10 ms·

Can a law make social media less 'addictive'?

33 points by reqo 2y ago

55555 2y ago
I think companies should be forced to provide a chat-only version of their app that's totally equivalent otherwise. How many of you only have instagram installed because you use it to talk with friends, but then sleepwalk into the algorithmic feed/explore page until you suddenly regain consciousness and notice you're wasting your life... The solution is easy: make a chat-only version mandatory. I also think companies should be required to provide tools to strictly control what gets recommended to you. Social media companies think people "like" stuff if they engage with it, but that's only half the story. Those who are struggling with porn addiction or gambling addiction etc need a way to opt-out from any softcore thirst trap content or slots videos, etc.
- thih9 2y ago
  Perhaps some easy to implement open chat protocol then?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    we'll have to see how that goes this time around. there was this brief glorious moment with pidgin and xmpp, but it did not last long. maybe this time will be different
    - politelemon 2y ago
      Having witnessed faang in operation over the past few decades, I hold little to no hope for this. Even after they are dragged unwillingly into interop, the only guarantee is that they will find new and incentive circumvents in ways not yet considered.
  - JackSlateur 2y ago
    IRC ? :p
- littlecranky67 2y ago
  I think the EU DMA exactly did that - requires interop between messengers to allow third parties to send chat messages. Not sure if Instagram messenger is included, but Whatsapp definitely is (I know, instagram is more popular in the US).
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Also, thanks to EU regs, Meta and Google were forced to allow you to finally disconnect the accounts Facebook-Oculus, Google-Youtube, the way it was in the past. Having single point of failure accounts, like seeing your email account banned because your YouTube videos got Copyright struck was insane. It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market, when a lot of the internet and digital services end up controlled by a couple of giant players who seem to align on anticonsumer behavior instead of competing for better consumer benefits as we were taught the free market works. Oligopolies need to be reigned in.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market We definitely aren't doing that. But these services are enormously hard to get right, work really well, and are entirely opt-in. You're critiquing luxury services, which isn't a strong need for regulation.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        How are Google and YouTube "luxury services"? Billions of people of all walks of life have access to them.
- sim7c00 2y ago
  Saying apps cause you to waste your time, is giving away your responsibility of your own life to some apps. If you sleepwalk into this, and they 'fix' it, what's to keep you sleepwalking into the next thing? People struggling with addiction should seek professional help if they really struggle rather than waiting for laws to protect them... - this is never going to solve their additions...
  - sloowm 2y ago
    I think this is very naive. The whole reason marketing is so lucrative is because the human brain is so easily exploited. That exploitation is to no benefit of society or the individual and an individual practically stands no chance against it. We also don't allow drugs to be distributed and marketed. There are many limitations to cigarette sales and they have shown to be successful. Maybe the next thing someone sleepwalks into is a pleasant conversations with people or coding a great open source project and that is not something that needs to be fixed.
    - sim7c00 2y ago
      It's naive and not naive. The brain is easily exploited mainly due to lack of awareness and education on the matter. It's not inherently exploitable itself. People simply are unaware of it happening. Those who are or become aware, generally get really turned off by it. I do agree, it's naive in the sense that you say, most people do seem unaware for the large part, atleast of the effect it has on them untill its too late (and they complain about it themselves - it's all subjective ofcourse). I don't think the next thing is someone sleepwalking into pleasant conversations with people coding etc. - I would love that, but i don't see a company earning billions from it - so it's unlikely. The reason they get you to sleepwalk into things is because they know you wouldn't consume it when awake. Its not because people naturally sleepwalk all their lives...
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > The solution is easy: make a chat-only version mandatory. I'm not sure how well that work work given the very fuzzy lines between "enough to connect with peers" versus "everything else". For example, a "show off your pictures" company could obey the letter of the rule but break the spirit, but not allowing the images-being-discussed in the chats, making participation pointless. I think a more-robust approach would be a scheme permitting the development of third-party "frontends" for these services (possibly already permitted by law [0]) with the compromise that they must pass-through any non-personalized ads the service makes available. That way it creates competition of "kid safe" versions--whatever blend of functionality that really means--and companies come under pressure to have a not-too-shitty version of their own. [0] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse-hidden-in-section-230-all-along-that-could-enable-adversarial-interoperability/ https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse...
- tgv 2y ago
  > I think companies should be forced to provide a chat-only version of their app Like WhatsApp? Before TikTok, children would get hundreds of messages per day on WhatsApp. I don't know if/how that changed, but chat-only isn't a solution. Complete prohibition is the only way out.
v101 2y ago
[flagged]
- sublinear 2y ago
  Completely agree. We don't need laws pointlessly micromanaging details. If we need laws now it's legislation from over 100 years into the future where these business ideas are not valid in the first place.
  - HenryBemis 2y ago
    We do need laws. A parent cannot fight a fight versus ten-twenty billion/trillion dollar companies. Sugar in your cornflakes, sounds and graphics in your games, insane tracking on ads, and so on. Those a-holes end up knowing more about your kid than you. And if you try to "fight" them by blocking their access to your kid, they got so many kids hooked up already that the exposure to garbage is unavoidable by some kid whose parents lost the fight or didn't bother to begin with. A law will protect your kid from gambling in games with "chest full of surprises", and so on.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      > A parent cannot fight a fight versus ten-twenty billion/trillion dollar companies Of course they can. I won't buy my kids a Javelin from Raytheon, nor a smartphone with Facebook on. With or without laws stopping me.
      - kelnos 2y ago
        That's fine until your teenager becomes a social outcast because they're not allowed to use the social media and messaging apps their peers use.
- BlackFly 2y ago
  In the same way, laws do not prevent people from killing other people. However, we (with a few exceptions) find it unethical to solve problems by killing the other party and make murder laws. Too many companies offer a defense for behavior we find distasteful of, "It isn't illegal," as if the law draws the complete contours of ethical behavior. Generally, we look to laws to dictate punishment for violations of ethics. Of course the law also forbids things we find ethical, but that is another issue. So no, it won't make social media less addictive, but perhaps it is time we started to formally define what behaviors we consider ethical for these types of interactions between businesses and consumers. With it defined perhaps respectable companies will start to act in the manner we grow to expect.
beardyw 2y ago
Parents seem to get out of this scot free. I see young children who's behaviour is ignored for long periods of time while parents are "busy" on their phones. The idea of parents being responsible for the upbringing of their children seems to be something which has disappeared.
- iknownothow 2y ago
  Many parents don't know social media is bad. I've had to convince my partner that it is harmful over many months. She's only now stopped doom scrolling instagram. We finally came to an agreement that our child will not get a "smart" phone until 14. Our child will have access to old school phones and any other less-harmful communication tech. I intend to expose my child to smart phones and computers in all ways that is educational so that they don't fall behind. EDIT: I would rather not have needed to convince my partner that social media FB, tiktok and instagram is obviously bad and I'd have liked to have some laws to give me some basic protection.
- cen4 2y ago
  Obviously it has disappeared because people have been pulled into global networks. Its like becoming part of the Borg. Can you imagine the Borg without a network? More complex the network, less control any individual has on anything. The Borg has no purpose other than to survive. These networks currently have no purpose other than to capture, trade, steal Attention. That has to be reimagined to escape the current trajectory.
  - DarkNova6 2y ago
    You are not wrong. The third (and only true season) of Picard has shown this wonderfully.
- pjc50 2y ago
  People are very judgy about the behavior of other parents. Especially on social media. It's no wonder the birth rate is down.
- tgv 2y ago
iraldir 2y ago
I'd personally target the "source" of the addictiveness: outlaw behavioral analytics that, on those apps, analyse any detail of your navigation (how fast you scroll, where you stop etc.). A: Many people are not aware that's a thing: "I did not click like on a racist video, but it keeps showing them to me", when in reality, the algorithm detected that you slowed down when shown that type of content so decided to feed more of it to you. B: I targets your worse instinct (oh a half naked girl, maybe she has something interesting to say?), and if you're not aware of point A, it's a loosing battle. If you are aware of point A, it's constantly tiring to have to adjust you speed scroll etc. I would personally make a GDPR type law that would require: "Any feed of user data must be presented in a non-opaque way, such as chronological, ranked by upvotes etc. Any personalized feed based on expectations of user preference should be entirely transparent, by allowing the user to access, modify their profile, as well as locking them (preventing future behaviour from changing the type of content you see).
- ryandvm 2y ago
  Absolutely. Outlawing the "meaningful content algorithms" would go a long way towards solving this problem.
yipbub 2y ago
I wonder how many people talking about self-control have a good relationship with their phone? I don't know anyone personally who likes their relationship with their phone. I've been considering and trying to practice being kinder to myself, my phone, and my relationship with it. I still want to use less of it, but it's now a part of us, and will take time to almost amputate. I want to just stop feeding it, and let it die off slowly, peacefully instead of amputating it with a hacksaw. Any kind of self-control based on shame seems doomed to be a vicious cycle.
- threatofrain 2y ago
  I carry my phone with me just about everywhere. Sometimes in a restaurant I look at it a lot, even when I'm with friends. But in the sum of all things almost all my phone use is predominantly about the GPS and outside of that I look at my phone less than 10 minutes per day. Sometimes 5, sometimes 0. It's not that I don't understand the fun of reading news, including places like HN, but I just can't get a proper hit on something like a phone so I'm not very tempted. Even typing in a URL is unpleasant on the phone.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > Sometimes in a restaurant I look at it a lot, even when I'm with friends Turn it off. (Where I’m lost is in bed.)
- changexd 2y ago
  I used to look at my phone all the time when commuting(by MRT), it was meaningless scrolls and short videos so I got bored quickly, but I didn't know what else I could do on my way to work, until I found reading books interesting, I wasn't really a book person ever since I was a kid, but right now it feels good to read books while putting on my favorite music on the MRT
- kelnos 2y ago
  I'm mostly happy with my relationship with my phone. Part of it is setting things up so it's not front and center in my life (disabling and/or silencing most notifications and only allowing calls and messaging apps to vibrate) and not really having a lot of "interesting" things on it that are easy to slide into and hard to pull out of (social media, which I've been fully off of for 4 or 5 years, and addictive games). But yes, there's a component of self-control, too. I could easily pull out my phone and start scrolling Google News, reading alarmist headlines and getting myself wrapped up in them. And sometimes that does happen. But for the most part I just... realize I don't like how I feel when I do it, so I don't do it[0]. If I'm waiting around for something (transit, waiting room, etc.), I'll first see if there's anything else to occupy myself with, even if it's just people-watching or enjoying being outside. If I'm not feeling it, then sure, I might take out my phone and read something in the Kindle app, open messaging apps to find someone to chat with, open the browser and check out HN or a news site I enjoy, etc. And that's fine. The key thing is that I've looked at the world around me and actively decided that I'd rather read something on my phone to pass the time. I don't think you need to develop this self-control through shame. Think about why you want to stop being on your phone so much. Frame that with respect to how you feel when you're using it. Not the results of the dopamine hits, but how you actually feel. Do you dislike the mindless aspects? Do you dislike all the inflammatory, outrage-inducing stuff that the algorithms throw at you? When you finally do put the phone away, do you lament the time you wasted, and think of other, more productive/useful/joyful things you could have been doing? Don't be ashamed, but do let the actual feelings associated with your phone use wash over you, and if you don't like them, start committing to doing things that don't make you feel that way. I'm not saying it's going to be easy for everyone to do that, but I think it's necessary. If you can't develop self-control that way, try to leave the phone at home sometimes. Not in the "amputating it with a hacksaw" sense, but in short, easy, low-stakes situation. When you go into your kitchen to have lunch, leave your phone behind. It'll still be there, a couple rooms away, and you can pick it up again after you finish eating. Next try leaving the house without it. Got outside for a 20-minute walk around your neighborhood, without your phone. Next leave the house for longer without it. You know how to get to the grocery store. You've done it a hundred times and don't need your GPS. Write or print your grocery list on a piece of paper, and leave the phone at home. You'll be home in an hour or so, and then you get it back. Realize that there are actually a lot of situations in our lives where we can do this, and give it a try. I think I'm lucky that I was a child of the 80s and 90s. I grew up without the internet until my teens (and then it was just intermittent dial-up until college), and without a smartphone until I was nearly 30. I got to see the evolution of a lot of this technology, and I believe that allows me to be more mindful about what I do and don't use. I know plenty of zoomers and younger millennials who have had always-on internet in their pockets for most of their lives, certainly for the entirety of their adult lives. It's all they know. And I think it's becoming harder and harder for today's parents to limit or deny screen time, as there can be severe social consequences for the children when that happens. [0] This is how I got myself off social media. I examined how it made me felt, committed to a month with no access to it, examined how that felt, and realized I was so unhappy scrolling my feeds all the time. I still have the accounts open, but I've deleted all the apps from my phone, signed out on desktop, and disabled all the email notifications they send.
dotcoma 2y ago
Can a law make cigarettes less addictive? What about alcoholic beverages? Soda? Sugar? Sweet stuff in general? Gambling? Drugs? Possibly so, to a certain extent, but in the end it's our personal responsibility to stay as much away as possible from the above things.
- akie 2y ago
  Personal responsibility is overrated. In almost all of the examples you mention, direct government intervention can and does lead to positive health outcomes for individuals and for the whole of society. It just seems like that's almost a taboo thing to say in the US.
  - dotcoma 2y ago
    I'm not in the US and I am in favour of laws making smoking, drinking, driving, drinking soda and sweet stuff etc harder, less pleasurable and taxed. But I don't think laws, while necessary, can really solve the problem. If well thought out, they can limit the damange that is done, but not solve the problem.
    - sloowm 2y ago
      There are many laws against advertising cigarettes for instance. There could be similar laws against unhealthy foods and alcohol. Lets try all these things before we say laws are not effective against these things and evaluate after. In smoking it has had a huge impact.
      - dotcoma 2y ago
        I'm all for it.
- blitzar 2y ago
  The law can not make heroin less addictive. You educate people and tell them it is addictive, you can make it illegal and hard for people to get, you can put people in jail for getting hooked on it. It is still addictive. Nothing short of making heroin not heroin makes it less addictive, but then it is no longer heroin and heroin itself is still just as addictive.
drewcoo 2y ago
Can the BBC make questions less stupid?

33 points by reqo 2y ago

I think companies should be forced to provide a chat-only version of their app that's totally equivalent otherwise. How many of you only have instagram installed because you use it to talk with friends, but then sleepwalk into the algorithmic feed/explore page until you suddenly regain consciousness and notice you're wasting your life... The solution is easy: make a chat-only version mandatory. I also think companies should be required to provide tools to strictly control what gets recommended to you. Social media companies think people "like" stuff if they engage with it, but that's only half the story. Those who are struggling with porn addiction or gambling addiction etc need a way to opt-out from any softcore thirst trap content or slots videos, etc.

thih9 2y ago
Perhaps some easy to implement open chat protocol then?
- fragmede 2y ago
  we'll have to see how that goes this time around. there was this brief glorious moment with pidgin and xmpp, but it did not last long. maybe this time will be different
  - politelemon 2y ago
    Having witnessed faang in operation over the past few decades, I hold little to no hope for this. Even after they are dragged unwillingly into interop, the only guarantee is that they will find new and incentive circumvents in ways not yet considered.
- JackSlateur 2y ago
  IRC ? :p
littlecranky67 2y ago
I think the EU DMA exactly did that - requires interop between messengers to allow third parties to send chat messages. Not sure if Instagram messenger is included, but Whatsapp definitely is (I know, instagram is more popular in the US).
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Also, thanks to EU regs, Meta and Google were forced to allow you to finally disconnect the accounts Facebook-Oculus, Google-Youtube, the way it was in the past. Having single point of failure accounts, like seeing your email account banned because your YouTube videos got Copyright struck was insane. It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market, when a lot of the internet and digital services end up controlled by a couple of giant players who seem to align on anticonsumer behavior instead of competing for better consumer benefits as we were taught the free market works. Oligopolies need to be reigned in.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > It's clear we can't just leave everything to the free market We definitely aren't doing that. But these services are enormously hard to get right, work really well, and are entirely opt-in. You're critiquing luxury services, which isn't a strong need for regulation.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      How are Google and YouTube "luxury services"? Billions of people of all walks of life have access to them.
sim7c00 2y ago
Saying apps cause you to waste your time, is giving away your responsibility of your own life to some apps. If you sleepwalk into this, and they 'fix' it, what's to keep you sleepwalking into the next thing? People struggling with addiction should seek professional help if they really struggle rather than waiting for laws to protect them... - this is never going to solve their additions...
- sloowm 2y ago
  I think this is very naive. The whole reason marketing is so lucrative is because the human brain is so easily exploited. That exploitation is to no benefit of society or the individual and an individual practically stands no chance against it. We also don't allow drugs to be distributed and marketed. There are many limitations to cigarette sales and they have shown to be successful. Maybe the next thing someone sleepwalks into is a pleasant conversations with people or coding a great open source project and that is not something that needs to be fixed.
  - sim7c00 2y ago
    It's naive and not naive. The brain is easily exploited mainly due to lack of awareness and education on the matter. It's not inherently exploitable itself. People simply are unaware of it happening. Those who are or become aware, generally get really turned off by it. I do agree, it's naive in the sense that you say, most people do seem unaware for the large part, atleast of the effect it has on them untill its too late (and they complain about it themselves - it's all subjective ofcourse). I don't think the next thing is someone sleepwalking into pleasant conversations with people coding etc. - I would love that, but i don't see a company earning billions from it - so it's unlikely. The reason they get you to sleepwalk into things is because they know you wouldn't consume it when awake. Its not because people naturally sleepwalk all their lives...
Terr_ 2y ago
> The solution is easy: make a chat-only version mandatory. I'm not sure how well that work work given the very fuzzy lines between "enough to connect with peers" versus "everything else". For example, a "show off your pictures" company could obey the letter of the rule but break the spirit, but not allowing the images-being-discussed in the chats, making participation pointless. I think a more-robust approach would be a scheme permitting the development of third-party "frontends" for these services (possibly already permitted by law [0]) with the compromise that they must pass-through any non-personalized ads the service makes available. That way it creates competition of "kid safe" versions--whatever blend of functionality that really means--and companies come under pressure to have a not-too-shitty version of their own. [0] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse-hidden-in-section-230-all-along-that-could-enable-adversarial-interoperability/ https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/02/was-there-a-trojan-horse...
tgv 2y ago
> I think companies should be forced to provide a chat-only version of their app Like WhatsApp? Before TikTok, children would get hundreds of messages per day on WhatsApp. I don't know if/how that changed, but chat-only isn't a solution. Complete prohibition is the only way out.

v101 2y ago

[flagged]

sublinear 2y ago
Completely agree. We don't need laws pointlessly micromanaging details. If we need laws now it's legislation from over 100 years into the future where these business ideas are not valid in the first place.
- HenryBemis 2y ago
  We do need laws. A parent cannot fight a fight versus ten-twenty billion/trillion dollar companies. Sugar in your cornflakes, sounds and graphics in your games, insane tracking on ads, and so on. Those a-holes end up knowing more about your kid than you. And if you try to "fight" them by blocking their access to your kid, they got so many kids hooked up already that the exposure to garbage is unavoidable by some kid whose parents lost the fight or didn't bother to begin with. A law will protect your kid from gambling in games with "chest full of surprises", and so on.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > A parent cannot fight a fight versus ten-twenty billion/trillion dollar companies Of course they can. I won't buy my kids a Javelin from Raytheon, nor a smartphone with Facebook on. With or without laws stopping me.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      That's fine until your teenager becomes a social outcast because they're not allowed to use the social media and messaging apps their peers use.
BlackFly 2y ago
In the same way, laws do not prevent people from killing other people. However, we (with a few exceptions) find it unethical to solve problems by killing the other party and make murder laws. Too many companies offer a defense for behavior we find distasteful of, "It isn't illegal," as if the law draws the complete contours of ethical behavior. Generally, we look to laws to dictate punishment for violations of ethics. Of course the law also forbids things we find ethical, but that is another issue. So no, it won't make social media less addictive, but perhaps it is time we started to formally define what behaviors we consider ethical for these types of interactions between businesses and consumers. With it defined perhaps respectable companies will start to act in the manner we grow to expect.

beardyw 2y ago

Parents seem to get out of this scot free. I see young children who's behaviour is ignored for long periods of time while parents are "busy" on their phones. The idea of parents being responsible for the upbringing of their children seems to be something which has disappeared.

iknownothow 2y ago
Many parents don't know social media is bad. I've had to convince my partner that it is harmful over many months. She's only now stopped doom scrolling instagram. We finally came to an agreement that our child will not get a "smart" phone until 14. Our child will have access to old school phones and any other less-harmful communication tech. I intend to expose my child to smart phones and computers in all ways that is educational so that they don't fall behind. EDIT: I would rather not have needed to convince my partner that social media FB, tiktok and instagram is obviously bad and I'd have liked to have some laws to give me some basic protection.
cen4 2y ago
Obviously it has disappeared because people have been pulled into global networks. Its like becoming part of the Borg. Can you imagine the Borg without a network? More complex the network, less control any individual has on anything. The Borg has no purpose other than to survive. These networks currently have no purpose other than to capture, trade, steal Attention. That has to be reimagined to escape the current trajectory.
- DarkNova6 2y ago
  You are not wrong. The third (and only true season) of Picard has shown this wonderfully.
pjc50 2y ago
People are very judgy about the behavior of other parents. Especially on social media. It's no wonder the birth rate is down.
tgv 2y ago

iraldir 2y ago

I'd personally target the "source" of the addictiveness: outlaw behavioral analytics that, on those apps, analyse any detail of your navigation (how fast you scroll, where you stop etc.). A: Many people are not aware that's a thing: "I did not click like on a racist video, but it keeps showing them to me", when in reality, the algorithm detected that you slowed down when shown that type of content so decided to feed more of it to you. B: I targets your worse instinct (oh a half naked girl, maybe she has something interesting to say?), and if you're not aware of point A, it's a loosing battle. If you are aware of point A, it's constantly tiring to have to adjust you speed scroll etc. I would personally make a GDPR type law that would require: "Any feed of user data must be presented in a non-opaque way, such as chronological, ranked by upvotes etc. Any personalized feed based on expectations of user preference should be entirely transparent, by allowing the user to access, modify their profile, as well as locking them (preventing future behaviour from changing the type of content you see).

ryandvm 2y ago
Absolutely. Outlawing the "meaningful content algorithms" would go a long way towards solving this problem.

yipbub 2y ago

I wonder how many people talking about self-control have a good relationship with their phone? I don't know anyone personally who likes their relationship with their phone. I've been considering and trying to practice being kinder to myself, my phone, and my relationship with it. I still want to use less of it, but it's now a part of us, and will take time to almost amputate. I want to just stop feeding it, and let it die off slowly, peacefully instead of amputating it with a hacksaw. Any kind of self-control based on shame seems doomed to be a vicious cycle.

threatofrain 2y ago
I carry my phone with me just about everywhere. Sometimes in a restaurant I look at it a lot, even when I'm with friends. But in the sum of all things almost all my phone use is predominantly about the GPS and outside of that I look at my phone less than 10 minutes per day. Sometimes 5, sometimes 0. It's not that I don't understand the fun of reading news, including places like HN, but I just can't get a proper hit on something like a phone so I'm not very tempted. Even typing in a URL is unpleasant on the phone.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Sometimes in a restaurant I look at it a lot, even when I'm with friends Turn it off. (Where I’m lost is in bed.)
changexd 2y ago
I used to look at my phone all the time when commuting(by MRT), it was meaningless scrolls and short videos so I got bored quickly, but I didn't know what else I could do on my way to work, until I found reading books interesting, I wasn't really a book person ever since I was a kid, but right now it feels good to read books while putting on my favorite music on the MRT
kelnos 2y ago
I'm mostly happy with my relationship with my phone. Part of it is setting things up so it's not front and center in my life (disabling and/or silencing most notifications and only allowing calls and messaging apps to vibrate) and not really having a lot of "interesting" things on it that are easy to slide into and hard to pull out of (social media, which I've been fully off of for 4 or 5 years, and addictive games). But yes, there's a component of self-control, too. I could easily pull out my phone and start scrolling Google News, reading alarmist headlines and getting myself wrapped up in them. And sometimes that does happen. But for the most part I just... realize I don't like how I feel when I do it, so I don't do it[0]. If I'm waiting around for something (transit, waiting room, etc.), I'll first see if there's anything else to occupy myself with, even if it's just people-watching or enjoying being outside. If I'm not feeling it, then sure, I might take out my phone and read something in the Kindle app, open messaging apps to find someone to chat with, open the browser and check out HN or a news site I enjoy, etc. And that's fine. The key thing is that I've looked at the world around me and actively decided that I'd rather read something on my phone to pass the time. I don't think you need to develop this self-control through shame. Think about why you want to stop being on your phone so much. Frame that with respect to how you feel when you're using it. Not the results of the dopamine hits, but how you actually feel. Do you dislike the mindless aspects? Do you dislike all the inflammatory, outrage-inducing stuff that the algorithms throw at you? When you finally do put the phone away, do you lament the time you wasted, and think of other, more productive/useful/joyful things you could have been doing? Don't be ashamed, but do let the actual feelings associated with your phone use wash over you, and if you don't like them, start committing to doing things that don't make you feel that way. I'm not saying it's going to be easy for everyone to do that, but I think it's necessary. If you can't develop self-control that way, try to leave the phone at home sometimes. Not in the "amputating it with a hacksaw" sense, but in short, easy, low-stakes situation. When you go into your kitchen to have lunch, leave your phone behind. It'll still be there, a couple rooms away, and you can pick it up again after you finish eating. Next try leaving the house without it. Got outside for a 20-minute walk around your neighborhood, without your phone. Next leave the house for longer without it. You know how to get to the grocery store. You've done it a hundred times and don't need your GPS. Write or print your grocery list on a piece of paper, and leave the phone at home. You'll be home in an hour or so, and then you get it back. Realize that there are actually a lot of situations in our lives where we can do this, and give it a try. I think I'm lucky that I was a child of the 80s and 90s. I grew up without the internet until my teens (and then it was just intermittent dial-up until college), and without a smartphone until I was nearly 30. I got to see the evolution of a lot of this technology, and I believe that allows me to be more mindful about what I do and don't use. I know plenty of zoomers and younger millennials who have had always-on internet in their pockets for most of their lives, certainly for the entirety of their adult lives. It's all they know. And I think it's becoming harder and harder for today's parents to limit or deny screen time, as there can be severe social consequences for the children when that happens. [0] This is how I got myself off social media. I examined how it made me felt, committed to a month with no access to it, examined how that felt, and realized I was so unhappy scrolling my feeds all the time. I still have the accounts open, but I've deleted all the apps from my phone, signed out on desktop, and disabled all the email notifications they send.

dotcoma 2y ago

Can a law make cigarettes less addictive? What about alcoholic beverages? Soda? Sugar? Sweet stuff in general? Gambling? Drugs? Possibly so, to a certain extent, but in the end it's our personal responsibility to stay as much away as possible from the above things.

akie 2y ago
Personal responsibility is overrated. In almost all of the examples you mention, direct government intervention can and does lead to positive health outcomes for individuals and for the whole of society. It just seems like that's almost a taboo thing to say in the US.
- dotcoma 2y ago
  I'm not in the US and I am in favour of laws making smoking, drinking, driving, drinking soda and sweet stuff etc harder, less pleasurable and taxed. But I don't think laws, while necessary, can really solve the problem. If well thought out, they can limit the damange that is done, but not solve the problem.
  - sloowm 2y ago
    There are many laws against advertising cigarettes for instance. There could be similar laws against unhealthy foods and alcohol. Lets try all these things before we say laws are not effective against these things and evaluate after. In smoking it has had a huge impact.
    - dotcoma 2y ago
      I'm all for it.
blitzar 2y ago
The law can not make heroin less addictive. You educate people and tell them it is addictive, you can make it illegal and hard for people to get, you can put people in jail for getting hooked on it. It is still addictive. Nothing short of making heroin not heroin makes it less addictive, but then it is no longer heroin and heroin itself is still just as addictive.

drewcoo 2y ago

Can the BBC make questions less stupid?