack and other drugs can form chemical dependencies that apps and screen time cannot.
      - vonjuice 3y ago
        Conversely there's aspects of screens that are not present in crack, such as widespread acceptance and even encouragement, hijacking of our most prioritized sense organ, etc. If you were to design a visual drug, as a concept, you wouldn't get very far from the current state of affairs.
        skidd0 3y ago
        Completely agree.
  - Erratic6576 3y ago
    Psychology takes place in a physical organ or network of physical organs
- XorNot 3y ago
  Your smartphone is in absolutely no way like smoking a physically addictive hard narcotic. Again: learned helplessness. You've picked a comparison to ensure that you have maximally separated any notion of your own culpability. Drug addicts who get clean start by recognizing that they made the choice to start, and need to be mindful of the choice to quit, outside the physical addictions which drive it. The answer for them isn't "I need the crack dealers to all go away first".
  - lethologica 3y ago
    You can substitute it with any addiction. Try replacing it with porn instead. It doesn’t matter. Your analysis is cruel and lacks empathy into how addiction actually works. You wouldn’t tell a depressed person to just stop being depressed either and that they lack the discipline to be happy.
  - darth_avocado 3y ago
    Addiction to smartphones, porn, shopping, eating, coffee, gambling etc. all work on the same neurological pathways. While it’s not the same as a drug addiction, “just don’t do it” isn’t that straightforward. People have to go to therapy and rehab to get rid of some of these, but somehow when it comes to smartphones, the opinion is that “it’s not that hard”.
    - XorNot 3y ago
      People can go to therapy and rehab for being addicted to their smartphones, but all of those things are voluntary activities. You have to choose that you want to get better. Externalizing the locus of your problems is itself a pathology: "I receive too many notifications from social media apps" in a normal person leads to "so I just silenced them all" or "that's why I don't install social media apps, who needs that?". The first thing anyone does in this topic though is externalize the problem: it's not a problem with them, it's a problem with the broadest possible generalization of a thing. They're not incapable of having a smartphone, everyone is. People fail therapy and rehab all the time because of that expectation mismatch: you don't go in and "they fix you", you go in and put in the work to fix yourself, with some assistance.
yunwal 3y ago
I’m not sure what your point is here. The adult thing to do if you’re an addict is to move as far away from your addiction as possible. That is what self discipline looks like.
phs318u 3y ago
It's now well known and accepted knowledge that "addictions" have heritable elements (specifically in the transition from initial to problematic use). This has been proven by repeated studies of families and twins. The preponderance of substance abuse addicts in recovery that "swap the witch for the bitch" and adopt behavioural addictions also support the genetic basis for addictability (my word). I am a behavioural addict in recovery (4442 days today) and when I consider my siblings, parents, their siblings and their children (my first cousins), there's a >50% incidence of addiction to either smoking (>2 packs/day), alcohol, sex, food, gambling, or drug use. Half of that cohort have more than one addiction and among those almost all share a substance addiction with a behavioural addiction. I appreciate that this is just one family and is statistically irrelevant. However because I've been around people dealing with their addictions for so long and spoken to so many, this is not an uncommon familial pattern among addicts. I'd also add that in my clan there are many instances where one sibling is an addict and another isn't. This is not learned behaviour (though the introduction to addictive pathways/behaviours etc is often as a result of environmental and psycho-social factors).