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Phones might be as much a symptom as a cause The related issue is parents are overly protective of teens and don't give them enough independence. You see this

Phones might be as much a symptom as a cause The related issue is parents are overly protective of teens and don't give them enough independence. You see this in a lot of different ways from parents wanting to text their kids, to only letting kids do highly managed structured activities, to treating teens as their best friends, to helicopter parenting protecting kids from all adversity, etc etc And a similar thing happens not just with parents, but society, there are not a lot of places teens can just hang out. A lot of fun things teens would do increasingly ban minors. If you want teens off devices, you need to give them alternatives

soupfordummies 1y ago
There's also the symptom that almost our entire society is addicted to staring at their phones for at least 4 hours a day. Go literally ANYWHERE and just look at the people around you if you don't think so.
- softwaredoug 1y ago
  The counter to phone is dog. My dog stares up at someone until they acknowledge him. Then I end up talking to the person. And everyone has a nice interaction. Usually they get a nice serotonin bump.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  Yeah. As someone who spends way too much time on their phone... I'm pretty sure that I have access to all kinds of alternatives, and that I have the agency necessary to getting off my phone. I'm pretty sure there's an awful lot more to it.
  - teekert 1y ago
    For sure, and you at least acknowledge it. As do I, I'm ashamed of my screen time reports. I feel weak.
    - rkomorn 1y ago
      At some point I started spending more time on my computer to reduce my phone screen time. And the worst part is that that made sense to me for a few days. Big screen = professional tech person. Small screen = phone addicted loser. HN tabs open on both.
      - teekert 1y ago
        I think it is the same as with food, we just have to not get tempted. It probably would take something as radical as getting a dumbphone, DNS blocking additive sites, ditching the toilet-scroller. I'm on a website before I realize it.
      - em500 1y ago
        The addictive substance is the network,not the phone. Nobody gets addicted to any phone disconnected from the internet. OTOH, as you experienced it's easy to spend just as much time on the laptop or desktop when that has a persistent internet connection.
        lrvick 1y ago
        First thing I did to beat my addiction was keep my phone in airplane mode at all times, and just rely on wifi. After porting my number to a voip provider, i just canceled my cell phone subscription and then the device was no longer a phone, but a wifi tablet. a boring tool i could easily leave at home most of the time until I never took it with me again.
        rkomorn 1y ago
        I often leave my phone in a different room, and that's pretty effective, too. I've started leaving my phone at home when my wife and I go places together. It's not a problem without solutions, of course. It just takes an amount of discipline that feels unreasonably burdensome to me (as in "ugh why is this so hard?!").
        adolph 1y ago
  - lrvick 1y ago
    Literally lock it in a safe for a month and see if after you recalibrate, if you are happier. Not carried a phone in 5 years and one of the best choices I ever made. Nothing you want to do in life requires you owning a phone if you are resourceful.
- bsghirt 1y ago
  Why is the exact device the problem? 20 years ago everyone on suburban trains would be looking at a newspaper, magazine or book throughout their journey. Then they would watch a couple of hours of TV at home. Why is 'looking at a phone' such a problem, when most of the looking replicates those activities, with much of the rest being basic utilities which didn't exist previously - consulting a map, ordering food or shopping, looking up timetables or schedules?
  - sersi 1y ago
    I remember meeting a lot of people by just talking to them in the subway during y daily commute. That happened both in France and Japan. Nowadays with phones it happens a lot less..
    - fn-mote 1y ago
      > talking to them [...] Japan Really struggling to imagine people talking on the subway during their morning commute in Japan!! Culture changes.
    - bsghirt 1y ago
      I commuted by public transit for around two decades before the ubiquity of smartphones and never experienced or witnessed this.
    - throwaway2037 1y ago
      You spoke with "a lot" of people in Japan on the subway during your daily commute? I am stunned here. Can you provide more details? (Years / location / line?) I find this very hard to believe. Metro trains in Tokyo and Osaka (and suburbs) are basically silent except very late when people are drunk, talking with their friends.
      - sersi 1y ago
        Kyoto 2005 to 2008. Mostly Kintetsu and subway (mostly between Kyoto and Nara). Later keihan from demachiyanagi to shijo kawaramachi. I am the one who often initiated the conversation (apart from some osaka bachans who did initiate. I'm using that term of endearment not criticism despite their fearful reputation Osaka bachans are great). There were also significantly less tourists back then. Made a few friends with whom I still stay in touch. Also met my first wife like this. I had the same experience of meeting people in the same way in Shanghai in 2004 (bus and subway). And before that, in France，the bus line I took near my university was filled with students.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Yesterday I had a meeting with a friend and wound up having to wait 20 minutes for him. Instead of being bored out of my mind, I doom scrolled.
  - tigerlily 1y ago
    That's abominable, sir. We need you to take care of your brain :)
  - Dilettante_ 1y ago
    That's the problem actually. Not a second of "boredom", where there isn't something happening. Downtime is important, and I don't mean popping on the TV and vegetating until it's time to go to bed.
  - lrvick 1y ago
    bring a mechanical puzzle, or a book to read, or a lock to pick, or a tiny pocketable laptop that allows you to actually be productive, and leave the brainrot device at home, or get rid of it. 5 years free of doom scrolling and never been happier or more productive in my life.
cjbgkagh 1y ago
It’s a tight feedback loop, use of phones is a symptom caused by problems caused by use of phones. To break it you have to stop using the phone. This is far simpler and more broadly applicable than figuring out who has dopamine disregulation and putting them on meds. My ADHD is clearly genetic and I’m heavily medicated for it and even still I have difficulty with phone addiction and self control. I would appreciate an environment that aided in this by making tempting things harder to access. For a long time we were told it was self control causing the issues of weight gain and not changes to the food, diets, and eating patterns. We were told that such problems couldn’t be solved with a magic pill, well for me that magic pill was ozempic and it really did solve 95% of my problems. I had uncontrolled weight gain after taking the Covid vaccine and now 4 years later, two on a rather low dose of ozempic and I’m finally back to normal. I was as disciplined before taking ozempic as I was after so it’s clear that the ozempic had a drastically positive effect. I think an aversion to empathy leads us to blame people as the cause of their own predicaments, but this blinds us to other causes and fixes. Sometimes it really is the environment.
Aurornis 1y ago
> but society, there are not a lot of places teens can just hang out. A lot of fun things teens would do increasingly ban minors. What fun things ban minors? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t see that around here.
- lizknope 1y ago
  When I was a kid in the 1980's and early 90's the mall was the place to go and hang out. Go to the food court, arcade, shoe stores, Spencer's gifts. Google "malls that ban teenagers" and you will find a lot of articles. I have been to a few places that have signs "Anyone under 18 must be chaperoned by an adult."
  - kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
    Usually that's the result of an incident with premeditated mayhem from an unsupervised gathering.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      Maybe there's some rare incident, maybe they're just annoyed the teens don't spend enough per hour. It doesn't really matter. Teens aren't some special danger, and it's bad when places want to give off the impression of being a nice public place but fail to be one in significant ways.
      - lotsofpulp 1y ago
        It doesn’t matter to a non stakeholder like you. For the business owners, it clearly matters.
        Dylan16807 1y ago
        What they think has very little relevance to the problem of teens having nowhere to go. And in general the US has been really lacking in third places.
jimt1234 1y ago
Many parents I talk to have this notion that idle-time/free-time for their children is unproductive, a waste of time, and thus bad for their children. And that's why they feel the need to micromanage their kids' time - "If I don't give Timmy productive things to do, he'll just rot away." There's a number of articles about this topic, but I just don't see parents accepting the message: boredom is good for young people. Heck, boredom is why I got into programming my Commodore-64 back in the day - Midwest winters are long and boring as shit, lots of time stuck inside. - https://youthfirstinc.org/why-its-important-for-your-child-to-be-bored/ https://youthfirstinc.org/why-its-important-for-your-child-t... - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-boredom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-b...
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  We took away my kid's screens for a week because we caught her lying to us about something. She was understandably upset and bored for a few days, and then found ways to occupy her time. Not productive ways - but ways that reminded me of what I did as a kid without screens.
- bitwize 1y ago
  Maybe that's why so many of the best demoscene coders are from northern Europe—Germany, Scandinavia, Finland? Bored kids with nothing to do but faff with their computers?
  - kqr 1y ago
    ...who spends half the year in darkness, to boot. It's so bad they even have a national holiday to grieve the departure of the sun and call for its return!
airtonix 1y ago
[dead]
lrvick 1y ago
In my household no one has cell phones, so we set expectations of checking in once a day via chat over wifi from laptops, radio, meshtastic, or picking up a public phone... and otherwise learn to be resourceful, self confident, and independent. I am convinced these skills will benefit a kid more than being good at doom scrolling.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > In my household no one has cell phones Do you live in the Bora Bora caves!? Seriously, in many highly developed countries, you need a mobile phone for essential government services.
  - lrvick 1y ago
    Hardly. I run a b2b tech company in silicon valley, frequently travel the world, and have a fairly active social life. No essential services ever -require- a phone. Just say it is against your unspecified religion and watch them fall over backwards to create alternatives for you. It is always hilarious to watch someone at a theme park or restaurant produce a paper map or menu just after saying they no longer exist moments earlier. If I travel overnight my only tech is a tiny laptop to work on the go, but when it is closed it is off, and not able to notify me.
- nilus0sora 1y ago
  I was intrigued enough by this comment to create an account. I noticed you mentioned ‘radio’. Do you mean HAM? Like you key up on local 2m repeaters with your HTs? (Our twins got their tech licenses in middle school and we had appointed check-in times during the day). I applaud you for being in the heart of the tech Beast but not subject to it.
  - navbaker 1y ago
    We have some friends (husband and wife) that we met because our kids play together and they are the first people I’ve met that are licensed ham operators! They each have their operator number on their license plates for their respective cars since our state has radio operator plates you can upgrade to!

soupfordummies 1y ago

There's also the symptom that almost our entire society is addicted to staring at their phones for at least 4 hours a day. Go literally ANYWHERE and just look at the people around you if you don't think so.

softwaredoug 1y ago
The counter to phone is dog. My dog stares up at someone until they acknowledge him. Then I end up talking to the person. And everyone has a nice interaction. Usually they get a nice serotonin bump.
rkomorn 1y ago
Yeah. As someone who spends way too much time on their phone... I'm pretty sure that I have access to all kinds of alternatives, and that I have the agency necessary to getting off my phone. I'm pretty sure there's an awful lot more to it.
- teekert 1y ago
  For sure, and you at least acknowledge it. As do I, I'm ashamed of my screen time reports. I feel weak.
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    At some point I started spending more time on my computer to reduce my phone screen time. And the worst part is that that made sense to me for a few days. Big screen = professional tech person. Small screen = phone addicted loser. HN tabs open on both.
    - teekert 1y ago
      I think it is the same as with food, we just have to not get tempted. It probably would take something as radical as getting a dumbphone, DNS blocking additive sites, ditching the toilet-scroller. I'm on a website before I realize it.
    - em500 1y ago
      The addictive substance is the network,not the phone. Nobody gets addicted to any phone disconnected from the internet. OTOH, as you experienced it's easy to spend just as much time on the laptop or desktop when that has a persistent internet connection.
      - lrvick 1y ago
        First thing I did to beat my addiction was keep my phone in airplane mode at all times, and just rely on wifi. After porting my number to a voip provider, i just canceled my cell phone subscription and then the device was no longer a phone, but a wifi tablet. a boring tool i could easily leave at home most of the time until I never took it with me again.
        rkomorn 1y ago
        I often leave my phone in a different room, and that's pretty effective, too. I've started leaving my phone at home when my wife and I go places together. It's not a problem without solutions, of course. It just takes an amount of discipline that feels unreasonably burdensome to me (as in "ugh why is this so hard?!").
      - adolph 1y ago
- lrvick 1y ago
  Literally lock it in a safe for a month and see if after you recalibrate, if you are happier. Not carried a phone in 5 years and one of the best choices I ever made. Nothing you want to do in life requires you owning a phone if you are resourceful.
bsghirt 1y ago
Why is the exact device the problem? 20 years ago everyone on suburban trains would be looking at a newspaper, magazine or book throughout their journey. Then they would watch a couple of hours of TV at home. Why is 'looking at a phone' such a problem, when most of the looking replicates those activities, with much of the rest being basic utilities which didn't exist previously - consulting a map, ordering food or shopping, looking up timetables or schedules?
- sersi 1y ago
  I remember meeting a lot of people by just talking to them in the subway during y daily commute. That happened both in France and Japan. Nowadays with phones it happens a lot less..
  - fn-mote 1y ago
    > talking to them [...] Japan Really struggling to imagine people talking on the subway during their morning commute in Japan!! Culture changes.
  - bsghirt 1y ago
    I commuted by public transit for around two decades before the ubiquity of smartphones and never experienced or witnessed this.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    You spoke with "a lot" of people in Japan on the subway during your daily commute? I am stunned here. Can you provide more details? (Years / location / line?) I find this very hard to believe. Metro trains in Tokyo and Osaka (and suburbs) are basically silent except very late when people are drunk, talking with their friends.
    - sersi 1y ago
      Kyoto 2005 to 2008. Mostly Kintetsu and subway (mostly between Kyoto and Nara). Later keihan from demachiyanagi to shijo kawaramachi. I am the one who often initiated the conversation (apart from some osaka bachans who did initiate. I'm using that term of endearment not criticism despite their fearful reputation Osaka bachans are great). There were also significantly less tourists back then. Made a few friends with whom I still stay in touch. Also met my first wife like this. I had the same experience of meeting people in the same way in Shanghai in 2004 (bus and subway). And before that, in France，the bus line I took near my university was filled with students.
WalterBright 1y ago
Yesterday I had a meeting with a friend and wound up having to wait 20 minutes for him. Instead of being bored out of my mind, I doom scrolled.
- tigerlily 1y ago
  That's abominable, sir. We need you to take care of your brain :)
- Dilettante_ 1y ago
  That's the problem actually. Not a second of "boredom", where there isn't something happening. Downtime is important, and I don't mean popping on the TV and vegetating until it's time to go to bed.
- lrvick 1y ago
  bring a mechanical puzzle, or a book to read, or a lock to pick, or a tiny pocketable laptop that allows you to actually be productive, and leave the brainrot device at home, or get rid of it. 5 years free of doom scrolling and never been happier or more productive in my life.

cjbgkagh 1y ago

It’s a tight feedback loop, use of phones is a symptom caused by problems caused by use of phones. To break it you have to stop using the phone. This is far simpler and more broadly applicable than figuring out who has dopamine disregulation and putting them on meds. My ADHD is clearly genetic and I’m heavily medicated for it and even still I have difficulty with phone addiction and self control. I would appreciate an environment that aided in this by making tempting things harder to access. For a long time we were told it was self control causing the issues of weight gain and not changes to the food, diets, and eating patterns. We were told that such problems couldn’t be solved with a magic pill, well for me that magic pill was ozempic and it really did solve 95% of my problems. I had uncontrolled weight gain after taking the Covid vaccine and now 4 years later, two on a rather low dose of ozempic and I’m finally back to normal. I was as disciplined before taking ozempic as I was after so it’s clear that the ozempic had a drastically positive effect. I think an aversion to empathy leads us to blame people as the cause of their own predicaments, but this blinds us to other causes and fixes. Sometimes it really is the environment.

Aurornis 1y ago

> but society, there are not a lot of places teens can just hang out. A lot of fun things teens would do increasingly ban minors. What fun things ban minors? I’m genuinely asking, because I don’t see that around here.

lizknope 1y ago
When I was a kid in the 1980's and early 90's the mall was the place to go and hang out. Go to the food court, arcade, shoe stores, Spencer's gifts. Google "malls that ban teenagers" and you will find a lot of articles. I have been to a few places that have signs "Anyone under 18 must be chaperoned by an adult."
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  Usually that's the result of an incident with premeditated mayhem from an unsupervised gathering.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    Maybe there's some rare incident, maybe they're just annoyed the teens don't spend enough per hour. It doesn't really matter. Teens aren't some special danger, and it's bad when places want to give off the impression of being a nice public place but fail to be one in significant ways.
    - lotsofpulp 1y ago
      It doesn’t matter to a non stakeholder like you. For the business owners, it clearly matters.
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        What they think has very little relevance to the problem of teens having nowhere to go. And in general the US has been really lacking in third places.

jimt1234 1y ago

Many parents I talk to have this notion that idle-time/free-time for their children is unproductive, a waste of time, and thus bad for their children. And that's why they feel the need to micromanage their kids' time - "If I don't give Timmy productive things to do, he'll just rot away." There's a number of articles about this topic, but I just don't see parents accepting the message: boredom is good for young people. Heck, boredom is why I got into programming my Commodore-64 back in the day - Midwest winters are long and boring as shit, lots of time stuck inside. - https://youthfirstinc.org/why-its-important-for-your-child-to-be-bored/ https://youthfirstinc.org/why-its-important-for-your-child-t... - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-boredom.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/well/family/kids-summer-b...

pavel_lishin 1y ago
We took away my kid's screens for a week because we caught her lying to us about something. She was understandably upset and bored for a few days, and then found ways to occupy her time. Not productive ways - but ways that reminded me of what I did as a kid without screens.
bitwize 1y ago
Maybe that's why so many of the best demoscene coders are from northern Europe—Germany, Scandinavia, Finland? Bored kids with nothing to do but faff with their computers?
- kqr 1y ago
  ...who spends half the year in darkness, to boot. It's so bad they even have a national holiday to grieve the departure of the sun and call for its return!

airtonix 1y ago

[dead]

lrvick 1y ago

In my household no one has cell phones, so we set expectations of checking in once a day via chat over wifi from laptops, radio, meshtastic, or picking up a public phone... and otherwise learn to be resourceful, self confident, and independent. I am convinced these skills will benefit a kid more than being good at doom scrolling.

throwaway2037 1y ago
> In my household no one has cell phones Do you live in the Bora Bora caves!? Seriously, in many highly developed countries, you need a mobile phone for essential government services.
- lrvick 1y ago
  Hardly. I run a b2b tech company in silicon valley, frequently travel the world, and have a fairly active social life. No essential services ever -require- a phone. Just say it is against your unspecified religion and watch them fall over backwards to create alternatives for you. It is always hilarious to watch someone at a theme park or restaurant produce a paper map or menu just after saying they no longer exist moments earlier. If I travel overnight my only tech is a tiny laptop to work on the go, but when it is closed it is off, and not able to notify me.
nilus0sora 1y ago
I was intrigued enough by this comment to create an account. I noticed you mentioned ‘radio’. Do you mean HAM? Like you key up on local 2m repeaters with your HTs? (Our twins got their tech licenses in middle school and we had appointed check-in times during the day). I applaud you for being in the heart of the tech Beast but not subject to it.
- navbaker 1y ago
  We have some friends (husband and wife) that we met because our kids play together and they are the first people I’ve met that are licensed ham operators! They each have their operator number on their license plates for their respective cars since our state has radio operator plates you can upgrade to!