
Why beating your phone addiction may come at a cost - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/mar/13/digital-wellness-phone-addiction-tech
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LinuxBender
Disclaimer: Very unpopular opinion ahead.

I've never owned a smart phone. As far as I can tell, that has saved me a lot
of hassle and mental capacity.

The only cost is that I am the only one that can see I am in the Twilight
Zone. Everyone around me has their head buried in their phone. They can't
function normally. They get stuck in the elevator and I have to let them know
they have arrived. I can see about a .4 second thought penalty on those around
me.

If I dare say anything negative about the precious device, I get slammed for
it which is further proof it is an opiate addiction that has profound
psychological implications.

My question to HN: If you find that you are the only one seeing that everyone
around you has been subjugated by a device, what would you do?

~~~
enilakla
I do think that the smartphone has lead to some sort of degradation in terms
of everyday social interactions, along with an increase in people consuming
more clickbait and subjecting themselves to advertisements, etc.. Basically
just consuming garbage.

Of course, one could argue that if you choose to not consume those things, you
can harvest the benefit of having information and fluid communication at your
fingertips. The reality is that in the aggregate, we likely waste more time on
the things like browsing <insert_favorite_site_here>.

This could have been phrased so many different ways, and its tricky to point
out what exactly is wrong with it all..but I believe soon we'll be at a sort
of short/medium term high-point with this sort of behavior, and people will
start embracing more natural interactions, etc..

I also think much of this has to do with economics/markets. For the past
decade theres been a massive run up in capital and with low yields it's been
invested in about every scheme imaginable. Large companies like Lyft lose a
lot of money and investors apparently haven't had enough yet...

In 2009 this would not have worked. Next time we have a recession, it will
'slow down' a lot of investment and in that sort of market it will be hard to
continuously lose money; and this is where it gets a bit vague (if it hasn't
already) but I feel that society _needs_ that slow-down, since these days
there's constant hype of this new service, app, way of doing things, etc..

