
Smartphones Are Toys First, Tools Second - imartin2k
https://www.raptitude.com/2019/05/smartphones-are-toys-first-tools-second/
======
_bxg1
Disable all notifications except _direct_ messages, and reminders that you
create yourself.

Delete all apps that are _designed_ to be checked over and over.

Put all other apps that _could_ be checked over and over (finance, video
streaming, shopping - believe me) inside folders, on screens behind the main
screen. You should have to consciously look for them when you actually need
them.

Don't sign in to any social sites in your browser, and don't let favorites or
recents give you colorful icons for your frequented sites. Force yourself to
type in the website you want to go to.

My home screen consists of music, direct communication, maps,
notes/calendar/contacts, and the web browser. None of these can be idly
checked except the web browser. They all encourage intentional interaction or
none at all. Sometimes I open my phone subconsciously, look at the icons, and
put it away again because there's nothing to be done.

~~~
tgb
I do this but then I just type to an unsigned-in Reddit and get the crappy
front page instead of at least a controllable selection of topics. The web
browser is the killer of this strategy.

~~~
_bxg1
The web browser is problematic - HN remains a bit of a Skinner box for me -
but it still denies you two important addictive mechanisms: candy-colored
icons and attractive design. If there's no icon begging you to tap it, and the
interface when you get there is "crappy", there's much less artificial
addictiveness in the equation.

~~~
jefurii
Try HN's noprocrast feature on the user settings page.

------
rkagerer
This excerpt summarizes the author's chief complaint:

 _For most of us, they easily soak up far more time than they save, capturing
our attention dozens of times daily, and directing it to gratifying but mostly
forgettable activities, usually infused with advertising._

I empathize. I just set up a new phone and was frustrated by all the unwanted
notifications spammed at me from my OS and the latest versions of so many of
my apps. It seems a lot worse than the last time I did this few years ago, and
I'm constantly tweaking settings to stomp them out.

This began as a surgical exercise - usually I don't want to kill all the
functionality, just turn off the specific alerts I don't care about. But it's
gotten to the point I feel like I'm waging war against an ecosystem of
developers intent to squander my attention without recognizing it's an
incredibly scare and valuable resource.

Messenger in particular was so difficult to get to shut up that I just wound
up removing all Facebook's apps. They're not the only offender. If you have an
Android, go into App Info for Google Maps ( _edit:_ then tap Notifications)
and look at the sheer volume of stuff it wants to nag you about.

~~~
lotsofpulp
I like to turn off all notifications (noise, vibration, and lock screen) other
than audio calls. All other messaging is asynchronous and shouldn’t be
important enough to disturb your focus. On iOS, I even move the apps that have
the little red numeric notification circle to a different page than the first,
so I don’t see it until I want to see it.

~~~
dustinmr
You can turn the little red bubbles off.

Go to Settings Search for notifications Go to the specific app and turn off
Badges

My normal routine is that turn them all off, then go back and turn on the
specific ones I want. But it turn off the badges for virtually all of them.

~~~
sixothree
Having a home page free of little red circles changes how you look at your
device. It is freeing and a breath of fresh air. It is amazing what a
psychological impact these red badges have over us.

~~~
inlined
I recently turned off all notifications. Messaging apps can still have badges.
As a former developer for a notification sending product I feel stunned at how
much I’m preferring this setup.

------
jaabe
Aren’t they supposed to be toys? I mean, I need a smartphone for e-mail and
maps, but I don’t need something that’s more powerful than an iPhone 5 for
that, and yet I’m typing this on an iPhone XS while I’m on my commute to work
(election preparations).

The reason I have the XS was mainly because I wanted more screen space for
things that fall in the “toys” category, things like hackernews, and I’m
certainly looking forward to playing the Harry Potter Pokemon go. I also
wanted the better camera to take better pictures of my newborn, that I share
with our family in Tinybeans.

I don’t see a problem with that at all though. I did turn notifications off
from everything except the e-mail where I get alerts. I use todoist, a todo
app, to schedule a lot of things, but even that doesn’t allow to alert me, not
even with a little red number on the app icon.

I suggests this to everyone. I did it at a suggestion of my personal-
efficiency-coach, but once the apps stopped reminding me to open them, it
instantly freed up hours of daily time. Now I check them when I want to, like
right now, where the alternative to my smartphone is quite literally staring
at the open train bathroom across me. This had the added advantage/side effect
of making me realise what apps I didn’t actually want.

~~~
marmaduke
I agree with what you wrote, my iPhone has all notifications off and the only
person who can make it ring is my wife.

But

> staring at the open train bathroom across me

I have since found that this sort of time wasting is pretty powerful way to
let creativity recharge. It’s like disengaging from screen let’s my mind work
at it own rhythm.

~~~
jaabe
Typically I’d agree, if I was seated next to a window I’d be looking outside.
That’s often how I get my best ideas, but the bathroom is just too boring.
Especially because it’s the same bathroom I look at every day.

I sit on folding seats in the conjunction between carts because I commute with
my folding bike, and it’s just easier to sit out here, but I do think you’re
absolutely spot on. I think “wasting” time is extremely valuable.

~~~
close04
> I think “wasting” time is extremely valuable.

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

At the very least you get to disconnect your brain. At best you come up with
something awesome.

~~~
hombre_fatal
> Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

People use this to justify just about everything, like being addicted to World
of Warcraft for 5 years and forgoing their ambitions to watch Netflix. It's a
joke at this point.

It needs to come with a second part "but do your best to set yourself up for
life fulfillment" or be refactored into "don't beat yourself up for wasting a
little bit of time". Wasting time and instant gratification will absolutely
keep you from achieving what you want in life.

~~~
snazz
Time you “waste” looking out the window, thinking about life is not instant
gratification and doesn’t beg you to come back whenever you can. It’s really
not comparable to a video game, movie streaming, or social media.

~~~
hombre_fatal
> Time you “waste” looking out the window, thinking about life is not instant
> gratification and doesn’t beg you to come back whenever you can.

Exactly.

Now compare the difference between what you said and the trite "Time you enjoy
wasting is not wasted time" that I responded to. That's my point.

~~~
close04
When you consider something wasteful it trumps what another person thinks
about the same? Are you using some objective criteria for this? I’m sure
something you consider a good use of time is considered wasteful by a good
number of people.

So my point is: should I consider binge watching Netflix (random example) as
wasted time because you consider it a waste or should I keep doing it because
I enjoy it? Especially if objectively speaking it doesn’t prevent me from
being a useful member of society, perhaps more so than many people who don’t
engage in such “wasteful” behavior.

You can probably find a counter example for most rules you can think of. A
cherry picked example doesn’t negate the premises.

Years ago some guy was rambling about shadows in a cave. Not quite WoW but
still pretty wasteful depending on who you asked.

------
rayssgyms
A few personal usage tactics I’ve been experimenting with, since I’ve been
dealing with smartphone overuse since 2005:

1) No social media apps.

2) Four icons on the home screen (for iPhone, go to this site: [https://david-
smith.org/blank.html](https://david-smith.org/blank.html) click share button
and add to home screen. Change wallpaper to black. Each black icon you add to
the home screen will take up a space where an app would have been, helping you
focus on apps that you find most important)

3) Airplane mode when I’m on vacation (so I can still use the camera but won’t
be tempted to reply to a text).

4) Few notifications other than calendar, phone, and text. Absolutely no email
notifications. Selective and timed Slack notifications since I’m often mobile
and don’t want to be the bottleneck at work.

5) No games.

6) Limited video use. Overuse hasn’t been a problem, so I don’t set hard
guidelines on this.

7) Leave phone in car [clearly I don’t live in SF] or at home during scheduled
time with loved ones.

8) Wear cellular Apple Watch and carry AirPods in pocket when leaving phone at
home - if there may be an important call coming in while I’m intentionally
preventing myself from working while mobile.

9) Keep phone charging at night in bathroom on do not disturb. No checking
during middle of the night bathroom usage.

10) Limit non-essential apps to informational apps - like HN.

Smartphones are tools first or they can be toys first. That depends on the
goals and discipline level of the user.

~~~
ryandrake
Great list. I go a little further on notifications: Do Not Disturb (DnD) mode
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, which inhibits all calls, texts, messages,
E-mails, and most importantly notifications. This allows you to use the phone
on your own terms and schedule, not on someone else's, including app
developers desperate to prod you into their apps. A big part of the smartphone
problem, in my view, is how we have all become slaves to them--using them when
they demand to be used, rather than when we choose to use them.

If it's important, they'll leave a message or E-mail, which you can check on
your own schedule.

~~~
j1elo
Hopefully your father / brother / SO / whoever doesn't need urgent help from
you, ever.

I used to always power off my phone at night, until one day at 2am I was in
the middle of nowhere needing help from a friend, and he did actually answer
the phone. He told me: "if it was the other way around, you wouldn't have
helped me". For me it was a life saver, and I could totally see how harder
would everything have been if he did like me every night (no one else to call
at that moment, before that's asked).

Since then, my phone is kept on and unsilenced at night. If anyone important
to me needs my help, I want to be there for them. Not that it's happened ever
once in the last 10 years, though :)

~~~
Nextgrid
Do not disturb on iOS let’s repeated calls through for emergencies.

~~~
j1elo
That's such a good idea! I wonder if it's possible to configure something
similar in Android..

~~~
graeme
You can also allow calls from contacts in ios dnd. Android may have that, or
allowed callers etc

------
kstenerud
We are social creatures. Everything he's talking about (aside from the simpler
games) engages our social centers, much like dinner parties and water cooler
talks and other social gatherings did in the past. People want to engage, even
vicariously, and feel social worth, because social interaction is a huge part
of our psyche.

Smartphones are empowering, but they also present a change in our environment
that we're not properly adapted to. The social lure that binds groups together
is being hijacked by social apps because they tap into the same psychology.
And they would have done so without the Facebooks of the world (in fact they
did, with Usenet and BBSes and party phone lines and television and radio and
so on).

We won't adapt quickly enough as a species to avoid being enraptured by social
apps (except for a tiny minority), so we'll need an artificial solution to
deal with it.

~~~
agumonkey
I deeply believe smartphones are the social equivalent of pornography for
sexuality. You get your needs when you want how you want but in fact it's only
a pale copy of the real thing.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And here I thought smarthphones are the social equivalent of neighbourhood kid
playgrounds of my generation. Kids there were each on a similar, but slightly
different and completely independent schedule. We wouldn't arrange social
events in advance, we'd just go outside when we wanted and play with whoever
happened to be there, for as long as either of us was there. Just like social
media today.

~~~
agumonkey
Sorry for my bold point but, most of the time I feel that saying hi to someone
in the street has more impact on me than having long convos on reddit. There's
something to physical proximity that is missing from the web (obviously) and
people trying to make it a full replacement are somehow lying.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't disagree. There is something in meatspace interactions that isn't
captured on the Internet. Probably even multiple small somethings that add up
to a different quality. And while I feel my social media activity currently
brings in more value than most of the meatspace conversations, I would
_really_ like to have these kinds of conversations I have on HN _in a bar_ ,
face to face.

~~~
petra
Yes, social media conversations are more interesting, and you'll learn more.

But emotionally, they hold little value compared to face to face interactions.

But with regards to learning and information, there's often much better we
could do than social media - for example good books, or at least summaries of
books, hold an order of magnitude more value than most social media.

But the way social media and the internet manipulated our attention, does make
it harder for us to read those.

~~~
agumonkey
There's a trend since the ubiquity of computers and internet that the most
important thing in life is information and truth. When you're face to face
with someone, information is rarely the most important thing. What matters is
how you share time and space to make for a good time for people involved.

~~~
EForEndeavour
> There's a trend since the ubiquity of computers and internet that the most
> important thing in life is information and truth.

Sadly, the ubiquity of computers and the internet have also enabled
disinformation and denial of information and truth at unprecedented scales.

~~~
agumonkey
It's actually not far from my previous point. Seeking truth when you're not
aimed for it or understand its limits reverts to ~tribal and emotional
reflexes of trust and influence, a large opportunity for disinformation. And
is the sour parallel to relating to others mostly emotionally (except anger).
The difference is that people are sold 'pure <sourced> information' as a new
paradigm.

------
alxmdev
I wish Google Maps wouldn't invent new notifications every other month and
enable them by default. No, I don't want to check-in, review, or take photos
of whatever place I'm in. I'd prefer a faster-loading app instead, to just
look up simple directions and orient myself.

And sometimes I want to jot down a quick note or create a new calendar
reminder, not to be bombarded by "Check out the new features, Got It?" speech
bubbles.

It's annoyances like this that make using my phone frustrating. It doesn't
feel like a personal device that's under my control at all, it's something I
reluctantly use and indeed look forward to working out of my life. I'm more
attached to my 2nd hand laptop running Linux Mint, and for good reason.

~~~
derefr
What notification from Google Maps do you need that you're not just disabling
its notifications at the app level?

~~~
alxmdev
Turns out none, thanks for the reminder :-)

------
acd
I will try and switch to a simpler phone Cat B35 to see if I can cut out smart
phone addiction. The Cat B35 uses KaiOS which is a Firefox OS clone. I will
also carry a pocket camera like a Sony Rx100 for taking good quality photos.

I realize my mind is addicted to smart phones touch interfaces and
applications and that phones are distracting me from reality. IE the haptic
dopamine reward from touching the screen in combination with applications.

The experiment is what you will gain from having a simpler device which is
focused on call first.

KaiOS
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS)

~~~
chronogram
Hey that compact camera idea is pretty good! With no clue about them, and
looking at Wikipedia and the Sony website, I have still little clue. Could you
link me some information about cameras? I see several different RX100 cameras
and several, much cheaper, W8x0 ones. I’m bad at taking pictures but I still
like to take some when there are these lambs by the side of cycling roads here
for example, so those compact cameras could be nice to carry in the bag while
my older iPhone SE is not the best at taking pictures.

~~~
jazzyjackson
Not OP but I'm a fan of keeping up with camera tech.

dpreview.com is my goto for comparing cameras. There are 7 different RX100's
as Sony keeps upgrading it every year - mostly little things - more focus
points, faster focus and light metering, higher frames per second... you
really can't go wrong just buying the most expensive one in your budget, even
the oldest ones will take great pictures -- they'll just be slower.

Check out

[https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/buying-guide-best-
pocketabl...](https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/buying-guide-best-pocketable-
enthusiast-cameras)

Also worth looking into, my favorite cameras are 'fixed prime' \- there's no
zoom so you have to be creative and zoom with your feet, and the lens is
matched to the sensor and gives really surprising high quality shots without
much effort.

[https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/buying-guide-best-fixed-
pri...](https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/buying-guide-best-fixed-prime-lens-
cameras)

Happy shooting.

~~~
chronogram
Thanks for the details! I’ve been reading that website for a bit now.

------
kashyapc
This has been my modus operandi:

• No push notifications (except for one human, and that too via SMS).

• No "social media" accounts (never had it on the phone to begin with; and
removed my FB account 5+ years ago).

• Use gray scale (this turned my phone into a very peaceful device). On
Android, this can only be enabled via the "Developer options" (and then select
"Simulate color space" \--> "Monochromacy")

• The "apps" on my phone are most practical ones: Maps, English & Dutch
dictionaries, Orgzly (Org-Mode-based note taker), Spotify, Signal, WhatsApp, a
couple of train look-up services, Firefox and an OTP generator.

This has been instrumental in making sure that my attention is not splintered
all over the place. And lets me retain the ability to concentrate and read
books in 2-hour, undistracted blocks. Go me!

~~~
marapuru
Thanks for that grayscale advice.

~~~
avel
I loved the grayscale mode, but in the end I had to set so many exceptions via
tasker for apps where I do need color for the UI (Such as Google Maps, Uber,
and Calendar), that it proved to be more of a hassle.

~~~
52-6F-62
I use an iPhone with a home button. I bound greyscale to a triple-click of
that so I can switch on and off at will pretty handy if that’s possible on
your end.

~~~
graeme
Note that this dramatically slows multitasking as the system waits for a third
press.

Not an issue on the X style phones.

~~~
52-6F-62
Good point that I’d never considered—though I honestly didn’t notice and
adjusted to it pretty easily. Could see how it would bother some people,
though.

------
chess93
Smartphones are what I think of as "attention capturers" which are able to
completely capture almost anyone's attention span for a significant amount of
time. Other attention capturers include computers[0], video games, TV, books,
chess. Each of these has varying capability as attention capturers but it is
safe to say that smartphones are the strongest attention capturer for most
people.

I believe that using any attention capturer for long periods is not healthy
and should be avoided. The hard part for me is actually finding anything else
to do in a new city without family/friends. Especially on a Tuesday night
after work where it is less possible to go to a bar and talk to strangers.

[0] Smartphones can be included here.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
>I believe that using any attention capturer for long periods is not healthy

Why? I assume you mean psychologically, not physically (which is more obvious
why).

~~~
chess93
I've noticed several side effects such as decreased attention span, decreased
sociability, decreased desire to do anything other than your preferred method
of attention capturing.

Frankly I just think that many of these things are simply addictive and, with
an appeal to naturalism, I don't think it is what humans were meant to do.
Increased smartphone use or TV watching or video games probably almost never
results in increased happiness over the long term.

Not to mention the ability to use attention capturing as a way to hide from
one's own emotions.

------
brainless
I have switched from using my phone for anything-distracting to only-work. I
have been trying it for a long time. Had removed most addictive Social apps
some time back.

WhatsApp usage went down gradually, and not it is limited to early mornings or
evenings. Messenger is rarely used (once in a couple months).

Instagram and Twitter for more social media marketing for our products than
personal.

No games on phone at all. I have finally been very content with my phone as a
tool for about 1.5 years or so.

Most used apps _I think_ are Gmail (multiple accounts including products),
then car pooling app, Slack and WhatsApp.

[Edit: added most used apps]

------
kkarakk
For a real account of how people are going to use smartphones - look at
teenagers. they're always glued to their phones, they edit photos on their
phones, they make plans on their phones, they write poetry on their phones,
kids even do homework on their tablets/phones now.

The dirty truth is app tool makers have been slow to adopt
smartphones/portable screen as input devices as a dev tool. Apple refuses to
put xcode on ipad and refuses to put a touchscreen on a mac(but have included
that godawful POS touchbar), google hasn't made ANY real take the charge
forays into a drag and drop android app creator and microsoft doesn't have a
clue.Indie app creators aren't incentivised to make dev tools for smartphones
because adoption is low since hardware/software makers are trying to
artifically push a "phones are for play, laptops are for work"
artifice(apple/google/microsoft).Ironically Samsung dex is an actual vision of
a realistic phone as primary computing tool future but Apple is too focused on
profits to adopt this paradigm.

The moment we see actual real "native mock to deployment" tools on mobile
devices is the moment the distraction moniker will go kaput.

it's not that phones are distracting us from our work, it's that our whole
world is on the phone, the social bits the communication bits and the
entertainment bits - except for the bit of the world that deals with making
things.

~~~
xenihn
The xcode experience is bad enough on a top-of-the-line MBP with the best
peripherals (monitor, keyboard, etc) available. I say this as someone who has
spent, on average, 8+ hours a day in xcode for the past four years. Maybe
Apple refuses to put xcode on iPad because trial runs had devs looking for the
nearest window to jump out of.

~~~
saagarjha
I've been running Xcode on a mediocre MacBook Pro with no peripherals for the
last five years (though I only spend a couple of hours on average per day).
It's not awful.

------
mathgladiator
> We don’t play with tape measures

Oh, yeah, we do... :)

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
See how far you can push it out until it collapses.

------
TheOperator
I broke a laptop and didn't replace it because I'm trying to learn to use my
android phone as a tool more. It does have a usb-c port.

It works okay. Needs more drivers. The issue with using phones as a tool isn't
the phones theirselves its the surrounding infrastructure. If somebody wants a
business idea how about selling phone compatible tools?

------
tdaltonc
After I got mu PhD in the neuroscience of habit formation, I made an app to
help people reconfigure their phone to prevent or dismantle exactly this kind
of compulsive relationship with their phone.

Check it out here:
[https://youjustneedspace.com/](https://youjustneedspace.com/)

------
everyone
Based on the title, I thought this was gonna be about how the entire UX design
of smartphones is utter garbage, and hence they cant be used to do most kinds
of work, and the stuff that _is_ possible is much slower / error prone.

Imo they have been designed from the ground up to be merely shiny toys /
gadgets.

The most fundamental flaw in the design is the touchscreen. Eg. Press a button
which is just part of the screen and has 0 haptic feedback, so the only way to
locate it is by looking at it, but your finger is obscuring it (as you are
moving to press it with your finger) so you cant see it. It is a paradoxical
situation.

------
Smithalicious
>For most of us, they easily soak up far more time than they save, capturing
our attention dozens of times daily, and directing it to gratifying but mostly
forgettable activities, usually infused with advertising.

I suspect this to be one of those things we all think everyone else is doing
but that very few people are actually doing in reality. Frankly, all time I
spend on my phone is actually valuable, or at least not better spent doing
anything else, and I think it's the same for most people.

------
tluyben2
More people said it here but I do 60-70% of my work on my smartphone,
including dev. No games, no social networking, just work. It is not only not a
toy, it is vital to my workflow.

------
amelius
No, smartphones are tools used by companies to extract personal data and/or
money from people.

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
And, when needed, LEO tracking devices.

------
nkkollaw
Like anything else, though.

Computers in the 70s might have been business machines, but families got them
because kids wanted to play videogames

------
T3OU-736
The reason we'd have difficulty explaining the smartphone to someone from 60s
is because it uses a while lot of infrastructure for all those spicy functions
to be available. This is not to take away from the pocket computer's
awesomeness, but there decides in our pockets aren't self-contained.

(Edit: keyboard mis-swipes)

------
habosa
A lot of good usage tips in this thread. One that not enough people use (IMO)
is to get a notification inbox app. Like this one (although I use one I made
myself):
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wandoujia....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wandoujia.notification&hl=en)

Basically it sucks up notifications from all (or selected) apps into an inbox-
like interface similar to email. You can check it when you want, but it's not
in your face.

There are a lot of apps where I don't want to disable notifications, but I
also don't want them interrupting me. NYTimes is a good example of that, since
I do want to read the news but only on my own schedule. A notification inbox
has helped me a lot.

------
edoo
Smartphones are totally toys. I am so efficient on a desktop I can't stand to
use them for anything work related. I pretty much use it to glance at emails
and take pictures. Oh and don't forget the government mandated backdoors and
location tracking a la the 911 laws.

------
ezconnect
I only use my phone for taking photos so I can remember what I saw or as
reference to what I am doing. I wish there's an app that could tag the photo
automatically so I can search it and reference it again.

The only time it would ring or get a message is if there's something important
from my wife.

~~~
core1024
> I wish there's an app that could tag the photo automatically so I can search
> it and reference it again.

Google photos does exactly this.

~~~
ezconnect
I tried it, its only good at categorizing images. I wish it could index the
text and numbers at different angles also. I also wish it can further filter
what you have already searched.

------
Kirth
I was strongly reminded of this yesterday when I wanted to send someone the
PSK for a home WiFi network. It baffles me that I'd need root access and a
separate tool to extract the PSK.

Are there any phone manufacturers that still let you root without potentially
bricking the phone etc?

------
geophile
Very poorly argued. The premise ignores that many of those superpowers are
available on your computer. So giving up the phone is not as big a sacrifice
as is being claimed.

------
dontbenebby
Having a metered plan helped tremendously (and saves me money).

I tend to eschew Twitter/Reddit and focus on podcasts, or binge a little
Wikipedia waiting for the train.

------
zemanel
my phone is my most powerful daily life, work, research device

------
unixhero
Well I didn't read tfa, but I disagree with the title.

I use the camera, document producing capabilities quite frequently in my work,
in addition the regular features of loudspeaker conference calls (when Skype
for Business fails) and so on.

I only take time to play with it, when I'm bored on plane rides.

