
Digital Detox Startups? - thiago_fm
Hi, I have a few ideas in the &quot;digital detox&quot; space, which basically strives to give back people more quality offline time meanwhile still letting them enjoy the best out there of social media and digital life.<p>I believe that just as humanity invented tools which let them control nature in many ways, which had unintended effects on the environment, and now governments and people are worried about protecting it. The same will happen for digital life. The connected people are like the coal miners of the past, we&#x27;re both generating a huge amount of content that eventually gets consumed by another party, as well consuming  too much of it. That will obviously will have a negative impact on society and I want to fight against those negative impacts.<p>Uh oh, soo...<p>I&#x27;ve been trying to research about this market, but it&#x27;s quite hard to Google and so on. Does anybody knows Startups on this space or use some product and would like to share? I want to study the market a bit before I start building, so I don&#x27;t end up with yet another pointless zero-impact side project.<p>Thanks.
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Jefro118
As starting points I'd recommend checking out Digital Minimalism [0] (a
concept and book by Cal Newport) and Tristan Harris' work at the Center For
Humane Tech [1].

There are lots of products that try to help people spend less time on social
media. There are website/app blockers for this (including mine [2]) and tools
like Rescue Time [3] which tell you where you're spending your time.

There are communities around this too like
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf)

Also, device makers, Apple especially, are starting to pay more attention to
this. Even Facebook has made some steps in this direction (partly by co-opting
the "Time Well Spent" phrase that Tristan Harris pushed) but they are too
incentivised to do the opposite here and it's unlikely they'll do much of
their own volition.

[0] - [http://www.calnewport.com/books/digital-
minimalism/](http://www.calnewport.com/books/digital-minimalism/)

[1] - [https://humanetech.com/](https://humanetech.com/)

[2] - [https://www.deepmode.app/](https://www.deepmode.app/)

[3] - [https://www.rescuetime.com/](https://www.rescuetime.com/)

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thiago_fm
Hey Jefro118, humanetech is amazing! I didn't know it. It's exactly what I've
been thinking the whole time, but never saw other people talking on that way.
It's kind of the "philosophy" behind what I want to change.

I've used rescue time before, Deepmode is pretty nice. Very neat.

Do you work on this space?

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Jefro118
It's more something I do on the side - Deepmode is something I started
building for myself and then decided I should try to turn it into a real
product for others to use too. I'm not an expert but I've been doing a lot of
reading in this area to make the product better and understand peoples needs.

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chrisswanda
I've been teaching wilderness survival and outdoors skills for years. I've
been thinking of migrating "digital detox" into some type of outdoors
settings, environment with a focus on doing nothing. (Plus if your phone
doesn't work, you're stuck in the woods anyway...).

I'll be interested in the comments here for some ideas also.

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Zee2
There's a pretty significant movement among the current tech giants for
allowing users to monitor their usage of technology and their various devices.
iOS and Android both now support their own versions of a "screen time"
monitoring system, providing exact information on each app's usage,
notification traffic, etc.

So a sort of "detox" mindset, or at least a "healthy usage" mindset is
definitely present in the current tech market. In addition, there was that
strange "Palm phone" released recently that was marketed as a sort of weird
"un-phone" that would actively discourage you from using your main phone. I'm
not sure exactly how effective that is, but it is apparently enough of a part
of the current technology consciousness to justify a marketing push...

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avichalp
I find the concept of calm technology [0] interesting. There has been some
research in this space. Calm tech provides UX guidelines to build products
that are not sticky but still has great utility.

[0] [https://calmtech.com/](https://calmtech.com/)

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solresol
I went through a no-smartphone phase for a while (in order to do a digital
detox). I asked on reddit if anyone was interested in some tech to support
that...

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/aa5qh2/does_anyone_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sydney/comments/aa5qh2/does_anyone_want_public_transport_info_via_sms/)

I do also believe that the retro-tech movement (being offline, uninstall
Facebook, digital Amish -- it has many names) is a thing. But I can't figure
out how to reach the community efficiently.

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eswat
Probably the best way is to look for the tentpoles that get the most attention
– Digital Minimalism/Cal Newport, Center for Humane Technology/Tristan Harris
– and follow the discussions around them to see if any other communities arise
from them.

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cfarm
Lightphone makes a dumb phone that lets you swap out your smart phone for a
while [https://www.thelightphone.com](https://www.thelightphone.com)

