5 ms·

My Month Without a Smartphone

57 points by dotcoma 2y ago

salesynerd 2y ago
I think most of us have gone through this rollercoaster. The iPhone was my first smartphone and I was like a kid in a toy store. I simply couldn't get enough of discovering new apps in new categories and the instant access to all the news, posts, etc. that I wanted. Luckily for me, I was never hooked on the social media apps. In fact, I deleted my Facebook account when it was at its peak. My crack/dopamine/heroin has been news and related apps. At one point, I was consuming content from 15-20 news sites on a daily basis. Likewise, I was heavily browsing Hacker News and LinkedIn. However, as I turned 50, I took stock of my habits and how they are impacting my health, especially eyesight and sleep. I decided something needs to change. So, I have uninstalled all my time-wasting apps and have installed the mLauncher from F-Droid. Also, I now read books mostly on my Kobo. These are small changes and I still go back to my old ways, once in a while. But, I'm determined to kick this addiction.
- hiharryhere 2y ago
  I’m similar. I’ve just done a few things to dumb down my iPhone. No notifications etc. I could happily avoid social media but safari is by far my biggest time wasting app. News as well as googling random interesting things all day and then ending up going down random rabbit holes on niche topics. Also not a great use of time because I end up learning a little trivia on lots of stuff, nothing particularly useful. I want my phone so I have a good camera on photos of my kid, managing my business, maps and small daily things like being able to sign my kid into daycare. I can delete the time wasting apps… except safari is the main offender.
- bboygravity 2y ago
  What you don't read about is news, all else is publicity. (some paraphrased quote)
- nytesky 2y ago
  Wow, we definitely had a similar path, though my internet addiction started in college where I would download freeware programs and games via ftp or browse through gopher. Used to write long email messages often. News was a big problem for me, especially in the 00s when the housing bubble was roaring and I wanted to buy a house and trying to figure out if we really should spend 10x what our parents had ever earned for a condo… Today, forget Insta and Snap, I follow HN and a parenting blog way way too much, and ads are not really part of the equation. I wonder what drives this compulsion? Anxiety? Lonelines? Actual addiction (alcoholism is common in my family). I know my dad felt compelled to watch the evening news EVERY night and some people ready NYT cover to cover, is that similar?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    it's the dopamine hit from getting new bits of information
    - nytesky 2y ago
      “New information “ seems like a hard thing to avoid! Any recommendations?!
qp11 2y ago
Saying Zuck et al knew what they were doing is misleading, and gives them too much credit. They are no experts in how dopamine works. Tech makes it easy to build things quick. Some things gets popular more by accident than design. Zuck didn't build insta, or whatsapp or tiktok. The reasons for popularity and what is working is generally discovered post facto. Popularity attracted funding. Things scale up (scale is the only thing tech brings to the table). That attracts financial engineers of Wall St. They take over and control how firms are managed. Cuz most creatives, engineers and scientists have no training in finance or business. And that sets up where the story goes. The financial engineers aren't programmed to design goods or improve quality of life. They are programmed to capture market, as quickly as possible and collect rent from as much of the market as possible, getting the cheapest rates on interest/labor/forex/tax etc. Market capture tactics increasing rely not on product, or quality of product, but on arbitrage capability, taking out competition AND outspending the competition in Marketing/Advertising/PR (ie Demand Engineering). Demand engineering works cause people have finite Attention bandwidth. As long you get your signalling and messaging into that finite bandwidth you win over the people who cant. The technologist, the financial engineer, the demand engineer are all furiously optimizing what they are individually good at. When they come together we end up with a very efficient corporate machine. When a whole herd of these machines, all copying each others behavior, run around the individual human being has less and less control over their own environment. The machine herd will capture your kids in some other way if you get them off smartphones and social media. The only solution is to change the behavior of the machine and the herd.
em500 2y ago
I believe most articles about smartphone addiction are missing the more important half of the issue: the addictive substance is the internet, rather than the enabling device. Certainly the phone allows more opportunities, but the actual substance is the internet. Most people will do fine for a month with a dumbphone and an internet connected laptop. Now try to live a month with any fancy phone and laptop, but without any internet connection whatsoever. The smartphone without internet is barely more addictive as a dumbphone.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I think we can be more specific than "the internet". It's the ad-funded web: drive engagement at all costs, utility be damned.
  - aeronaut80 2y ago
    HN is pretty addictive for me - no ads on here!
    - udev4096 2y ago
      Read their privacy policy. It makes sense not to have ads when you are incentivizing user's data
    - fragmede 2y ago
      There are plenty of posts here pushing a product aka advertising, even if the way they get to the front page isn't directly by the company giving money to YC.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - qrobit 2y ago
    Well, reading blogs without any incentive to earn money is quite addictive too. Same for HN
TheCapeGreek 2y ago
I've done something similar recently. Purged quite a lot of apps on my phone when I decided to be more minimalistic about it. I wanted to improve device performance (and thus reduce the desire for an upgrade) as well as decentralise some of my reliance on apps. The stair stepping in this is from already having removed social media (and Youtube) from my phone. For me, if I got sucked into a feed, I'd be in it for hours and feel awful. There's no such thing as moderate usage for some. It almost became a fun game to see how many apps I could get rid of! The biggest holdouts I haven't been able to get rid of have been around banking and insurance. Too many new age fintechs, even in South Africa, are convinced that actively ditching web is the best way to grow.
alkonaut 2y ago
He covers the personal bit but the difficult question for me would be the practical bit. I wouldn’t be able to pay for a lot of things (apps only), would be really hard to know when the train comes (time tables aren’t on posters any more). I couldn’t park my car (meters are app only). I couldn’t pay my bills etc. The list goes on and on. Being bored is the known factor. That would be hard. But the practical bit would perhaps make it impossible.
bionsystem 2y ago
I spent 10+ years without a smartphone, from early 2010s to early 2020s. Nowadays I can barely book a train ticket without one, and so many little things require a whatsapp number or some app that I bought one refurbished. Also it's hard to find a decent brick phone that can store enough SMS, one that I bought with an additional SD card will not store SMS on the SD card, so I'm stuck with a massive SD card and a 300 SMS storage limit. Now I have to turn it off outside of job breaks to avoid looking at it every 5 minutes. I also have people getting angry at me because I do not answer their messages within a few minutes. Helps me select toxic people I guess. Some just get crazy with this thing.
blipmusic 2y ago
Most posts of this kind are completely void of thoughts on how society - including public institutions - require you have a smart phone nowadays. I don't use my smart phone that much (probably more than I think, though). It's practical as a portable music/podcast player, a camera that's always with me etc. Occasionally I read a programming book, or blog post. I would love a good feature phone, with fantastic battery life. But what I absolutely need a smart phone (and their secure enclaves) for are all the connected systems my country implements without hesitation: electronic authentication (most public services, such as healthcare, bank, taxes etc), public transport (they had seconds thoughts, though, and a plastic card is available). It's frankly dumb, and nonchalant to build societies like this. I can go into a train tunnel a lose coverage. Rural areas are not always covered, yet we (at least here) build systems depending on internet as if we all lived in the densest part of a large city. That's primarily why I can't (currently) use a feature phone, not because I lack in self control.
ein0p 2y ago
I wish I could buy a dumb phone which would nonetheless have a great camera. No browser, no email, no apps, god forbid. Maybe also support for Signal instead of SMS. I know it’s not going to happen, but one can dream.
- rsolva 2y ago
  If you have self discipline like a god, you could achieve this with any smartphone. Remove every app, just install Signal and keep the camera app. But almost no one has the willpower to do this, unfortunately.
  - awelxtr 2y ago
    Can parental controls help in this case?
- l3x4ur1n 2y ago
  Seems like you just want a regular camera at this point
  - ein0p 2y ago
    I have a regular camera. No phone-sized "regular camera" is anywhere near the quality of a phone.
alex_suzuki 2y ago
I have two kids, with the elder one approaching the age where smartphones are starting to appear in their peer group (~10-11 yrs). Does anyone have a recommendation for a flip phone with coolness factor? Maybe ruggedized, with a compass built-in (non-GPS), something with “tool” aesthetics. The hard part is denying your kid something that the other kids are using to actively communicate amongst each other (peer pressure).
- dayjaby 2y ago
  Respect for keeping a smartphone away for so long. I've seen kids in a babywagon playing games on a smartphone already.
  - alex_suzuki 2y ago
    Depends a bit where you live I think. Here in Switzerland smartphone ownership among kids is less prevalent than say in the US. There's mostly consensus that we're not doing the kids any favors. But the peer pressure is just there. Also it doesn't help that some schools use WhatsApp for in-class communication.
  - awelxtr 2y ago
    Depends on where you live. My nephew didn't have an smartphone until he was 12-13 I think. He had a tablet at home and a switch though. There is a region-wide push to prohibit smartphone usage for primary school children (<12yr)
- Refusing23 2y ago
  i cant really recommend a specific phone but "dumb" android phones do exist, so they can tkae pictures, send texts etc. to their friends but you can prevent them from scrolling through tiktok
  - alex_suzuki 2y ago
    What would be ideal IMHO is a flip phone that can also do WhatsApp. Not my favourite messenger, but it’s what’s being used.
rsolva 2y ago
The endless content available on the internet is a time sink on a regular desktop computer, more so on a laptop – but paired with a smartphone, this time sink is suddenly available all the time! There is no friction. It quickly becomes a habit. And now we are all addicted, which most of us still refuse to admit, because we don't see the negative impact it has on our lives and our loved ones – like with any addictive behavior.

57 points by dotcoma 2y ago

I think most of us have gone through this rollercoaster. The iPhone was my first smartphone and I was like a kid in a toy store. I simply couldn't get enough of discovering new apps in new categories and the instant access to all the news, posts, etc. that I wanted. Luckily for me, I was never hooked on the social media apps. In fact, I deleted my Facebook account when it was at its peak. My crack/dopamine/heroin has been news and related apps. At one point, I was consuming content from 15-20 news sites on a daily basis. Likewise, I was heavily browsing Hacker News and LinkedIn. However, as I turned 50, I took stock of my habits and how they are impacting my health, especially eyesight and sleep. I decided something needs to change. So, I have uninstalled all my time-wasting apps and have installed the mLauncher from F-Droid. Also, I now read books mostly on my Kobo. These are small changes and I still go back to my old ways, once in a while. But, I'm determined to kick this addiction.

hiharryhere 2y ago
I’m similar. I’ve just done a few things to dumb down my iPhone. No notifications etc. I could happily avoid social media but safari is by far my biggest time wasting app. News as well as googling random interesting things all day and then ending up going down random rabbit holes on niche topics. Also not a great use of time because I end up learning a little trivia on lots of stuff, nothing particularly useful. I want my phone so I have a good camera on photos of my kid, managing my business, maps and small daily things like being able to sign my kid into daycare. I can delete the time wasting apps… except safari is the main offender.
bboygravity 2y ago
What you don't read about is news, all else is publicity. (some paraphrased quote)
nytesky 2y ago
Wow, we definitely had a similar path, though my internet addiction started in college where I would download freeware programs and games via ftp or browse through gopher. Used to write long email messages often. News was a big problem for me, especially in the 00s when the housing bubble was roaring and I wanted to buy a house and trying to figure out if we really should spend 10x what our parents had ever earned for a condo… Today, forget Insta and Snap, I follow HN and a parenting blog way way too much, and ads are not really part of the equation. I wonder what drives this compulsion? Anxiety? Lonelines? Actual addiction (alcoholism is common in my family). I know my dad felt compelled to watch the evening news EVERY night and some people ready NYT cover to cover, is that similar?
- fragmede 2y ago
  it's the dopamine hit from getting new bits of information
  - nytesky 2y ago
    “New information “ seems like a hard thing to avoid! Any recommendations?!

qp11 2y ago

Saying Zuck et al knew what they were doing is misleading, and gives them too much credit. They are no experts in how dopamine works. Tech makes it easy to build things quick. Some things gets popular more by accident than design. Zuck didn't build insta, or whatsapp or tiktok. The reasons for popularity and what is working is generally discovered post facto. Popularity attracted funding. Things scale up (scale is the only thing tech brings to the table). That attracts financial engineers of Wall St. They take over and control how firms are managed. Cuz most creatives, engineers and scientists have no training in finance or business. And that sets up where the story goes. The financial engineers aren't programmed to design goods or improve quality of life. They are programmed to capture market, as quickly as possible and collect rent from as much of the market as possible, getting the cheapest rates on interest/labor/forex/tax etc. Market capture tactics increasing rely not on product, or quality of product, but on arbitrage capability, taking out competition AND outspending the competition in Marketing/Advertising/PR (ie Demand Engineering). Demand engineering works cause people have finite Attention bandwidth. As long you get your signalling and messaging into that finite bandwidth you win over the people who cant. The technologist, the financial engineer, the demand engineer are all furiously optimizing what they are individually good at. When they come together we end up with a very efficient corporate machine. When a whole herd of these machines, all copying each others behavior, run around the individual human being has less and less control over their own environment. The machine herd will capture your kids in some other way if you get them off smartphones and social media. The only solution is to change the behavior of the machine and the herd.

em500 2y ago

I believe most articles about smartphone addiction are missing the more important half of the issue: the addictive substance is the internet, rather than the enabling device. Certainly the phone allows more opportunities, but the actual substance is the internet. Most people will do fine for a month with a dumbphone and an internet connected laptop. Now try to live a month with any fancy phone and laptop, but without any internet connection whatsoever. The smartphone without internet is barely more addictive as a dumbphone.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I think we can be more specific than "the internet". It's the ad-funded web: drive engagement at all costs, utility be damned.
- aeronaut80 2y ago
  HN is pretty addictive for me - no ads on here!
  - udev4096 2y ago
    Read their privacy policy. It makes sense not to have ads when you are incentivizing user's data
  - fragmede 2y ago
    There are plenty of posts here pushing a product aka advertising, even if the way they get to the front page isn't directly by the company giving money to YC.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- qrobit 2y ago
  Well, reading blogs without any incentive to earn money is quite addictive too. Same for HN

TheCapeGreek 2y ago

I've done something similar recently. Purged quite a lot of apps on my phone when I decided to be more minimalistic about it. I wanted to improve device performance (and thus reduce the desire for an upgrade) as well as decentralise some of my reliance on apps. The stair stepping in this is from already having removed social media (and Youtube) from my phone. For me, if I got sucked into a feed, I'd be in it for hours and feel awful. There's no such thing as moderate usage for some. It almost became a fun game to see how many apps I could get rid of! The biggest holdouts I haven't been able to get rid of have been around banking and insurance. Too many new age fintechs, even in South Africa, are convinced that actively ditching web is the best way to grow.

alkonaut 2y ago

He covers the personal bit but the difficult question for me would be the practical bit. I wouldn’t be able to pay for a lot of things (apps only), would be really hard to know when the train comes (time tables aren’t on posters any more). I couldn’t park my car (meters are app only). I couldn’t pay my bills etc. The list goes on and on. Being bored is the known factor. That would be hard. But the practical bit would perhaps make it impossible.

bionsystem 2y ago

I spent 10+ years without a smartphone, from early 2010s to early 2020s. Nowadays I can barely book a train ticket without one, and so many little things require a whatsapp number or some app that I bought one refurbished. Also it's hard to find a decent brick phone that can store enough SMS, one that I bought with an additional SD card will not store SMS on the SD card, so I'm stuck with a massive SD card and a 300 SMS storage limit. Now I have to turn it off outside of job breaks to avoid looking at it every 5 minutes. I also have people getting angry at me because I do not answer their messages within a few minutes. Helps me select toxic people I guess. Some just get crazy with this thing.

blipmusic 2y ago

Most posts of this kind are completely void of thoughts on how society - including public institutions - require you have a smart phone nowadays. I don't use my smart phone that much (probably more than I think, though). It's practical as a portable music/podcast player, a camera that's always with me etc. Occasionally I read a programming book, or blog post. I would love a good feature phone, with fantastic battery life. But what I absolutely need a smart phone (and their secure enclaves) for are all the connected systems my country implements without hesitation: electronic authentication (most public services, such as healthcare, bank, taxes etc), public transport (they had seconds thoughts, though, and a plastic card is available). It's frankly dumb, and nonchalant to build societies like this. I can go into a train tunnel a lose coverage. Rural areas are not always covered, yet we (at least here) build systems depending on internet as if we all lived in the densest part of a large city. That's primarily why I can't (currently) use a feature phone, not because I lack in self control.

ein0p 2y ago

I wish I could buy a dumb phone which would nonetheless have a great camera. No browser, no email, no apps, god forbid. Maybe also support for Signal instead of SMS. I know it’s not going to happen, but one can dream.

rsolva 2y ago
If you have self discipline like a god, you could achieve this with any smartphone. Remove every app, just install Signal and keep the camera app. But almost no one has the willpower to do this, unfortunately.
- awelxtr 2y ago
  Can parental controls help in this case?
l3x4ur1n 2y ago
Seems like you just want a regular camera at this point
- ein0p 2y ago
  I have a regular camera. No phone-sized "regular camera" is anywhere near the quality of a phone.

alex_suzuki 2y ago

I have two kids, with the elder one approaching the age where smartphones are starting to appear in their peer group (~10-11 yrs). Does anyone have a recommendation for a flip phone with coolness factor? Maybe ruggedized, with a compass built-in (non-GPS), something with “tool” aesthetics. The hard part is denying your kid something that the other kids are using to actively communicate amongst each other (peer pressure).

dayjaby 2y ago
Respect for keeping a smartphone away for so long. I've seen kids in a babywagon playing games on a smartphone already.
- alex_suzuki 2y ago
  Depends a bit where you live I think. Here in Switzerland smartphone ownership among kids is less prevalent than say in the US. There's mostly consensus that we're not doing the kids any favors. But the peer pressure is just there. Also it doesn't help that some schools use WhatsApp for in-class communication.
- awelxtr 2y ago
  Depends on where you live. My nephew didn't have an smartphone until he was 12-13 I think. He had a tablet at home and a switch though. There is a region-wide push to prohibit smartphone usage for primary school children (<12yr)
Refusing23 2y ago
i cant really recommend a specific phone but "dumb" android phones do exist, so they can tkae pictures, send texts etc. to their friends but you can prevent them from scrolling through tiktok
- alex_suzuki 2y ago
  What would be ideal IMHO is a flip phone that can also do WhatsApp. Not my favourite messenger, but it’s what’s being used.

rsolva 2y ago

The endless content available on the internet is a time sink on a regular desktop computer, more so on a laptop – but paired with a smartphone, this time sink is suddenly available all the time! There is no friction. It quickly becomes a habit. And now we are all addicted, which most of us still refuse to admit, because we don't see the negative impact it has on our lives and our loved ones – like with any addictive behavior.