
I realized my brain belongs to my phone - submeta
https://qz.com/1165651/smartphone-addiction-this-was-the-year-i-realized-my-brain-belongs-to-my-phone/
======
jesperlang
It came to a point (for HN and RSS readers) where I would check articles every
hour. It culminated with me mindlessly clicking article links, reading the
title, scrolling through it (not reading), just familiarizing myself with
single words passing through my hyper short attention-span, and getting a
"feel" for what the article looked like. It was quite a scary when I did this
one time for 30 minutes not remembering anything I have "read" whatsoever.

I am still struggling with this a bit but I am more aware now and try to be
mindful of what I read. A neat trick I have found is to try to just check once
a week using the search tool (popular past week):

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&p...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=&query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastWeek&type=story)

I fail at this quite often, but a weekly mindful check is what I am aiming for

~~~
KVFinn
>It came to a point (for HN and RSS readers) where I would check articles
every hour. It culminated with me mindlessly clicking article links, reading
the title, scrolling through it (not reading), just familiarizing myself with
single words passing through my hyper short attention-span, and getting a
"feel" for what the article looked like. It was quite a scary when I did this
one time for 30 minutes not remembering anything I have "read" whatsoever.

Not specifically about phones, but I have my router only allow access to sites
like that for certain hours in the day. I can always log into the router to
turn it off, but adding that extra bit of friction is usually enough to get me
to check it later during the designated times.

~~~
unicornporn
> but I have my router only allow access to sites like that for certain hours
> in the day

My router can do this, but not for sites using SSL (that is, just about every
respectable site out there, these days). Do you filter IPs and not by domain?

~~~
KVFinn
>My router can do this, but not for sites using SSL (that is, just about every
respectable site out there, these days). Do you filter IPs and not by domain?

Yeah it's a pain to do it right. I'm just doing it with a local DNS server for
the moment.

I've considered setting up a local Raspberry Pi for both PiHole to block ads,
and running Squid or whatever on it to provide better SSL filtering. If there
a nice writeup for how to do this I would also be interested.

When I am working on a single computer away from home I sometimes just
manually edit my hosts file. Crude but it still catches me a bunch of times
over the day where I almost unconsciously pop up a distracting site.

------
textor
The whole situation with attention economics is very illustrative of the
neglected power of small things. Facebook can't really hack your dopaminergic
pathways, however much they improve their feed AI. AdSense doesn't brainwash
you to be a consumerist drone. Smartphones aren't exactly subtle with
notifications, and it's easy to disable them. There's no violent, obvious
infingement of one's agency, so the opinion that you still make your free
choices is not without reason. But more often than not, people don't actively
counteract these influences. They go with the flow, they allow the scales to
be tipped a little. The more they do so, the more suspectible to distractions
they become: that is, less prone to consciously deciding if the next stimulus
is worth responding do. So even the tiniest starting amount of influence, as
long as it isn't annoying and doesn't raise any internal alarm, is a seed of a
serious behavioral change. This is how vulnerabilities work: it's not always
intuitive that some small hole can compromise an entire system which is
otherwise robust and adaptive. But you don't argue that this is pathetic, you
go and patch it before the damage is done. Hard to do with humans.

On a more practical (if unrelated) note, I think all browsers should block
website notifications by default, i.e. when you get a prompt about push
notifications, Deny button has to be highlighted. And it shouldn't be ever
shown on mobile.

~~~
munificent
It's about economy of scale, which modern corporations have demonstrated that
they are incredibly effective at. Bank fees that are a small fraction of each
user's transaction but add up to billions for the bank. "First month free"
subscriptions that only require you to remember to unsubscribe before they
start charging.

When you have a billion users, than harnessing even a tiny fraction of their
resources — financial, labor, cognitive, whatever — is a huge amount.

If our phones and social media apps take 2% of our attention away, that's next
to nothing, but when you scale it up to millions of users, you're talking
thousands of person-minds completely hijacked. It's like our brains are all
running low priority threads bitcoining mining for these companies and getting
next to nothing in return.

~~~
textor
There's also another, intrapersonal scale at play: if you get 20 "free"
subscriptions, in 3-4 cases you'll definitely forget to unsubscribe before it
starts charging, since it becomes impossible to track and optimize every
process. Attentional impact of each one is miniscule, so many people don't
notice going way above 2% or any other hard limit they could probably deal
with semi-efficiently.

------
notadoc
I know several families (some with teenagers!) who traded their iPhones for
dumb phones, reducing usage to much like a phone behaved in 2005; entirely for
phone calls that actually matter, and the simplest of brief text messaging.
They all have reported it to be a very positive experience.

Alerts, notifications, badges, social media, apps, vibrations, chimes, dings,
rings, virtually all of this is generated from entirely inconsequential noise,
distraction, and interference. How do you measure the impact on humans of
being interrupted all day long by your phone chiming every 5 minutes with a
new email, mundane message, social media trash, or nonsensical alert from some
app to come fiddle with it and be force fed a few dozen ads in the process?
None of this is good for the human mind or psyche.

~~~
wincy
My wife and I purchased dumb phones but there were a few pain points we
encountered. First, my wife especially would get lost and so we were going to
need to buy a GPS, possibly for both cars. We also have a two year old and
capturing moments with a camera was limited; we figured we'd end up spending
$500 or more on a camera with equivalent features to an iPhone. Eventually we
settled on enabling the parental controls on one anothers phones. I
aggressively turn off notifications, to the point where my laptop doesn't even
display the time as I consider it a distraction to constantly glance at the
clock.

~~~
Feuilles_Mortes
Do you have web blocking on safari enabled? When a friend and I tried this,
there was no way to block individual sites that did not also block many sites
with seemingly arbitrary rules (stackoverflow was blocked, even though it was
not on my blacklist).

~~~
wincy
Yeah we ended up blocking everything. I’ve found that I almost never actually
need Safari. It was annoying though because my wife figured out that Google
Maps has a browser baked in (maps “Googleplex” and you have google search) ,
so we’re stuck using apple maps.

------
manmal
I find myself (mis)using my smartphone a lot more when I‘m down or exhausted.
It’s a refuge, and it’s not a good one, just like your random drug. Browsing
around past midnight leaves me feeling empty and my sleep quality suffers a
lot. Fight with my wife? Go browsing. Kids are little devils and I can’t
escape physically? Yep, check the feeds.

If I‘m feeling well (which is the case most of the time, thankfully), I can go
the whole day without opening FB, or even the mail client.

Apart from the social isolation that smartphones bring with them, I‘m also
worried about:

\- How the constant suckling at the dopamine teat messes up our grasp of what
is important and what isn‘t

\- and how past-sundown-browsing can destroy your mood [1]. Those screens are
comparatively dim for a light source, but they are also the only ones you
point directly at your retina for hours on time. And I BET they will find even
more dire consequences of unbalanced blue light exposure (vs full spectrum, ie
including infrared light which has a restorative effect on retinal cells).

[1]:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5299389/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5299389/)

~~~
njarboe
I also worry about the forced transition from incandescent to other types of
lighting in the US. Save a little electricity but high temperature and non-
blackbody spectrum LED lights are probably going to turn out to be not so good
for humans in many ways.

------
the_common_man
I would add Netflix to the list. In my social circle, people keep watching
episode after episode and just feel a compulsion to "finish" the series even
the quality is sub par and degraded. I have been there and uninstalled netflix
years ago. The series always start out well and then degrades to the point
where you are just addicted and cannot help watching since you are already
vested at that point.

~~~
ambivalents
I find our cultural acceptance of "binging" somewhat troubling. I often hear
about how many hours people have "wasted" watching an entire series in one
sitting. There's a sort of ambivalence towards it, like the busy olympics,
maybe, where people feel the need to outcompete each other in just how much
time they spend on Netflix.

I notice the nights I decide not to watch TV, the evenings unfold more slowly
and pleasantly. I feel like I've gotten a lot done, figuring it must be near
midnight, and I check and it's only 9:30. The nights I partake in the binging,
however, glide by in a flash with nothing to show for it. I wonder, how much
are we losing to Netflix?

~~~
njarboe
Most people would do this with TV before Netflix. The stats on adult TV
watching back before the internet was amazing. 5-6 hours a day on average. Ads
have always been intolerable for me and the recent streaming trend with no ads
and all the year shows on demand is much more addictive.

~~~
ambivalents
Yes, but was TV specifically engineered to be as addictive as possible? Was it
designed to give you little hits of dopamine just at the moment you were
considering turning it off?

There are tradeoffs here, of course. We can now customize our viewing
experience to our tastes (though even that, I question the direction tastes
are formed), fewer ads means more quality viewing time, etc. Huge
improvements, but with many attendant costs.

------
tabeth
I realized this as well. On my to-do list is to build the "Difference Engine".
The Difference Engine does the following:

\- When you go to a website the response of the request is saved.

\- When you go to the website again, the new response of the request is saved
and compared to the previously saved version.

\- Finally, when you go to the website a third or subsequent time, the
Difference Engine is invoked, which uses some sort of easing function in
addition to calculating the "difference" between the responses.

\- The point of all of this is that similarity between responses will result
in some response, let's call it 704, which says "hey, nothing has changed, cut
it out."

\- The Difference Engine could be saved, resulting in near instant results,
telling you nothing has changed. This saves you time, but more importantly,
will slowly wean you off the site in question.

\- This is implemented via a VPN, so there's nothing to install.

Basically, the point of the Difference Engine is to instantly tell you to stop
if nothing meaningful has changed. The hope is that you'll stop checking so
much as you realize nothing changes usually.

Feel free to steal this idea, hah.

------
munificent
I could have written this exact article. My phone died a couple of weeks ago.
I can't accurately convey how unsettling it was to realize how to deeply into
my subconsciousness my phone had ingrained itself. Any time there was the
slightest lull in stimulation, I found myself reaching for it. _I kept
carrying my phone with me even though I knew it was dead._

The first night, I was cooking dinner. Once I had everything going on the
burners, I had a few minutes to kill. Normally I'd reach for my phone, but I
couldn't. After a while, I got bored so I went ahead and did the dishes.
Instead of leaving that chore for later and adding to my stress I got on top
of it. Better, it required no willpower to do so since I was bored and
literally had nothing better to do.

I've felt for _years_ that the days were too short. It turns out they got
shorter because of all of the accumulated minutes sucked into my phone. The
days felt longer, more relaxed. It was easier to get the minutiae of life done
during the between-times. I wasn't irritated by the kids interrupting me. I
read more.

At the same time, I really missed the practical aspects of my phone. Listening
to the radio while driving sucked. Not having navigation — I have essentially
no sense of direction — was a nightmare.

I have a phone again now, but so far I haven't installed any of the
consumptive apps on it. (For me that was mainly Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram.) It's been good so far. I do find myself sometimes missing the
ability to _share_ things on those platforms. If there were write-only
versions of those apps, I'd install them and then only consume on my laptop
which is a little more naturally self-limiting by not being easily carried
around.

A while back, I rewatched the original Alien. One thing that struck me,
watching it with modern eyes how all of the characters _constantly_ smoked.
When the movie came out, that helped the characters look natural and
believable. Now it just looks gross and distracting. I believe strongly in a
few decades, we'll look back on phone use today in the same way.

At least, I hope we do. The scary alternative is an entire populace constantly
drugged by our own dopamine receptors triggered by carefully engineered
cognitive manipulation.

~~~
DerfNet
Devil's advocate: smoking still looks cool.

Have you tried using an app like Forest etc. to avoid using your smart device?
I'd like to start blocking off a 2-3 hour period of time every evening where I
abstain from so much as handling my phone unless I'm receiving a call.

~~~
munificent
> Have you tried using an app like Forest etc. to avoid using your smart
> device?

No, this is the first I've heard of it.

------
pdog
If you want to significantly reduce your phone usage, consider Apple's $349
iPhone: the iPhone SE.

The iPhone SE is just as secure as other new iPhones. It runs all the latest
apps. However, the screen is tiny. This makes it a pain to use for long
periods of time. Plus, it only has 32GB of storage. It's impossible to install
a lot of apps on it. It's also the most pocketable iPhone.

In some ways, the iPhone SE is the perfect smartphone.

~~~
giarc
It's funny you would describe the SE as "tiny" and only having "32GB". It was
the same size as all the other iPhone models before it. It was a pretty
standard screen size. Oh, and it also comes in 128GB.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
My 2013 Moto X has 16 GB and that's enough to install enough distracting apps
to keep me "busy" all the time if I let myself.

------
phil248
I have a hard time relating to these kinds of critiques. I limit my phone's
notifications pretty severely. My phone only bothers me for texts and calls,
period. Those are usually human beings I know who want my immediate attention,
so I want to be bothered. Everything else just waits until I feel like
checking it.

I think the difference for me might be that I haven't posted frequently on
social media for many years. That does create a kind of compulsion to see how
people have reacted and commented. You're putting yourself out there to be
judged and I found that very stressful and eventually just stopped.

------
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
For me the most important first step is to turn off any notification that
consistently gets my attention, but doesn't provide value.

~~~
inetknght
That's assuming you _can_ turn off those notifications. Some notifications
can't be turned off. Or if there is a way then it's not immediately clear to
me, the end user.

~~~
jgroszko
If I can't turn off notifications then I just uninstall the app. I uninstalled
Facebook and Messenger because of this. I had been using the Facebook mobile
site just fine for years, but this fall decided to stop checking that too...

~~~
inetknght
There are quite a few notifications on my phone that are, provided by the OS,
or whose app I can't identify, or the app cannot be disabled in any fashion.

Google's traffic notifications, for example. I literally don't care that the
traffic is lighter than normal at 2 AM. I literally don't care about traffic
_at all_. My life does not revolve around traffic. But can I disable these?
Nope.

T-mobiles application updates. I don't care about T-mobiles application
updates. I don't use T-mobile's application. I don't _trust_ T-mobile's
application. Can I disable that notification? Nope. It wastes precious _every
resource a mobile device has_.

"Select Keyboard" notification when I have a keyboard open. Uhh... I selected
the default keyboard. Is that not enough? Apparently not. I don't know how to
get rid of the notification though.

I install _OS_ updates pretty regularly. But there's a few updates that are
pushed without consent because the "I agree" form has no way to opt out, not
even for "no I don't want to reboot my phone right now, I have something more
important to do" after a few days.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
I believe the traffic notifications will go away if you turn off "Commute and
time to leave" under "Your feed" in the Google app.

------
en-us
The book called _Deep Work_ by Cal Newport looks at this same idea in detail.
If you've noticed that smart phones and shallow content are affecting you as
they did this article's author, I recommend it as a resource for reclaiming
that lost time.

------
binaryapparatus
This is a real problem that I try untangling myself for many months. I have
zero phone addiction but my work requires that I sit by the computer _and_
often use browser for documentation. Which makes limiting distractions a lot
harder.

I did limit distractions a lot (compared to what I did before) HN being one of
the few rare sites I visit. I am not at all happy with google addiction, that
may be biggest problem that is less visible than HN or Reddit.

------
gthtjtkt
I found magazines to be a good way of slowly building your attention span back
up from basically nothing. The articles are usually short enough that you
don't get bored and start reaching for your phone, but they're long enough to
require some effort if you want to stay focused.

My favorite so far is Lapham's Quarterly.

~~~
marnett
Lapham's quarterly is an absolute amazing publication. Stumbled across the
Religion volume in the sprituality section of my local thrift store three
weeks ago. Truly one of the more important publications I've been exposed to
in a long time, and it's a non-profit! I love how it's essentially classic
literature curated just for those who aren't lifelong academics of the
classics.

------
darrmit
I have dealt with this off and on for years. My relationship with my
smartphone has always been love/hate. I actually even did go to a dumphone for
several months and enjoyed the disconnect, but the lack of maps and a camera
ultimately sent me back to the smartphone.

Now I try to swap SIMs over to a dumbphone for vacation every summer and go to
remote places for other trips where there just isn't any cellular service.
Nothing like being so disconnected you have to walk 15 minutes to the nearest
landline phone.

Edit: I am curious, as an engineer, what others are doing from an on-call
perspective when it comes to no smartphone. PagerDuty handles SMS alerts
nicely and I'm starting to explore Slack/IFTTT. Hangouts is a big missing
piece. There are just a few things like that where I'm concerned about being
_too_ disconnected.

------
noxecanexx
I have been bogged by this for a long time. I would spend hours jumping from
twitter to HN with some TV Shows inbetween. So I decided to take charge by
deleting twitter, only going through HN in the night and watching TV only on
the weekends. I couldn't ditch HN, I have become a better programmer because
of it(I even tried HN subscription programs but those seem to select articles
based popularity...I am not one for that). Regardless I will still suggest
that anyone having this issues first detach completely. It took a lot of time
and discipline to get used to the new schedule.

------
b52_
I completely agree with this article, and the parallels I draw from it (and
some of the comments here) are extremely close.

But why is it that I read this article, agree with it, yet then continue
scrolling HN or FB 2 minutes later? How can I get out of this dopamine cycle?

------
nickjj
I'm really happy using a non-smartphone.

It's super cheap ($30), monthly costs are very low, it comes with unlimited
calls, unlimited texts, holds a charge for 3-4 days (even after 3 years of
use), has a nice slide out keyboard for tactile typing and is a lot smaller
than most smartphones.

For on occasion maps when I travel I have a cheap smartphone that I pay for on
demand ($20 for more than enough data for a long trip) and it works great for
listening to offline MP3s while I walk / run. The camera is meh, but it gets
the job done.

Basically, I carry the non-smartphone all the time except for when I'm walking
/ traveling because I like either absorbing nature or listening to podcasts
with the other phone.

~~~
byproxy
Out of curiosity, which phone are you using? I was tempted to buy a Nokia 3310
recently but it only supports 3G networks which are gradually being phased out
across the United States.

~~~
nickjj
The non-smartphone is an LG Xpression 2.

The smartphone is a TracFone Galaxy Stardust.

I don't use the internet on the LG at all because the experience is crippling
slow, but the Stardust is actually really good for what it is (I've taken it
on trips using Google Maps, etc.).

There are probably better non-smartphones out now but I haven't had any real
issues with this one. I even dropped it once from about 5 feet onto concrete
and it survived without a case. The entire back came apart and the battery
flew out but it all connected together again without a scratch and still works
today.

------
hailk
I've managed to limit my "phone time" significantly since a few years now.
Other than the traditional remedies, one thing which works exceptionally well
for me is that I've put the device on silent and on vibrate at all time,
unless I'm explicitly expecting a very important call (rare). The main
reasoning behind this is that auditory signals are much more distracting than
visual signals; the latter you must explicitly look for. I just occasionally
glance to check the flash notifier. The phone stays out of my hand most of the
day.

------
wellpast
Is there a market for a screenless phone with voice interaction only (which
would not obviate at all many usueful apps "texting", maps, note-taking, etc,
btw) -- I know for certain that I would replace my iPhone with (a sufficiently
designed) one.

Who else would?

~~~
jdavis703
There is, it's called the Light Phone [0]. I've noticed they're engaging in a
lot of marketing that seems to be paid native advertising, but the promotion
doesn't disclose it's an ad, so proceed with caution. I would maybe wait until
they leave the "pre-order" stage.

[0]: [https://www.thelightphone.com/](https://www.thelightphone.com/)

------
jlg23
One shock-therapy that at least had some benefit for a lot of my friends:
Whenever you feel tempted to get out your smartphone in a public place, survey
how many people around you are glued to their smartphones. Talk to the few who
are not.

------
stephengillie
The problem here is the narcissistic viewpoint. It's all about the author,
their usage patterns, and their device problems. There's no mention of being
part of (or missing out on) social debates or discussions. The author also
doesn't mention any online clubs, teams, or groups which would miss them. Are
they just bouncing off the front page of each site for a quick dopamine rush?

This reminds me of someone who goes to college and never joins any clubs, then
comes home and complains that college is a waste of time.

Edit: suddenly, this seems reminiscent of the Inbox Zero initiative from years
ago.

~~~
gaius
_There 's no mention of being part of (or missing out on) social debates or
discussions. The author also doesn't mention any online clubs, teams, or
groups which would miss them_

These things existed long before “attention economy” was even a thing

~~~
stephengillie
And they will persist long after. Is the author part of debate on HN, as we
are performing here? Or do they just skim articles out of habit?

My argument is that this person is missing connecting with other people.

------
muh_phone

      > and deleted the following apps: Twitter, Hacker News
      > Hacker News
    

How does one “delete the Hacker News app”?

~~~
grzm
There are a number of dedicated HN readers. I assume they mean one of those.

------
Animats
_In no way did I miss the actual content._

------
zyngaro
And your phone belongs Facebook (or so they seem to think)

------
jacquesm
Only if you let it.

~~~
skywhopper
Did you read the article, which is explicitly making this point (only, with
actual argument instead of assertion)? Or do you just troll HN responding to
headlines?

~~~
jacquesm
> Did you read the article

Asking 'did you read the article' is just about the oldest troll on HN, so
pot, meet kettle.

It also seems that that is a favorite pastime of yours, to ask if people read
the article, such as here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16016803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16016803)

Only an hour ago.

