7 ms·
Here is a gradated set of exercises to determine one's phone addiction, if any, in increasing levels of potential difficulty. 1 - on an off day, with no reas
by AdieuToLogic 1y ago
Here is a gradated set of exercises to determine one's phone addiction, if any, in increasing levels of potential difficulty.
1 - on an off day, with no reason to require phone use,
put your phone in a dresser drawer for the day and
do not use or look at it.
2 - on an off day, with no reason to require phone use,
put your phone in a dresser drawer for the day and
leave your residence for at least one hour.
3 - leave your phone at home when either meeting friends,
getting lunch, or going to the grocery store.
4 - leave your phone at home when going into the office
for one day.
5 - leave your phone in a dresser drawer for an entire
weekend.
6 - leave your phone at home when traveling for more
than a day (vacation, visiting family, etc.).
- Exoristos 1y agoYour tests may work on plebs, but I have a smartwatch.
- myself248 1y agoThese are very good. I take phone-free walks around the neighborhood, to the store, downtown for a festival. It feels weird at first, then it's nice. I took an internet-free vacation last spring, and it was lovely. While planning the trip, I made sure my old TomTom's built-in maps seemed accurate to what I was seeing online; there wasn't a lot of road-building activity there in the last decade or two. Then I turned off my phone and locked it in the glovebox, there in case of emergency. Then I took a deep breath, started the car, and headed north. It was awesome just knowing there was no way a notification could ding, nobody could call me, no news headline could pop up and harsh my mellow. Even if those things didn't actually happen constantly, simply existing in a state where they could was stressful, apparently, and turning the damn thing off was remarkably cathartic.
- AdieuToLogic 1y agoReading your story brings joy to my heart, not for any reason other than I can see in my mind's eye what you describe. And it rocks! Freedom is a gift, not from without, but found from within. We set ourself free by our choices. And we shackle ourselves by same.
- rrr_oh_man 1y agoIf you haven't done it, yet: Turn notifications off. All of them. It will improve your life.
- thi2 1y agoThe hardest challenge is not using your phone when sitting on the toilet
- mwidell 1y agoI also recommend getting an Apple Watch with cellular – that way you can still be reached for emergencies, while not having access to any social media or other distractions. Since I got an apple watch I find myself leaving the phone at home more often.
- shreezus 1y agoAgreed - I disabled all non-essential notifications (I don't need Slack pinging my wrist) and have found my watch actually helps me ditch the phone more easily. I'm still "reachable", but the watch UX is annoying enough that I won't find myself scrolling X etc on it.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago> I also recommend getting an Apple Watch with cellular – that way you can still be reached for emergencies ... For people who realistically could require emergency contact (parents of minor children, family members with health risks, etc.) this is a wise recommendation. However, for those not having these very genuine concerns, an Apple Watch with cellular connectivity (or equivalent device) could engender a placebo effect and mask withdrawal.
- gattilorenz 1y agoWouldn’t a dumbphone work better for a fraction of the price?
- jen729w 1y agoYour dumbphone can't have your actual phone number as that SIM is in your iPhone, so it's no good for emergency notifications. The reality is that the vast majority of people can't actually use a dumbphone as their daily driver. Society has pushed us past that point.
- eemil 1y agoThis simply isn't true. Where I live every major operator offers multisim i.e. two (e)sims with the same number. It's primarily used for smartwatches, but they support phones as well.
- stiray 1y agoVery nice, will use it on my child, but this doesn't cover my case. I have it as a wallet (those flip cases) so it is always with me. But it can stay in backpack for days without using it, except maybe for calls (to talk with parents after I don't call for weeks :D) and to pay for public transit (huge mess to charge nfc cards). I don't use social networks, chat software (sms excluded) at all, never even registered to fb, cant even remember when was the last time I installed any app. I consider this a very sane use of phone. It is not addiction, rather satisfying addicted society that is pressuring me to use it.
- j45 1y agoPaying with a watch is a nice alternative too. Beyond not having the phone with you, I think the real measure is the number of times it's picked up and/or unlocked.
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago> Very nice, will use it on my child, but this doesn't cover my case. Thanks for sharing your perspective. I need to point out what I originally stated was: ... exercises to determine one's phone addiction, if any ... Note the "if any" qualifier. You express having no phone addiction and I have no reason to think otherwise. More importantly, I am not going to adjudicate as to yourself or anyone else.
- stiray 1y agoYes, sure, as i said, will practice it on my 15 years old... he probably cant do anything of stated :D
- CGMthrowaway 1y agoHow does this work when you need a phone for 2fa?
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago> How does this work when you need a phone for 2fa? See the stipulation of: on an off day, with no reason to require phone use If you "need a phone for 2fa" then that qualifies as a "reason to require phone use."
- AdieuToLogic 1y ago> How does this work when you need a phone for 2fa? Just out of curiosity, suppose you are not on-call for work and it is an observed holiday. Do you foresee the need for two factor authentication for non-work activities? In other words, is 2fa a requirement for daily life?
- eCa 1y agoOne example would be Github for personal projects. There are several other use cases where the phone is a factor for logging into services.
- em500 1y agoGit pull a day before, git push a day later? Have we forgotten to do anything without a persistent internet connection 24/7? Or why we'd use a distributed version control system in the first place.
- jskherman 1y agoLooks like I just inadvertently skipped to level 4 every workday, due to working inside of a restricted area with lots of proprietary industrial stuff.
- annie_muss 1y agoThe problem is I know that I am completely addicted, but I cannot stop. I feel like I'm the alcoholic drinking a bottle of vodka a day. I have tried to give up many times but I just can't crack it. Every time I have a good day the next day just slides right back into addiction. I probably average around 5-10 hours of pointless screen time a day (scrolling random youtube clips. Researching items I will never buy. Fantasizing about jobs I can never get. ) I have tried all kinds of blocking software and strategies. Blocking software, however elaborate, never seems to make a different. You find one way or another to get around the block and then after a while turning off the block just becomes part of your muscle memory. The most extreme thing I tried was cutting off the internet to my house and going back to a dumbphone for 6 months. For sure, I probably had less screen time. But I also spent many hours sitting in the station using the public wifi or watching hours and hours of pointless television. This is a really tough nut to crack. I think there is probably no technological solution to it.
- kolinko 1y agoDid you check yourself for adhd?
- annie_muss 1y agoI was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago as an adult. I take medication for it and try my best to apply strategies but it is hard going. I wrote down some simple todos at 9am this morning but it's the end of the day now and I've done maybe 30 minutes of focused work and the rest browsing the internet. The confusing thing is sometimes I have days when I do manage to do work, but I can never see what I do differently on those days to other days.
- kolinko 1y agoDid you discuss this with psychiatrist/therapist? At least for me this is the pattern I had before I had a good enough dose of meds.
- 1y ago
- leokennis 1y agoThis is a good one. My phone is my memory. If I ever need to be without a phone, I 100% need to carry a notebook and pen. And likely a camera.
- rrr_oh_man 1y ago> If I ever need to be without a phone, I 100% need to carry a notebook and pen. And likely a camera. Try it once a week. It will improve your life immeasurably.
- franga2000 1y agoI guess it's a good test for something, but I wouldn't call that something "phone addiction". I think wanting to be reachable by friends and family is fine and "addiction" starts when you start compulsively using your phone, like if you're scrolling through [insert social media here]. And phones are much more than content consumption machines - I like having a little pocket camera with me in case a see a new cat in the neighbourhood or something, and looking up bus schedules, renting city bikes, calling a cab, etc. are things I all but need to be able to do when I'm out. My trick to almost never looking at my phone has been, somewhat ironically, having a smartwatch, as well as carefully curating the notifications I get on my phone. If I know I can't miss an important notification, I'll never even look at my phone, so there's no chance I even see one of those time wasting apps. And when a notification buzzes on my wrist, I can see in a fraction of a second if it's something really important or if it can wait.
- jszymborski 1y agoSmartwatches similarly have had the same effect for me and I can anecdotally recommend it. I think another thing to consider is having ways for people to reach you _without_ your cell phone. For instance, I have a home phone, and calling my cell also rings that home phone. You could set up something similar if you have an office phone, or using a softphone on your desktop. That leaves you with instances where you leave home or the office, which are honestly cases where I'm personally least likely to look at my phone because I'm usually doing things that occupy my full attention (unless I'm commuting where I'm often reading a book on my phone).
- Ajedi32 1y agoYeah, this feels to me a bit like trying to find out if you're addicted to indoor plumbing by committing to not flushing your toilet for a week. Maybe if we were talking about social media or some other non-essential service on my phone, but the phone itself is hard to do without because of its practical utility, not because of addiction.
- ikr678 1y agoBeing reachable by family and friends 24/7 has only been normal in the past 25 years. For the entire rest of human history, we seemed to do fine without this. I think it also has changed what our perception of a true emergency is. When I was a kid, if I needed to be picked up from an event, it was on me to be at the pickup point at the right time, and my parent to be there. If for whatever reason we couldnt make it, there was always an alternative plan 'wait at the meetup, wait inside the venue, go home with a friend'. Not getting picked up and being forced to wait with some uncertainty was not an emergency, it was an inconvenience.
- bravesoul2 1y ago7. Keep your Nokia 3210 with you at all times
- blitzar 1y ago> in increasing levels of potential difficulty Level 0 or 100 depending on the person: take your phone with you and just don't a) look at it every 5 minutes, b) reply to incoming messages instantly or c) check in to see what some pointless celebrity posted in the last 3 minutes.
- theoreticalmal 1y agoI feel like I always “need” my phone, as it is my car key, workout tracker, garage door opener, baby monitor, and HVAC controller. Obviously I could have separate physical devices for all those tasks, but the whole reason I run my homelab is so that I can control them from one portable item that’s always on me
- BeFlatXIII 1y agoInterestingly, I'd find #1 to be significantly harder than 2 and about half the scenarios in 3 [waiting for friends and would make me nervous without real time updates]. The temptation is too great to get bored and check my phone when I'm in the house with it.
- littlecranky67 1y agoYou can set the phone unlock code to a very long combination and put the unlock code into a time-lock [0]. No temptation there, yet you can still take calls and make outgoing calls (using Siri or Assistant), use the camera etc. [0]: lockmeout.online
- ec109685 1y agoI don’t think addiction is the right way to look at it. I think most people can easily do all the way through #6 if they put their mind to it. It’s not a physical addiction. The real cost is when you’re not intentionally trying to deprive yourself. Do you gravitate back to unhealthy (at least the way you define it) behaviors?
- noisy_boy 1y agoMost of the time, I don't carry a wallet so I just use my phone to tap and pay at the store. To get to the store, I use my phone on the bus to tap and buy ticket. To get back into my residence, I need to use the app on my phone to open the main gate as well as access the lift. I can still do the first two without the phone but my housing society has eliminated physical cards with basically zero consultation. It is basically a losing battle.
- wildpeaks 1y agoA good compromise is to set apps to use only wifi and disable data mode of the SIM card, this way you don't receive notifications when you're outside without sacrificing the ability to call for support in case of emergency or simply take photos to capture a fleeting moment.
- subscribed 1y ago7: don't have breakdown when travelling to your family without phone.
- moffkalast 1y agoYeah if there's a thing I could advise anyone is do not leave the one thing that combines literally everything one could need in an emergency and everyone relies on and expects you to have, at home. If there's every a solid reason to use a phone it's when travelling.