25 ms·

My experiment in phonelessness was a failure, and it also changed my life

213 points by thm 3y ago

nonrandomstring 3y ago
> "Do you want to be my girlfriend?" I ask Almond one day. "I already am. That's what this is" Spot on. Sometimes that's all it takes, someone from the real world to remind you that you're OK, that _this_ is living, that it's good enough. After that the unreality at the inside of digital perdition starts to unravel and dissolve. The mind starts to wander back to that most highly addictive of all things, reality.
isometricid 3y ago
``` Thief of my life? No one gets to steal my life. Unfortunately, I am now addicted to sugar. ```
ghaff 3y ago
It seems there are some distinct modes of phone use that are pretty different: - Social media/news/etc. scrolling - Contact with friends you're meeting or otherwise being reachable - Utility apps for parking, travel, GPS, etc. - Camera - Music/podcasts Probably others.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  The distinction between social media and communicating with friends is a interesting, but important one. I have some Signal groups that at times have huge bursts of activity and I haven't met everyone in them in person. Yet it's totally different from "social media" like Facebook. This seems obvious, but 2008 Facebook was closer to my Signal groups than current Facebook or Twitter. I want to say it's the news feed that made Facebook problematic, but maybe it's the volume and that there always is something new?
  - ghaff 3y ago
    I have Facebook and have a fair variety of people on it but it's mostly dip in/dip out/here are photos of my trip. Mostly use email/SMS/iMessage if it's arranging a get-together with a closer overall group. With Facebook, I think it is partly the feed but it's also that I've accumulated a fair number of mostly professional colleagues and friends-of-friends over time. Some classmates I've stayed in various degrees of touch with.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  The one I am loving in recent years is searching if an item is in stock at a store nearby and in many cases, seeing the location of the item in the store itself. Not to mention being able to compare prices and see reviews or other details.
csdvrx 3y ago
My quirk is being phoneless. I have an android phone, but unless I'm flying, it stays at home, in a drawer. It's certainly not for everyone, as apps are used for almost everything, but I've found it helps me achieve deep focus by introducing just a little bit of friction, and forcing me to be more "in the present".
- hot_gril 3y ago
  I carry a phone everywhere, but all the apps companies want you to install seem to add more friction if anything. Like, I have a credit card, why the heck would I use Apple Pay, let alone some store-specific payment app? Even if there's some fancy digital restaurant line system, that works via SMS, I'm not installing the Olive Garden app.
k__ 3y ago
I tend to use media (games, chats, dating apps, social media, etc.) excessively (for 4-8h a day) However, since I never miss them when I have better things to do, it never fits the definition of addiction. On the other hand, I also don't drink, smoke, or consumer caffein without a purpose, so maybe I just don't tend to get addicted.
- blueflow 3y ago
  Theory (open for discussion): With ADHD you don't get addicted, the excesses are mostly to fill the boredom between the better things.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    This is just plain wrong. People with ADHD are much more likely to develop addiction than people who don't. Most of the addicts I know, including myself, have it.
    - mordae 3y ago
      My experience is the opposite. I don't get addicted. Obsessed with a topic for a while? Sure! Compulsively repeating some behaviors, like checking HN? That's me! But once I get distracted by something interesting, it's like those never existed. They just lose their appeal.
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
        [dead]
    - findyourexit 3y ago
      ADHD is a pretty broad brush. While I’ve no doubt that some instances fuel a predisposition for addiction, I’ve seen exactly the opposite tendencies exhibited also.
      - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
Triphibian 3y ago
I am over a year in to using a Light Phone II as my daily driver. There are many inconveniences, but the change in my life has been worth it.
- thisischarbs 3y ago
  What's THE biggest inconvenience would you say? And do you find yourself using more of your laptop/computer to stay on top of things?
  - Triphibian 3y ago
    The biggest inconvenience are businesses that insist on an app. I bought tickets to a hockey game and couldn't attend because the venue doesn't honor printed tickets. When I have to Zelle my mechanic I do it from my laptop at home before I leave the house -- good thing I trust him. I "keep up" on news via my laptop -- which I keep open on my desk. I check my papers and Hackernews, etc throughout the day. I have a print subscription to the New Yorker.
    - VyseofArcadia 3y ago
      > The biggest inconvenience are businesses that insist on an app. I bought tickets to a hockey game and couldn't attend because the venue doesn't honor printed tickets. That kind of thing is my biggest concern with going smartphoneless. It seems like more and more businesses assume a smartphone as a prerequisite. I would really love for there to be a "you have to allow customers without a smart phone" law. I don't want to be excluded from society because the $1,000 chunk of incredibly advanced electronics I bought a few years ago stopped getting updates. I hope you at least got a refund on the tickets. > When I have to Zelle my mechanic I do it from my laptop at home before I leave the house -- good thing I trust him. Cash?
      - Triphibian 3y ago
        The incident really made me double down on my commitment to using a dumb phone. And yeah, cash is always an option, but he did an engine replacement for me. That was a lot of dough to be walking around with. Another places that punishes me for not having a phone is Whole Foods, I never get my discount for having Prime. They say I can use my phone number but it never works. I refuse to put more effort into it.
forgotmypw100 3y ago
Reading this makes me realise I have a healthy relationship with my phone. I don't have any "social" apps installed, or "scroller" apps (Insta, TikTok, and things like that). I don't pick up my phone during the day while working, and in the evening it sits next to my keys by the door. Being present is easy. On my tablet, I have my RSS reader which produces about 30 entries per day, of which I read 2 or 3 articles, and then I'm done for the day. If I put down the tablet to do something else, I have zero experience of "FOMO" because blog articles are experienced at a glacial time scale. But also on my work laptop, we have Slack and Email and such on my laptop (only, no hand-held devices), and none of them have notifications enabled. Also, once I've read my mail to inbox zero, I close that tab. Then I'll open Slack (not both at once), and once I've caught up I close it. Then I do some productive work. I'll open them later when it's convenient for me. I think that's an attitude I developed at some point in the past few years. All modern Internet-based tech wants your engagement, full of dark patterns (like making things disappear if you see it once or lift your finger), and you have to protect yourself from that. Choose devices, apps, services that keep you in control. Discard the ones that don't.
- notyourwork 3y ago
  These are all great tips. Especially closing slack/email and disabling notifications. I struggled with these for awhile, growing up during the IRC, ICQ, AIM era, messaging always felt like a requirement of using a computer. Putting them away for focus time is critical.
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [dead]
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I'm similar to you where my phone is bare bones, often not within reach. I do take it with me wherever I go — often it is my wallet. Maps, Camera, Notes and Messages are about the only four apps I use on it (yeah, Health and Weather and the aforementioned Wallet — Apple Pay, actually - from time to time). When I find myself out and about, standing in line or otherwise bored, I don't pull out my phone as I see so many others do — there is nothing interesting to me on the phone. But I also turn 60 this year so, for me, my laptop is my "phone". It stays at home of course (except on trips) but it is where I do all my browsing, coding, image editing, etc. And to divorce myself from my laptop would be a hard task. A remote friend of mine checks email/messages only in the morning when he gets up. Sometimes I have been up when he texts me and I reply within seconds — only to get his reply to mine the following morning — like playing chess by mail. (Sometimes he never responds at all ... I think he finds connectivity to be bad for his mental health and I respect that.) I would like to be more like him — limit my browsing to the morning; essentially turn off the WiFi by 9:00 AM so to speak. Unfortunately when I am finishing a task (perhaps an hour out in the garage building a virtual pinball machine) I use the break time (perhaps a cup of tea) to open the laptop and see what insanity the US politicians are up to this hour of the day....
zikduruqe 3y ago
For almost a decade I worked with mobile devices; their certification, R&D, testing. At any given time I would have a dozen devices on me to test out in the field or demo units prior to sale. Now that I no longer do this for a living, I seldom if ever carry a phone with me. I don't do social media, I don't watch movies on a phone, navigation I just look up where I want to go on a map and just drive there. The only connectivity I have outside the home is my Apple Watch Cellular for those random "pick up bread" messages, weather, and to tell the time. It is so liberating.
- Loughla 3y ago
  >navigation I just look up where I want to go on a map and just drive there. This is one of the two reasons I believe I cannot get rid of a phone. After getting lost in a not great neighborhood in the 1990's and getting jumped, I have pretty severe anxiety about travel to places that I am unfamiliar with. GPS has been a godsend. And pictures of my kids. There is no more convenient way to take constant pictures and videos of my kids than with my phone. I don't remember entire years of my life, and therefore their lives. But I have pictures and videos to remind me!
  - syntheticnature 3y ago
    From my observations, people's innate ability to relate a map to the world varies. There are some studies attempting to tie this to gender, but my experience is that is not a hard line at all. I'm sure training is a component, of course, but some folks do not tie the abstraction to the real world well at all. I seem to be good at it, but no one in my wife's family is, so during family get-togethers on that side I'm usually driving or navigating. The fact I can retrace a path I took two years prior from memory is an astonishing feat to them.
    - edgarvaldes 3y ago
      When I'm inside the house (any house, but including my own), I often point to a direction when talking about a nearby place. People laugh and correct me because the place I'm talking about is to the north, not to the south as I point out with my finger. I can't go back to a place I was last week without asking for directions. I walk and turn the wrong corner in familiar environments, etc. I love GPS now.
slothtrop 3y ago
At least as devs/tech people go, the fixation on phones seems a bit off the mark as we're always on our machines. I use my phone for menial phone-stuff in addition to reminders/lists, but on my machine I can fall into a bad habit of too much reddit or HN (I never use fb or twitter). I guess the phone issue makes sense for those who have dedicated work machines that aren't used for any personal use whatsoever.
bsder 3y ago
Dude found a girlfriend--now spends way less time online. Isn't that kind of ... normal? Most guys I've known generally cut down their "find a girlfriend" activities dramatically once they actually find one.
simonbarker87 3y ago
I managed to make my phone boring in the past few months and it’s delightful. I removed all apps that need my engagement to make money. It took time for me to realise why I was picking my phone up and then wondering why. My brain was reflexively reaching for my phone as it was bored (or anticipating becoming bored?) but then when I concisely looked at my phone I thought “well there’s nothing to do here why did I pick it up?” It’s taken a couple of months but now I rarely find my phone in my hand without a conscious reason to have it there.
- nytesky 3y ago
  It’s not just the apps. I know I have a problem with checking Hacker News and another very low tech discussion site (local to my area, basically a 2003 website). The discussions are very pertinent to my daily life, unvarnished, and the clientele of note (kind of like Hacker News I guess). For me it’s because I think I have very little time for real friends as a working parent; I text old friends from college and such, but my daily life is lonely outside my family, and logistics and chores consume a lot of that time. More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - chii 3y ago
    I dont see a problem with HN in of it self. The problem is only when you spend disproportionate amount of time on HN (or twitter), vs other activities.
  - macNchz 3y ago
    > More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit. I’ve enjoyed discussion boards long before smartphones, but have been spending more time scrolling them on my phone than I’d like since 2020. This point, along with the author’s discussion of “the desire underneath the desire” is making me think that I’m actually just missing the types of conversations I’d have with coworkers at lunch or over happy hour beers before I started to work from home full time. Most of my close friends are not programmers or involved in startups, so this sort of makes sense to me as a missing social outlet.
isolli 3y ago
For a while I was tempted to get a minimalist phone like the Punkt MP02 [0] or Mudita Pure [1], but in the end I could not give up on: - A camera (to snap pictures of our kids) - A map for navigation - Authentication apps for banking There seem to be a few success stories in the comments. I'd be curious to hear how they made up for the missing features I listed... [0] https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ [1] https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure/ https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure/
- pdxandi 3y ago
  These are precisely the reasons I want a smarter phone. Taking pictures of my kids and navigating around town. We also listen to children’s stories in the car using Spotify so that too. Banking I could probably work around but it’s possible I’m just not realizing how much I use my phone for these types of things. That said, I have zero social media or scroller apps, outside of HN.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  I've adopted a different approach. Going fully offline makes life really difficult, so I decided to basically compartmentalize my online life. I have different user accounts for different tasks, with privoxy set up to block irrelevant network traffic . Admittedly I mostly use a desktop computer for my online life so it's tailored toward that, but I did configure my phone to use a proxy as well it's been working pretty well. Means I can cut back on "mindless" social media use without having to cut back on intentional use. I did a write-up here: https://www.marginalia.nu/log/99_context/ https://www.marginalia.nu/log/99_context/
- vundercind 3y ago
  It’s a document scanner, a document-signing device (we did basically the entire house search, offer, and closing process all on our phones, last time), flashlight (I use this daily), camera that can do “live photos” (they’re magical, I have zero interest in a camera that doesn’t do that), a check-depositing terminal, a tape measure or level (in a pinch), a note-taking device, and so much more. Music player. Alarm clock. A credit card. My phone is without a doubt the single most-useful electronic gadget in my house, and it’s not a close call. My desktop machine and laptop are nothing but toys unless I’m building stuff for computers. (My tablet is the second most-useful, and again, it’s not a close call)
dallasg3 3y ago
Almond?
weinzierl 3y ago
I have a similar experience. I lived almost three years without Google and Amazon[1] before a global pandemic changed my life in a way that did not make this sustainable anymore. Admittedly I considered ending the experiment even before the pandemic hit and it is very likely I would have done so. Also I deliberately did not pick up the abstinence again. Despite all that, I would never call that phase a failure. It gave me a lot of confidence that life without these services is well possible and that it was not much of a sacrifice for myself. What it thought me, however, is that it very well was a nuisance for others sometimes[2]. And that is the reason I ultimately decided not to continue, but I believe I use the services of both companies much more deliberately than before. [1] Why these two of all things? In 2015 or 2016 I sat down and classified all the services I was using by how much valuable data they collected about me and how much value they provided in return. These were the two services that lost. It might seem strange at first but the data Amazon has about me is a ton more valuable than the data Facebook has. I decide what I put on my profile there, which friends I add and if I want to use messenger. I feel I do not have that choice with Amazon - I order what I need, but that still paints a pretty accurate picture of me. I'm not sure if my analysis today would come to the same conclusion, but that was my thinking back then. [2] This is even more true for WhatsApp, but there I'm still steady.
mofeien 3y ago
For one month now I have mobile data turned off on my phone. I have started reading much more on the subway since the main distraction is gone, and there are surprisingly few drawbacks. Of course, YMMV. What started as a one week experiment quickly turned into a month and now I'm thinking about getting a cheaper data plan, since I'll only be using it for emergencies.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  Yes, the only thing I can think of needing mobile data for is navigation, and that's not too hard to solve either.
webdoodle 3y ago
How long was he in 'phone detox'? From what I gather, only 2 months, which isn't nearly long enough. I've been 100% phone free for 4 years now, and was 95% free 2 years prior to that (only powering it on for work). I can personally say that anything less than a year is probably not long enough to even dent the addiction, and anything less that 2 won't teach you the discipline to stay phone free.
- barbarr 3y ago
  Seconding this. I was phone free for an entire year, only to get re-addicted a few months later.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
runamuck 3y ago
I recommend turning off all notifications and then configuring the phone to allow texts/ calls from "Favorite Contacts Only."
msluyter 3y ago
A lot of articles on reducing phone use coming out at the moment. For example (older, but recently updated: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/break-up-with-your-phone/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/break-up-with-you...) I think a lot about the fact that we carry on our persons the most addictive device ever created. I've recently adopted the grey scale trick -- set your phone to grey scale display mode. It works pretty well! Of course, I can always disable it if severely tempted, but it creates another hoop to jump through. I also have one of the phone safes, which I use sporadically. Ironically, having an Apple watch makes the phone safe more effective, because I can lock up the phone but still answer critical calls if necessary. Weird that in the 23rd century, a lot of us are replaying Oddyseus, collectively tying ourselves to the mast.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Cellular smartwatch (Pixel watch in my case) is great for minimizing distractions while retaining basics: calendar, note-taking, basic messaging, phone calls, maps, music (via Bluetooth) and payments. But WITHOUT the very distracting web browser and YouTube. Battery life can be pretty poor though if the phone is turned off, you really can't listen to music all day for instance. I also use greyscale mode on phone, can set a keyboard shortcut. Some apps are also just far too colourful - e.g. Duolingo - and look better in greyscale I think. Phone can be a productivity machine too though with a Bluetooth keyboard, phone stand. Can have full desktop environment with a keyboard and mouse and VNC client.
  - the_snooze 3y ago
    Seconding smartwatches. There's no reason to habitually check my phone (and risk getting distracted) when my watch tells me if I have notifications. My watch is basically a read-only beeper for high-priority notifications, so there's no fear of missing out on something important. I don't even need a cellular watch. Just having the phone inconveniently nearby (e.g., in a backpack, or on the bathroom counter instead of a nightstand) adds enough friction to eliminate mindless phone use.
    - 3y ago
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
I mainly use my phone to "waste time", somehow I've gotten into a lifestyle where I end up waiting for other people a lot to do something - codependency, woo - and tend to browse Reddit while doing so. It's fine if it's a few minutes, up to half an hour, but after that I start to think wtf I'm doing with my time. Mind you, I'm not alone, the other two people living here do the same, the joys of ADHD I suppose.
captainclam 3y ago
I've never used social media or had a "problem" with my phone. So I used to read articles like this a little smugly, but I'm growing increasingly discomfited by the notion that I'm...out of touch..? Yeah, it's probably overall a positive thing that I've never been hooked on instagram, but it's also a language/shared experience with which I have no point of contact. I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. And it's great to be weird! I just hope that it doesn't impact potential connections in the future.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. Well, I have some good news: here you are, on social media, having a presence. Admittedly, it's a bit more niche than Instagram.
  - captainclam 3y ago
    Haha, good point. I'm not a hopeless case after all.
  - browningstreet 3y ago
    National borders and most romantic dates won’t ask for your HN profile but they will ask for all the other major social networks. Not everything with an account and a comment system is a Social Network to lay-people and first encounter authorities.
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    Before the abused and tired notion of "social media" was coined, this was called... a forum. Nothing "media" about it.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      I think it still is. A discussion forum like this lacks a number of features we'd commonly associate with social media.
rootusrootus 3y ago
My phone has never really been the problem. I don't install frivolous apps, don't watch YouTube or TikTok, etc. The real problem for me is ... HN. Here I am. At work. With one browser tab wasting time on HN. Admittedly, though, I'm not totally lost. I'll check HN when I'm taking a break for some other reason, running a big suite of tests maybe, or like now, listening to our C-suite regale us with the exciting future of the company and how awesome we all are. Somehow they manage to do this while continuing to sound like they have no idea what to actually do next (and it's not a tiny company, ~5000 employees). But I digress.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  I to, here right now instead of writing PowerShell am on HN. Although, who really wants to write PowerShell anyway. It's hell. The S is silent.
  - vonjuice 3y ago
    I chuckled.
ap11071 3y ago
A few weeks ago, I watched a YouTube video [1] that helped me reduce my phone usage from 2-3 hours a day to less than 30 minutes. It made a significant difference in my life. Sharing the link here in case anyone needs a helpful guide. [1] [YouTube video](https://youtu.be/Ek2eo5lrZws?si=dotZxn-EttMOmF9W https://youtu.be/Ek2eo5lrZws?si=dotZxn-EttMOmF9W)
helboi4 3y ago
I find that all of the positive effects he's talking about of trying to cut down consciously eventually fade away after a while. I dislike how the article acts like he's become enlightened from one detox. I've been in this mode many times. This has been harder than dealing with a nicotine addiction for me.
marviel 3y ago
Recently, when I feel the urge to pick up my phone without a specific purpose in mind -- I force myself to write something down in my (physical, pen/paper) journal instead. It doesn't even have to be "why am I trying to pick up my phone right now," though it often becomes that. Analyzing how this makes me feel, I've found I am more calm throughout the day, and I attend to things with a bit more mindfulness / care.
karaterobot 3y ago
> I’m currently on my phone for 90 minutes a day. Five of those are spent on Instagram. I no longer feel addicted. I take it this is an improvement over the prior state of affairs, so that's great to hear. But I'd personally consider 90 minutes an awfully long time to spend on my phone every day. If I assume the author doesn't have a laptop they're also using, and their phone is their only computing device, that sounds like a victory large enough to write a followup article like this about. If not, I think I'd want to know whether they had just shifted their usage from one platform to another rather than actually decreasing the overall magnitude. If that's the case, I wouldn't consider it much of an improvement.
tech_ken 3y ago
> What’s the desire underneath the desire to check your phone? This seems like a big question that gets elided in discussions of social media addiction. My understanding of "classic" addictions (ex. substances) is that there's typically some initial romantic experience or period where a person kind of falls in love with this ideological version of the object of addiction ("chasing that first high", but with a wider definition of "first high" than simply the first time they took the drug). Maybe they spend a beautiful month in Paris drinking wine all day long and that forms the bedrock of the later addiction, as they try and recreate th e magic of that experience ad nauseum. I've never really tried to reconcile phone addiction with this pattern though, but if we are going to call it a true addiction we should probably attempt to square these things up. Identifying the underlying desire, rather than just modeling the phone addict as someone simply pressing a dopamine button, seems like a more productive approach to developing a healthier relationship to technology. Like in my case, my worst scrolling behaviors occur when I'm avoiding something that I find overwhelmingly stressful. When I'm enjoying the outside world I rarely reach for me phone, it's only when I'm uncomfortable or anxious that I open Reddit or Insta (or when I'm waiting for my brain to finish waking up). Maybe targeting this anxious-avoidance would help me end the behavior, rather than trying to behaviorally hack my way off the phone.
- rolph 3y ago
  F.O.M.O. fear of missing out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomo
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Definitely see how that's a factor in many cases, but I can see other possible explanations. For example, I used to be a real serious Twitter addict, but it wasn't really FOMO driving that IMO. My own post-hoc analysis is that it was a mixture of needing feel "in control" during a period of political upheaval, alongside a desperate desire to build a personal brand and receive recognition. There's lots of people and lots of software, I think the underlying motivations are going to be different for different pairings of the two.
- 3y ago
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I've struggled with a bad phone addiction, and my previous attempts at either going phoneless (or rather smartphoneless) failed because there were enough useful things I needed from my phone on a regular basis (e.g. maps, Uber/Lyft, Venmo, etc.) I think that after years of trying I finally have a system that has greatly reduced my "mindless scrolling" on my phone. I had previously set up "focus mode" to block apps, but I did it with the idea that I would be "in the zone" and thus blocked anything that could give a notification like the Messages app and GMail. The blocklist was too broad so I ended up just turning it off. Now I only block the apps that I use for "mindless doom scrolling", like the browser, any social media apps, shopping apps, etc. Of course then it's easy to just click the "use for 5 minutes" button, but I was amazed the amount of times I would just unconsciously open one of these apps whenever I felt the smallest tinge of boredom. It was at least a reminder to me "Do you really want to be looking at that now?" I'm not perfect know but I've come to enjoy being a little bored at times and forced to find something more interesting to do. I also banned my phone from my bedroom which vastly improved my insomnia symptoms.
- madmask 3y ago
  I think the key is blocking feeds. It’s totally ok to actively look for stuff online with a question or problem in mind. For me it becomes addictive when I am prompted by a feed.
Multiplayer 3y ago
Wait till these guys try the Apple headset.... oh the irony. I think the AVP (Apple Vision Pro) is incredible. I am wearing it... a LOT. I'm working, wandering around, playing, etc. I don't think I'm crazy either. It's not social media per se at the moment but it's definitely a major shift from not being "online". I'm wearing it so much I'm getting puffy bags under my eyes (hopefully temporary) There is a whole new set of issues and causation coming!
- VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  You don't look crazy, but it's definitely harming your social standing.
_uoud 3y ago
Yep, just like I wrote about my experience in my age of distractions post back during the COVID-times… It stayed on the front page for quite a while here on HN: https://www.lostbookofsales.com/age-of-distractions/ https://www.lostbookofsales.com/age-of-distractions/ I also mentioned the greyscale screen trick people bring up here, haha. Phones are huge contributor to this whole problem.
graphe 3y ago
I cracked my screen and didn't replace it. Ruins my experience for the better. Glad the writer stopped his anxiety and addiction... For now.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  iPhone 6 throttling update did this for me. The phone was borderline unusable.
Stephen_0xFF 3y ago
I think the crux of the issue is our brains looking to be occupied with easily digestible content. I removed Facebook a while ago but then replaced it with Reddit and X. I quickly removed them, but then it was like my brain was looking for something similar and I was on Neighbors and Telegram groups for a while. So I removed those too, but now I'm on HN more. I tell myself I would rather be working, and that working is more beneficial to me in the long run, but for some reason, it quickly opens a tab to HN when I'm stuck or tired. Rewiring my brain is harder than I imagined.
- orzig 3y ago
  Having gone through the same cycle, I've done some amount of acceptance. HN is least bad, as long as I don't get sucked into writing comments (oops). The total amount of time I 'waste' is really not huge, so I try not to stress about getting it to 0. YMMV, but worth considering.
  - keanebean86 3y ago
    I did a detox a few years ago. Just HN and maybe some Google news. Eventually I went back to reddit and it felt so weird. It took some time to get addicted to reddit again because it just wasn't as interesting. I really need to detox again because this stuff has ruined my attention span.
- dstroot 3y ago
  “Why, exactly, are we rendered so uncomfortable by concentrating on things that matter — the things we thought we wanted to do with our lives — that we’d rather flee into distractions, which, by definition, are what we don’t want to be doing with our lives? When you try to focus on something you deem important, you’re forced to face your limits, an experience that feels especially uncomfortable precisely because the task at hand is one you value so much.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
  - j4yav 3y ago
    Does he get to an answer in the book?
stmblast 3y ago
This is a great article. I think it's difficult to not be addicted with how much simple content there is out there that's easy to digest. TikTok, YT shorts and Instagram reels are pretty good examples of this.
wsintra2022 3y ago
That sugar addiction is the elephant in the room. What a history that drug has! We still ain’t had reparations for it.
h2odragon 3y ago
Gave up having a phone a year ago, when even the cheapest "prepaid" plans went to $30/mo minimum. I'm way out in the woods, anyway. Verizon ran a tower here I could talk to until a few months before I gave up phone; but then something happened and i'm told its an AT&T tower now. It didn't provide signal anymore, even in the front yard, most of the time. Having had several years of "phone don't work" is a great way to make switching to "no phone" easier. I just regret the money I spent all those years for a service i didn't really receive.
gwbas1c 3y ago
I mostly stopped using Facebook: I slowed down a few years ago, and generally stopped in early 2021. Now I probably open it every few months. But, I'm still looking at news frequently when I'm on the toilet, or if I'm trying to fill a few minutes. I do it instead of reaching for a magazine. I use Google's feed. It's... addictive... But at the same time, it's not endless. At a certain point the "news" is just the "olds," and if I'm reading the "news" for that long, it's time to switch to Kindle or find something educational.
andoando 3y ago
My interest in no phones is going back to the old days where you’d have to make plans to meet someone at sometime and be there next week with no communication in between, not having ease of access to every bit of information, not relying on maps, etc. It’s crazy how much having a phone changes things and it’s fun to think about living life in almost another world simply by getting rid of it.
weiliddat 3y ago
I'm trying to go smartphone-less, but a major blocker are services that rely on apps that are critical to my life, e.g. banking, insurance, transport. Some of these services don't even have alternatives and you MUST use an Android/iPhone to do basic operations like transferring money, logging in, or showing your ticket. Now that I mention it, it seems like the critical functionality that these apps provide are usually just credential holders, e.g. ticket / card, MFA auth that happen to be locked in a proprietary app. I really hope more services adopt standard credential/authentication mechanisms. Anyone happen to know a list of services, e.g. banking (US/EU-based) that don't require an app these days?
wt__ 3y ago
One addiction to watch out for is the desire to read articles about other people's attempts to conquer their phone addiction. They seemed to start about 2-3 years ago - surely we have passed the peak by now? In my experience you get a degree of dopamine from the inevitable schadenfreude felt reading of the author's difficulty or perceived "failure", but there is a steep law of diminishing returns when it comes to learning anything new, until eventually you realise this and that, even if you are not addicted to your phone, you are almost certainly addicted to something else yourself (e.g. Wordle, some podcast you could almost certainly live without, websites you would be ashamed to admit to using, damaging personal relationships, the spotting or collecting of pretty much any real or virtual object and so on.) The secret is to (a) tell yourself not to click on the stories in the first place and reward yourself for doing so (b) look but quickly scan them. Also, actually check who wrote the article, so you can decide whether or not you know or care who they are. My own phone tips are: - deleting apps (especially anything social but also YouTube and anything that feeds you random content - the advice from another commenter about considering the business model of the app is good) - inserting gaps between apps on your home screen so it's not cluttered (iPhone users: do a search for "Invisible iOS Home Screen icon Template" - it's ridiculous Apple don't let you add blank spaces, but we are (still) where we are) - turning all the badges/counters off - massively pruning notifications - having a mobile browser home screen filled with icons for 'meaningful/useful' favourite sites - using text only news sites (less distracting) - placing the phone face down or across the room - keeping it in silent mode the entire time - putting it in airplane mode at night - books/audiobooks (because more effort's gone into them but also they're longer, so there are far less frequent occasions when you have to decide/browse what to listen to next) - personally I'd also recommend turning screen time etc OFF - on iOS at least you can get a decent enough idea of usage just from looking at the battery page and time limits inevitably never work. I'm aware if I was truly free of any addictive behaviour myself I'd have skipped writing a comment about it, but I don't comment on this issue that often and the above have genuinely worked for me for quite a long time.
deleted 3y ago
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Rudism 3y ago
I used a Light Phone II for a few years, which is essentially an expensive e-ink dumbphone (it runs Android under the hood, but you can't actually run any apps outside of some minimal built-in ones for stuff like directions and music). My main gripe was that I like to listen to music and podcasts while I walk, and the LP2's apps for that are rather lackluster (nearly to the point of unusability for me). It drove me back to my smartphone a few times (a OnePlus something-or-other), which would usually last a few weeks before I'd go back to the LP2 again because the smartphone was too distracting (like I'd pop open a web browser to look up an actor while watching a movie, then getting sucked down a rabbit hole and missing the whole movie before I realized it was happening). I'm trying a new experiment now--I've got a smartphone again but it's a super tiny one (a Jelly Star which has a 3 inch screen). It's very annoying to actually use for typing or reading because it's so small. It's only been a month or so, but so far I'm finding it's a very nice compromise. I can listen to all my podcasts and music using my normal Android apps, and I can fire up a web browser in a pinch, but it doesn't suck up my attention because it's so uncomfortable to use for any period of time.
wakasaka 3y ago
After many years trying to reduce my phone usage, I think the best way is to install a MMORPG such as wow classic or similar. I barely touch my phone now.
- _benj 3y ago
  this made me chuckle, but I'm with you on that! The times that I've been deep into something, either a project that enjoyed a lot (like writing a CHIP-8 emu, that was fun!) or a book that I couldn't put down, or a video game that I just to play (Ark?) I didn't even cared about my phone!
lrvick 3y ago
No phone for 3 years now. I am so much happier. Every excuse you have in your brain right now is moot because we survived the 90s, and with probably higher attention spans.
- npteljes 3y ago
  I have several excuses: one, yes this worked in the 90s, but as smartphones shape the culture now, they are a soft, sometimes hard requirement, now that they are widespread. We did fine without the internet and credit cards too, but not culture, business, life relies on it. Second, surviving is a very low bar. Maybe it's not such an excuse to set it a bit higher. Living organisms survive all kinds of ailments, abuse, deficits and other bad situations. Yet, it's not "fine" to inflict these on each other at all. Third, what works for one, doesn't necessarily work for another. It's great to find something that's working, but humans are different, their situations are different, they are at different stages of life, and so, advice in general is not very universally applicable.
pizzafeelsright 3y ago
My biggest help was switching to gray scale. A lot of the entertainment value of scrolling videos and photos goes away.
spacecadet 3y ago
I tried this for over a year back in 2011. The hardest things for me were maps, I had become reliant on mobile mapping... and of course friends and family complaining I dont have imessage or facetime.
johuatench 3y ago
[flagged]
DoItToMe81 3y ago
This is just a narcissist making a histrionic show over basic adult self control. I'm astounded the Guardian has such low standards.
blendo 3y ago
I expect that hundreds of years ago there was also much gnashing of teeth about people overusing the new technology of literacy.

213 points by thm 3y ago

> "Do you want to be my girlfriend?" I ask Almond one day. "I already am. That's what this is" Spot on. Sometimes that's all it takes, someone from the real world to remind you that you're OK, that _this_ is living, that it's good enough. After that the unreality at the inside of digital perdition starts to unravel and dissolve. The mind starts to wander back to that most highly addictive of all things, reality.

isometricid 3y ago

``` Thief of my life? No one gets to steal my life. Unfortunately, I am now addicted to sugar. ```

ghaff 3y ago

It seems there are some distinct modes of phone use that are pretty different: - Social media/news/etc. scrolling - Contact with friends you're meeting or otherwise being reachable - Utility apps for parking, travel, GPS, etc. - Camera - Music/podcasts Probably others.

ajmurmann 3y ago
The distinction between social media and communicating with friends is a interesting, but important one. I have some Signal groups that at times have huge bursts of activity and I haven't met everyone in them in person. Yet it's totally different from "social media" like Facebook. This seems obvious, but 2008 Facebook was closer to my Signal groups than current Facebook or Twitter. I want to say it's the news feed that made Facebook problematic, but maybe it's the volume and that there always is something new?
- ghaff 3y ago
  I have Facebook and have a fair variety of people on it but it's mostly dip in/dip out/here are photos of my trip. Mostly use email/SMS/iMessage if it's arranging a get-together with a closer overall group. With Facebook, I think it is partly the feed but it's also that I've accumulated a fair number of mostly professional colleagues and friends-of-friends over time. Some classmates I've stayed in various degrees of touch with.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
The one I am loving in recent years is searching if an item is in stock at a store nearby and in many cases, seeing the location of the item in the store itself. Not to mention being able to compare prices and see reviews or other details.

csdvrx 3y ago

My quirk is being phoneless. I have an android phone, but unless I'm flying, it stays at home, in a drawer. It's certainly not for everyone, as apps are used for almost everything, but I've found it helps me achieve deep focus by introducing just a little bit of friction, and forcing me to be more "in the present".

hot_gril 3y ago
I carry a phone everywhere, but all the apps companies want you to install seem to add more friction if anything. Like, I have a credit card, why the heck would I use Apple Pay, let alone some store-specific payment app? Even if there's some fancy digital restaurant line system, that works via SMS, I'm not installing the Olive Garden app.

k__ 3y ago

I tend to use media (games, chats, dating apps, social media, etc.) excessively (for 4-8h a day) However, since I never miss them when I have better things to do, it never fits the definition of addiction. On the other hand, I also don't drink, smoke, or consumer caffein without a purpose, so maybe I just don't tend to get addicted.

blueflow 3y ago
Theory (open for discussion): With ADHD you don't get addicted, the excesses are mostly to fill the boredom between the better things.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  This is just plain wrong. People with ADHD are much more likely to develop addiction than people who don't. Most of the addicts I know, including myself, have it.
  - mordae 3y ago
    My experience is the opposite. I don't get addicted. Obsessed with a topic for a while? Sure! Compulsively repeating some behaviors, like checking HN? That's me! But once I get distracted by something interesting, it's like those never existed. They just lose their appeal.
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      [dead]
  - findyourexit 3y ago
    ADHD is a pretty broad brush. While I’ve no doubt that some instances fuel a predisposition for addiction, I’ve seen exactly the opposite tendencies exhibited also.
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

Triphibian 3y ago

I am over a year in to using a Light Phone II as my daily driver. There are many inconveniences, but the change in my life has been worth it.

thisischarbs 3y ago
What's THE biggest inconvenience would you say? And do you find yourself using more of your laptop/computer to stay on top of things?
- Triphibian 3y ago
  The biggest inconvenience are businesses that insist on an app. I bought tickets to a hockey game and couldn't attend because the venue doesn't honor printed tickets. When I have to Zelle my mechanic I do it from my laptop at home before I leave the house -- good thing I trust him. I "keep up" on news via my laptop -- which I keep open on my desk. I check my papers and Hackernews, etc throughout the day. I have a print subscription to the New Yorker.
  - VyseofArcadia 3y ago
    > The biggest inconvenience are businesses that insist on an app. I bought tickets to a hockey game and couldn't attend because the venue doesn't honor printed tickets. That kind of thing is my biggest concern with going smartphoneless. It seems like more and more businesses assume a smartphone as a prerequisite. I would really love for there to be a "you have to allow customers without a smart phone" law. I don't want to be excluded from society because the $1,000 chunk of incredibly advanced electronics I bought a few years ago stopped getting updates. I hope you at least got a refund on the tickets. > When I have to Zelle my mechanic I do it from my laptop at home before I leave the house -- good thing I trust him. Cash?
    - Triphibian 3y ago
      The incident really made me double down on my commitment to using a dumb phone. And yeah, cash is always an option, but he did an engine replacement for me. That was a lot of dough to be walking around with. Another places that punishes me for not having a phone is Whole Foods, I never get my discount for having Prime. They say I can use my phone number but it never works. I refuse to put more effort into it.

forgotmypw100 3y ago

Reading this makes me realise I have a healthy relationship with my phone. I don't have any "social" apps installed, or "scroller" apps (Insta, TikTok, and things like that). I don't pick up my phone during the day while working, and in the evening it sits next to my keys by the door. Being present is easy. On my tablet, I have my RSS reader which produces about 30 entries per day, of which I read 2 or 3 articles, and then I'm done for the day. If I put down the tablet to do something else, I have zero experience of "FOMO" because blog articles are experienced at a glacial time scale. But also on my work laptop, we have Slack and Email and such on my laptop (only, no hand-held devices), and none of them have notifications enabled. Also, once I've read my mail to inbox zero, I close that tab. Then I'll open Slack (not both at once), and once I've caught up I close it. Then I do some productive work. I'll open them later when it's convenient for me. I think that's an attitude I developed at some point in the past few years. All modern Internet-based tech wants your engagement, full of dark patterns (like making things disappear if you see it once or lift your finger), and you have to protect yourself from that. Choose devices, apps, services that keep you in control. Discard the ones that don't.

notyourwork 3y ago
These are all great tips. Especially closing slack/email and disabling notifications. I struggled with these for awhile, growing up during the IRC, ICQ, AIM era, messaging always felt like a requirement of using a computer. Putting them away for focus time is critical.
sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]
JKCalhoun 3y ago
I'm similar to you where my phone is bare bones, often not within reach. I do take it with me wherever I go — often it is my wallet. Maps, Camera, Notes and Messages are about the only four apps I use on it (yeah, Health and Weather and the aforementioned Wallet — Apple Pay, actually - from time to time). When I find myself out and about, standing in line or otherwise bored, I don't pull out my phone as I see so many others do — there is nothing interesting to me on the phone. But I also turn 60 this year so, for me, my laptop is my "phone". It stays at home of course (except on trips) but it is where I do all my browsing, coding, image editing, etc. And to divorce myself from my laptop would be a hard task. A remote friend of mine checks email/messages only in the morning when he gets up. Sometimes I have been up when he texts me and I reply within seconds — only to get his reply to mine the following morning — like playing chess by mail. (Sometimes he never responds at all ... I think he finds connectivity to be bad for his mental health and I respect that.) I would like to be more like him — limit my browsing to the morning; essentially turn off the WiFi by 9:00 AM so to speak. Unfortunately when I am finishing a task (perhaps an hour out in the garage building a virtual pinball machine) I use the break time (perhaps a cup of tea) to open the laptop and see what insanity the US politicians are up to this hour of the day....

zikduruqe 3y ago

For almost a decade I worked with mobile devices; their certification, R&D, testing. At any given time I would have a dozen devices on me to test out in the field or demo units prior to sale. Now that I no longer do this for a living, I seldom if ever carry a phone with me. I don't do social media, I don't watch movies on a phone, navigation I just look up where I want to go on a map and just drive there. The only connectivity I have outside the home is my Apple Watch Cellular for those random "pick up bread" messages, weather, and to tell the time. It is so liberating.

Loughla 3y ago
>navigation I just look up where I want to go on a map and just drive there. This is one of the two reasons I believe I cannot get rid of a phone. After getting lost in a not great neighborhood in the 1990's and getting jumped, I have pretty severe anxiety about travel to places that I am unfamiliar with. GPS has been a godsend. And pictures of my kids. There is no more convenient way to take constant pictures and videos of my kids than with my phone. I don't remember entire years of my life, and therefore their lives. But I have pictures and videos to remind me!
- syntheticnature 3y ago
  From my observations, people's innate ability to relate a map to the world varies. There are some studies attempting to tie this to gender, but my experience is that is not a hard line at all. I'm sure training is a component, of course, but some folks do not tie the abstraction to the real world well at all. I seem to be good at it, but no one in my wife's family is, so during family get-togethers on that side I'm usually driving or navigating. The fact I can retrace a path I took two years prior from memory is an astonishing feat to them.
  - edgarvaldes 3y ago
    When I'm inside the house (any house, but including my own), I often point to a direction when talking about a nearby place. People laugh and correct me because the place I'm talking about is to the north, not to the south as I point out with my finger. I can't go back to a place I was last week without asking for directions. I walk and turn the wrong corner in familiar environments, etc. I love GPS now.

slothtrop 3y ago

At least as devs/tech people go, the fixation on phones seems a bit off the mark as we're always on our machines. I use my phone for menial phone-stuff in addition to reminders/lists, but on my machine I can fall into a bad habit of too much reddit or HN (I never use fb or twitter). I guess the phone issue makes sense for those who have dedicated work machines that aren't used for any personal use whatsoever.

bsder 3y ago

Dude found a girlfriend--now spends way less time online. Isn't that kind of ... normal? Most guys I've known generally cut down their "find a girlfriend" activities dramatically once they actually find one.

simonbarker87 3y ago

I managed to make my phone boring in the past few months and it’s delightful. I removed all apps that need my engagement to make money. It took time for me to realise why I was picking my phone up and then wondering why. My brain was reflexively reaching for my phone as it was bored (or anticipating becoming bored?) but then when I concisely looked at my phone I thought “well there’s nothing to do here why did I pick it up?” It’s taken a couple of months but now I rarely find my phone in my hand without a conscious reason to have it there.

nytesky 3y ago
It’s not just the apps. I know I have a problem with checking Hacker News and another very low tech discussion site (local to my area, basically a 2003 website). The discussions are very pertinent to my daily life, unvarnished, and the clientele of note (kind of like Hacker News I guess). For me it’s because I think I have very little time for real friends as a working parent; I text old friends from college and such, but my daily life is lonely outside my family, and logistics and chores consume a lot of that time. More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- chii 3y ago
  I dont see a problem with HN in of it self. The problem is only when you spend disproportionate amount of time on HN (or twitter), vs other activities.
- macNchz 3y ago
  > More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit. I’ve enjoyed discussion boards long before smartphones, but have been spending more time scrolling them on my phone than I’d like since 2020. This point, along with the author’s discussion of “the desire underneath the desire” is making me think that I’m actually just missing the types of conversations I’d have with coworkers at lunch or over happy hour beers before I started to work from home full time. Most of my close friends are not programmers or involved in startups, so this sort of makes sense to me as a missing social outlet.

isolli 3y ago

For a while I was tempted to get a minimalist phone like the Punkt MP02 [0] or Mudita Pure [1], but in the end I could not give up on: - A camera (to snap pictures of our kids) - A map for navigation - Authentication apps for banking There seem to be a few success stories in the comments. I'd be curious to hear how they made up for the missing features I listed... [0] https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/ [1] https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure/ https://mudita.com/products/phones/mudita-pure/

pdxandi 3y ago
These are precisely the reasons I want a smarter phone. Taking pictures of my kids and navigating around town. We also listen to children’s stories in the car using Spotify so that too. Banking I could probably work around but it’s possible I’m just not realizing how much I use my phone for these types of things. That said, I have zero social media or scroller apps, outside of HN.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
I've adopted a different approach. Going fully offline makes life really difficult, so I decided to basically compartmentalize my online life. I have different user accounts for different tasks, with privoxy set up to block irrelevant network traffic . Admittedly I mostly use a desktop computer for my online life so it's tailored toward that, but I did configure my phone to use a proxy as well it's been working pretty well. Means I can cut back on "mindless" social media use without having to cut back on intentional use. I did a write-up here: https://www.marginalia.nu/log/99_context/ https://www.marginalia.nu/log/99_context/
vundercind 3y ago
It’s a document scanner, a document-signing device (we did basically the entire house search, offer, and closing process all on our phones, last time), flashlight (I use this daily), camera that can do “live photos” (they’re magical, I have zero interest in a camera that doesn’t do that), a check-depositing terminal, a tape measure or level (in a pinch), a note-taking device, and so much more. Music player. Alarm clock. A credit card. My phone is without a doubt the single most-useful electronic gadget in my house, and it’s not a close call. My desktop machine and laptop are nothing but toys unless I’m building stuff for computers. (My tablet is the second most-useful, and again, it’s not a close call)

dallasg3 3y ago

Almond?

weinzierl 3y ago

I have a similar experience. I lived almost three years without Google and Amazon[1] before a global pandemic changed my life in a way that did not make this sustainable anymore. Admittedly I considered ending the experiment even before the pandemic hit and it is very likely I would have done so. Also I deliberately did not pick up the abstinence again. Despite all that, I would never call that phase a failure. It gave me a lot of confidence that life without these services is well possible and that it was not much of a sacrifice for myself. What it thought me, however, is that it very well was a nuisance for others sometimes[2]. And that is the reason I ultimately decided not to continue, but I believe I use the services of both companies much more deliberately than before. [1] Why these two of all things? In 2015 or 2016 I sat down and classified all the services I was using by how much valuable data they collected about me and how much value they provided in return. These were the two services that lost. It might seem strange at first but the data Amazon has about me is a ton more valuable than the data Facebook has. I decide what I put on my profile there, which friends I add and if I want to use messenger. I feel I do not have that choice with Amazon - I order what I need, but that still paints a pretty accurate picture of me. I'm not sure if my analysis today would come to the same conclusion, but that was my thinking back then. [2] This is even more true for WhatsApp, but there I'm still steady.

mofeien 3y ago

For one month now I have mobile data turned off on my phone. I have started reading much more on the subway since the main distraction is gone, and there are surprisingly few drawbacks. Of course, YMMV. What started as a one week experiment quickly turned into a month and now I'm thinking about getting a cheaper data plan, since I'll only be using it for emergencies.

hot_gril 3y ago
Yes, the only thing I can think of needing mobile data for is navigation, and that's not too hard to solve either.

webdoodle 3y ago

How long was he in 'phone detox'? From what I gather, only 2 months, which isn't nearly long enough. I've been 100% phone free for 4 years now, and was 95% free 2 years prior to that (only powering it on for work). I can personally say that anything less than a year is probably not long enough to even dent the addiction, and anything less that 2 won't teach you the discipline to stay phone free.

barbarr 3y ago
Seconding this. I was phone free for an entire year, only to get re-addicted a few months later.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

runamuck 3y ago

I recommend turning off all notifications and then configuring the phone to allow texts/ calls from "Favorite Contacts Only."

msluyter 3y ago

A lot of articles on reducing phone use coming out at the moment. For example (older, but recently updated: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/break-up-with-your-phone/ https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/break-up-with-you...) I think a lot about the fact that we carry on our persons the most addictive device ever created. I've recently adopted the grey scale trick -- set your phone to grey scale display mode. It works pretty well! Of course, I can always disable it if severely tempted, but it creates another hoop to jump through. I also have one of the phone safes, which I use sporadically. Ironically, having an Apple watch makes the phone safe more effective, because I can lock up the phone but still answer critical calls if necessary. Weird that in the 23rd century, a lot of us are replaying Oddyseus, collectively tying ourselves to the mast.

HPsquared 3y ago
Cellular smartwatch (Pixel watch in my case) is great for minimizing distractions while retaining basics: calendar, note-taking, basic messaging, phone calls, maps, music (via Bluetooth) and payments. But WITHOUT the very distracting web browser and YouTube. Battery life can be pretty poor though if the phone is turned off, you really can't listen to music all day for instance. I also use greyscale mode on phone, can set a keyboard shortcut. Some apps are also just far too colourful - e.g. Duolingo - and look better in greyscale I think. Phone can be a productivity machine too though with a Bluetooth keyboard, phone stand. Can have full desktop environment with a keyboard and mouse and VNC client.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  Seconding smartwatches. There's no reason to habitually check my phone (and risk getting distracted) when my watch tells me if I have notifications. My watch is basically a read-only beeper for high-priority notifications, so there's no fear of missing out on something important. I don't even need a cellular watch. Just having the phone inconveniently nearby (e.g., in a backpack, or on the bathroom counter instead of a nightstand) adds enough friction to eliminate mindless phone use.
  - 3y ago

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

I mainly use my phone to "waste time", somehow I've gotten into a lifestyle where I end up waiting for other people a lot to do something - codependency, woo - and tend to browse Reddit while doing so. It's fine if it's a few minutes, up to half an hour, but after that I start to think wtf I'm doing with my time. Mind you, I'm not alone, the other two people living here do the same, the joys of ADHD I suppose.

captainclam 3y ago

I've never used social media or had a "problem" with my phone. So I used to read articles like this a little smugly, but I'm growing increasingly discomfited by the notion that I'm...out of touch..? Yeah, it's probably overall a positive thing that I've never been hooked on instagram, but it's also a language/shared experience with which I have no point of contact. I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. And it's great to be weird! I just hope that it doesn't impact potential connections in the future.

thfuran 3y ago
>I'm a little worried that not having a social media presence /at all/ is going to turn or has turned from mildly admirable (such restraint!) to...weird. Well, I have some good news: here you are, on social media, having a presence. Admittedly, it's a bit more niche than Instagram.
- captainclam 3y ago
  Haha, good point. I'm not a hopeless case after all.
- browningstreet 3y ago
  National borders and most romantic dates won’t ask for your HN profile but they will ask for all the other major social networks. Not everything with an account and a comment system is a Social Network to lay-people and first encounter authorities.
- dgfitz 3y ago
  Before the abused and tired notion of "social media" was coined, this was called... a forum. Nothing "media" about it.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    I think it still is. A discussion forum like this lacks a number of features we'd commonly associate with social media.

rootusrootus 3y ago

My phone has never really been the problem. I don't install frivolous apps, don't watch YouTube or TikTok, etc. The real problem for me is ... HN. Here I am. At work. With one browser tab wasting time on HN. Admittedly, though, I'm not totally lost. I'll check HN when I'm taking a break for some other reason, running a big suite of tests maybe, or like now, listening to our C-suite regale us with the exciting future of the company and how awesome we all are. Somehow they manage to do this while continuing to sound like they have no idea what to actually do next (and it's not a tiny company, ~5000 employees). But I digress.

doublerabbit 3y ago
I to, here right now instead of writing PowerShell am on HN. Although, who really wants to write PowerShell anyway. It's hell. The S is silent.
- vonjuice 3y ago
  I chuckled.

ap11071 3y ago

A few weeks ago, I watched a YouTube video [1] that helped me reduce my phone usage from 2-3 hours a day to less than 30 minutes. It made a significant difference in my life. Sharing the link here in case anyone needs a helpful guide. [1] [YouTube video](https://youtu.be/Ek2eo5lrZws?si=dotZxn-EttMOmF9W https://youtu.be/Ek2eo5lrZws?si=dotZxn-EttMOmF9W)

helboi4 3y ago

I find that all of the positive effects he's talking about of trying to cut down consciously eventually fade away after a while. I dislike how the article acts like he's become enlightened from one detox. I've been in this mode many times. This has been harder than dealing with a nicotine addiction for me.

marviel 3y ago

Recently, when I feel the urge to pick up my phone without a specific purpose in mind -- I force myself to write something down in my (physical, pen/paper) journal instead. It doesn't even have to be "why am I trying to pick up my phone right now," though it often becomes that. Analyzing how this makes me feel, I've found I am more calm throughout the day, and I attend to things with a bit more mindfulness / care.

karaterobot 3y ago

> I’m currently on my phone for 90 minutes a day. Five of those are spent on Instagram. I no longer feel addicted. I take it this is an improvement over the prior state of affairs, so that's great to hear. But I'd personally consider 90 minutes an awfully long time to spend on my phone every day. If I assume the author doesn't have a laptop they're also using, and their phone is their only computing device, that sounds like a victory large enough to write a followup article like this about. If not, I think I'd want to know whether they had just shifted their usage from one platform to another rather than actually decreasing the overall magnitude. If that's the case, I wouldn't consider it much of an improvement.

tech_ken 3y ago

> What’s the desire underneath the desire to check your phone? This seems like a big question that gets elided in discussions of social media addiction. My understanding of "classic" addictions (ex. substances) is that there's typically some initial romantic experience or period where a person kind of falls in love with this ideological version of the object of addiction ("chasing that first high", but with a wider definition of "first high" than simply the first time they took the drug). Maybe they spend a beautiful month in Paris drinking wine all day long and that forms the bedrock of the later addiction, as they try and recreate th e magic of that experience ad nauseum. I've never really tried to reconcile phone addiction with this pattern though, but if we are going to call it a true addiction we should probably attempt to square these things up. Identifying the underlying desire, rather than just modeling the phone addict as someone simply pressing a dopamine button, seems like a more productive approach to developing a healthier relationship to technology. Like in my case, my worst scrolling behaviors occur when I'm avoiding something that I find overwhelmingly stressful. When I'm enjoying the outside world I rarely reach for me phone, it's only when I'm uncomfortable or anxious that I open Reddit or Insta (or when I'm waiting for my brain to finish waking up). Maybe targeting this anxious-avoidance would help me end the behavior, rather than trying to behaviorally hack my way off the phone.

rolph 3y ago
F.O.M.O. fear of missing out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomo
- tech_ken 3y ago
  Definitely see how that's a factor in many cases, but I can see other possible explanations. For example, I used to be a real serious Twitter addict, but it wasn't really FOMO driving that IMO. My own post-hoc analysis is that it was a mixture of needing feel "in control" during a period of political upheaval, alongside a desperate desire to build a personal brand and receive recognition. There's lots of people and lots of software, I think the underlying motivations are going to be different for different pairings of the two.
3y ago

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I've struggled with a bad phone addiction, and my previous attempts at either going phoneless (or rather smartphoneless) failed because there were enough useful things I needed from my phone on a regular basis (e.g. maps, Uber/Lyft, Venmo, etc.) I think that after years of trying I finally have a system that has greatly reduced my "mindless scrolling" on my phone. I had previously set up "focus mode" to block apps, but I did it with the idea that I would be "in the zone" and thus blocked anything that could give a notification like the Messages app and GMail. The blocklist was too broad so I ended up just turning it off. Now I only block the apps that I use for "mindless doom scrolling", like the browser, any social media apps, shopping apps, etc. Of course then it's easy to just click the "use for 5 minutes" button, but I was amazed the amount of times I would just unconsciously open one of these apps whenever I felt the smallest tinge of boredom. It was at least a reminder to me "Do you really want to be looking at that now?" I'm not perfect know but I've come to enjoy being a little bored at times and forced to find something more interesting to do. I also banned my phone from my bedroom which vastly improved my insomnia symptoms.

madmask 3y ago
I think the key is blocking feeds. It’s totally ok to actively look for stuff online with a question or problem in mind. For me it becomes addictive when I am prompted by a feed.

Multiplayer 3y ago

Wait till these guys try the Apple headset.... oh the irony. I think the AVP (Apple Vision Pro) is incredible. I am wearing it... a LOT. I'm working, wandering around, playing, etc. I don't think I'm crazy either. It's not social media per se at the moment but it's definitely a major shift from not being "online". I'm wearing it so much I'm getting puffy bags under my eyes (hopefully temporary) There is a whole new set of issues and causation coming!

VoodooJuJu 3y ago
You don't look crazy, but it's definitely harming your social standing.

_uoud 3y ago

Yep, just like I wrote about my experience in my age of distractions post back during the COVID-times… It stayed on the front page for quite a while here on HN: https://www.lostbookofsales.com/age-of-distractions/ https://www.lostbookofsales.com/age-of-distractions/ I also mentioned the greyscale screen trick people bring up here, haha. Phones are huge contributor to this whole problem.

graphe 3y ago

I cracked my screen and didn't replace it. Ruins my experience for the better. Glad the writer stopped his anxiety and addiction... For now.

hot_gril 3y ago
iPhone 6 throttling update did this for me. The phone was borderline unusable.

Stephen_0xFF 3y ago

I think the crux of the issue is our brains looking to be occupied with easily digestible content. I removed Facebook a while ago but then replaced it with Reddit and X. I quickly removed them, but then it was like my brain was looking for something similar and I was on Neighbors and Telegram groups for a while. So I removed those too, but now I'm on HN more. I tell myself I would rather be working, and that working is more beneficial to me in the long run, but for some reason, it quickly opens a tab to HN when I'm stuck or tired. Rewiring my brain is harder than I imagined.

orzig 3y ago
Having gone through the same cycle, I've done some amount of acceptance. HN is least bad, as long as I don't get sucked into writing comments (oops). The total amount of time I 'waste' is really not huge, so I try not to stress about getting it to 0. YMMV, but worth considering.
- keanebean86 3y ago
  I did a detox a few years ago. Just HN and maybe some Google news. Eventually I went back to reddit and it felt so weird. It took some time to get addicted to reddit again because it just wasn't as interesting. I really need to detox again because this stuff has ruined my attention span.
dstroot 3y ago
“Why, exactly, are we rendered so uncomfortable by concentrating on things that matter — the things we thought we wanted to do with our lives — that we’d rather flee into distractions, which, by definition, are what we don’t want to be doing with our lives? When you try to focus on something you deem important, you’re forced to face your limits, an experience that feels especially uncomfortable precisely because the task at hand is one you value so much.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
- j4yav 3y ago
  Does he get to an answer in the book?

stmblast 3y ago

This is a great article. I think it's difficult to not be addicted with how much simple content there is out there that's easy to digest. TikTok, YT shorts and Instagram reels are pretty good examples of this.

wsintra2022 3y ago

That sugar addiction is the elephant in the room. What a history that drug has! We still ain’t had reparations for it.

h2odragon 3y ago

Gave up having a phone a year ago, when even the cheapest "prepaid" plans went to $30/mo minimum. I'm way out in the woods, anyway. Verizon ran a tower here I could talk to until a few months before I gave up phone; but then something happened and i'm told its an AT&T tower now. It didn't provide signal anymore, even in the front yard, most of the time. Having had several years of "phone don't work" is a great way to make switching to "no phone" easier. I just regret the money I spent all those years for a service i didn't really receive.

gwbas1c 3y ago

I mostly stopped using Facebook: I slowed down a few years ago, and generally stopped in early 2021. Now I probably open it every few months. But, I'm still looking at news frequently when I'm on the toilet, or if I'm trying to fill a few minutes. I do it instead of reaching for a magazine. I use Google's feed. It's... addictive... But at the same time, it's not endless. At a certain point the "news" is just the "olds," and if I'm reading the "news" for that long, it's time to switch to Kindle or find something educational.

andoando 3y ago

My interest in no phones is going back to the old days where you’d have to make plans to meet someone at sometime and be there next week with no communication in between, not having ease of access to every bit of information, not relying on maps, etc. It’s crazy how much having a phone changes things and it’s fun to think about living life in almost another world simply by getting rid of it.

weiliddat 3y ago

I'm trying to go smartphone-less, but a major blocker are services that rely on apps that are critical to my life, e.g. banking, insurance, transport. Some of these services don't even have alternatives and you MUST use an Android/iPhone to do basic operations like transferring money, logging in, or showing your ticket. Now that I mention it, it seems like the critical functionality that these apps provide are usually just credential holders, e.g. ticket / card, MFA auth that happen to be locked in a proprietary app. I really hope more services adopt standard credential/authentication mechanisms. Anyone happen to know a list of services, e.g. banking (US/EU-based) that don't require an app these days?

wt__ 3y ago

One addiction to watch out for is the desire to read articles about other people's attempts to conquer their phone addiction. They seemed to start about 2-3 years ago - surely we have passed the peak by now? In my experience you get a degree of dopamine from the inevitable schadenfreude felt reading of the author's difficulty or perceived "failure", but there is a steep law of diminishing returns when it comes to learning anything new, until eventually you realise this and that, even if you are not addicted to your phone, you are almost certainly addicted to something else yourself (e.g. Wordle, some podcast you could almost certainly live without, websites you would be ashamed to admit to using, damaging personal relationships, the spotting or collecting of pretty much any real or virtual object and so on.) The secret is to (a) tell yourself not to click on the stories in the first place and reward yourself for doing so (b) look but quickly scan them. Also, actually check who wrote the article, so you can decide whether or not you know or care who they are. My own phone tips are: - deleting apps (especially anything social but also YouTube and anything that feeds you random content - the advice from another commenter about considering the business model of the app is good) - inserting gaps between apps on your home screen so it's not cluttered (iPhone users: do a search for "Invisible iOS Home Screen icon Template" - it's ridiculous Apple don't let you add blank spaces, but we are (still) where we are) - turning all the badges/counters off - massively pruning notifications - having a mobile browser home screen filled with icons for 'meaningful/useful' favourite sites - using text only news sites (less distracting) - placing the phone face down or across the room - keeping it in silent mode the entire time - putting it in airplane mode at night - books/audiobooks (because more effort's gone into them but also they're longer, so there are far less frequent occasions when you have to decide/browse what to listen to next) - personally I'd also recommend turning screen time etc OFF - on iOS at least you can get a decent enough idea of usage just from looking at the battery page and time limits inevitably never work. I'm aware if I was truly free of any addictive behaviour myself I'd have skipped writing a comment about it, but I don't comment on this issue that often and the above have genuinely worked for me for quite a long time.

deleted 3y ago

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Rudism 3y ago

I used a Light Phone II for a few years, which is essentially an expensive e-ink dumbphone (it runs Android under the hood, but you can't actually run any apps outside of some minimal built-in ones for stuff like directions and music). My main gripe was that I like to listen to music and podcasts while I walk, and the LP2's apps for that are rather lackluster (nearly to the point of unusability for me). It drove me back to my smartphone a few times (a OnePlus something-or-other), which would usually last a few weeks before I'd go back to the LP2 again because the smartphone was too distracting (like I'd pop open a web browser to look up an actor while watching a movie, then getting sucked down a rabbit hole and missing the whole movie before I realized it was happening). I'm trying a new experiment now--I've got a smartphone again but it's a super tiny one (a Jelly Star which has a 3 inch screen). It's very annoying to actually use for typing or reading because it's so small. It's only been a month or so, but so far I'm finding it's a very nice compromise. I can listen to all my podcasts and music using my normal Android apps, and I can fire up a web browser in a pinch, but it doesn't suck up my attention because it's so uncomfortable to use for any period of time.

wakasaka 3y ago

After many years trying to reduce my phone usage, I think the best way is to install a MMORPG such as wow classic or similar. I barely touch my phone now.

_benj 3y ago
this made me chuckle, but I'm with you on that! The times that I've been deep into something, either a project that enjoyed a lot (like writing a CHIP-8 emu, that was fun!) or a book that I couldn't put down, or a video game that I just to play (Ark?) I didn't even cared about my phone!

lrvick 3y ago

No phone for 3 years now. I am so much happier. Every excuse you have in your brain right now is moot because we survived the 90s, and with probably higher attention spans.

npteljes 3y ago
I have several excuses: one, yes this worked in the 90s, but as smartphones shape the culture now, they are a soft, sometimes hard requirement, now that they are widespread. We did fine without the internet and credit cards too, but not culture, business, life relies on it. Second, surviving is a very low bar. Maybe it's not such an excuse to set it a bit higher. Living organisms survive all kinds of ailments, abuse, deficits and other bad situations. Yet, it's not "fine" to inflict these on each other at all. Third, what works for one, doesn't necessarily work for another. It's great to find something that's working, but humans are different, their situations are different, they are at different stages of life, and so, advice in general is not very universally applicable.

pizzafeelsright 3y ago

My biggest help was switching to gray scale. A lot of the entertainment value of scrolling videos and photos goes away.

spacecadet 3y ago

I tried this for over a year back in 2011. The hardest things for me were maps, I had become reliant on mobile mapping... and of course friends and family complaining I dont have imessage or facetime.

johuatench 3y ago

[flagged]

DoItToMe81 3y ago

This is just a narcissist making a histrionic show over basic adult self control. I'm astounded the Guardian has such low standards.

blendo 3y ago

I expect that hundreds of years ago there was also much gnashing of teeth about people overusing the new technology of literacy.