Yes. I went away a few months ago with my fiancé for 4 days and we did an unofficial smartphone detox. We just got there and said to each other, why not turn the phone data off and leave the phones in the corner of the room. So we did. The holiday was very relaxing.
But the most interesting part was when we got back. When I jumped onto hacker news I was overwhelmed by all the headlines about totally different things all simultaneously being interpreted by my brain as must reads. It was total overload, and not at all what I was expecting. The Hacker News feed is it’s own kind of brain hack. I wonder how much more pleasant (but less addictive surely) it would be if each page had say 5 headlines with a few paragraphs underneath. Like a newspaper.
Another interesting thing that i’ve Observed since I started observing my Hacker News usage: I read maybe 2 paragraphs of an article then read the top 3 or 4 comments then go to the next thing. I don’t stop until I have some kind of realization about something. Or I see my own views on something validated. Then I put the phone down seemingly satisfied. It seems I come here for the hit of dopamine that comes from “you learnt a thing” or “people agree with your view on a thing”. The addictive part seems to stem from this. I stay here until I get that moment.
I seem to ignore the "people agree with your view on a thing" or at least it doesn't satisfy. I already know people agree with me or don't - so rationally I don't search for that.
But I definitely experience the "you learnt a thing" addiction. And frankly, I don't know how to feel about that. If that's the thing I'm searching a hit for... do I need to stop that?
I think probably yes - but I'm not sure why. When I thought deeply about it and talked with a friend about it, we somewhat came to a consensus that as long as you still do a significant amount of deep reading, thinking, work, etc per day these little hits of "learnt a thing" probably are fine to endulge.
It's when you're always only "learnt a thing" and never digging deeply into them and applying them that you have a problem.
But what's the right balance? Or is some hits of learnt a thing always bad?
But the most interesting part was when we got back. When I jumped onto hacker news I was overwhelmed by all the headlines about totally different things all simultaneously being interpreted by my brain as must reads. It was total overload, and not at all what I was expecting. The Hacker News feed is it’s own kind of brain hack. I wonder how much more pleasant (but less addictive surely) it would be if each page had say 5 headlines with a few paragraphs underneath. Like a newspaper.
Another interesting thing that i’ve Observed since I started observing my Hacker News usage: I read maybe 2 paragraphs of an article then read the top 3 or 4 comments then go to the next thing. I don’t stop until I have some kind of realization about something. Or I see my own views on something validated. Then I put the phone down seemingly satisfied. It seems I come here for the hit of dopamine that comes from “you learnt a thing” or “people agree with your view on a thing”. The addictive part seems to stem from this. I stay here until I get that moment.