At this rate of headlines, The Grauniad will be shutting their app and web servers down shortly and moving back to movable type and newspaper boys covered in soot.
My phone helps gets me to places I can go and touch things. And take photos with it. It's just a tool. Encourage those uses. It's not the device, it's the users' choice in how they use it.
If you've never picked up your phone to do one thing and half an hour later found yourself trawling through Instagram, having forgotten what you originally meant to do with your "just a tool", you are in a tiny minority of incredibly focused people.
The majority of us, through no fault of our own, find these 'tools' regularly sucking us into a vortex of distractions and time-wasting. The struggle against cheap dopamine hits is real.
> you are in a tiny minority of incredibly focused people.
I have never been described as a focused person but I have never lost an hour to Instagram because I do not use Instagram. Nor do I use Facebook or any other social media apps. Not a one is even installed on my phone.
If you lose an hour to Instagram that is entirely on you. Instagram has to ask you to turn on notifications. You choose to open it.
Turn off all your notifications and silence your ringer and your phone won't distract you with anything. Even better delete social media apps that demand your engagement to make them money. If you feel you must use some social media only do so through their web apps.
By allowing notifications you're participating in your own abuse.
I'm not going to take the blame game angle of personal accountability as another sub thread has gone, but! I'm here to help!
First things first, you can organise your apps so that the tools you want appear prominently. On iOS Focus modes can help you set pages of apps just to what you need in that focus - I have one for "Holiday" which I use when on a beach which has my airline/holiday company, bank (to check the spends), an e-Reader, and that's it. My work focus has apps I need for work - slack, email, calendar, internal apps for accessing shared docs and so on. There is one focus which has casual games and mind candy stuff - I switch to it consciously. I can't accidentally end up in there.
I'm also lucky in that I can separate out how my friends contact me (Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram) vs family (FB Messenger and text messages), vs work (Slack). If you can do that, do it, it really helps, honestly.
Next up, kill notifications with fire. Apps heavey on notifications are the crying babies of smartphones: they can ruin your sleep with their neediness, but you need to help them adapt into your routine, not the other way around.
On iOS you can have "scheduled summary notifications", and that's awesome, but I think the only stuff you need to get notified about generally is really important stuff. Only you can decide what that is, but it's probably not social media. Kill as much of it as possible.
Unread notification badges are evil. You can get rid of those. Even on email, do you really need to know how much "work" is needed inside that app? Probably not.
Plan your time, then plan your tech around that plan, and then stick with those plans (and at first it might require willpower until it becomes habit).
These changes mean I've not been a habitual user of social media in years (and I used to be on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook for 5+ hours a day), and I'm reading more books on my phone. Things that need my attention get it, but I am super careful about deciding what that "need" really is, and most things don't get it.
We all have different personalities. I'm one of those focused people who sometimes forgets to even bring my phone along with me when I leave the house. My gf seems to have some serious catching-up to do on her FB horse diva group any time she picks up her phone. She might benefit from some kind of barrier, and I could do a better job of keeping in touch with old friends. Let's not bury our heads in the sand.
> > The majority of us, through no fault of our own
> it is called "personal accountability", I know its very hated on in the modern world, but please...
Look, I get the point you're trying to make, but as stated, this is incredibly insensitive. There are plenty of scenarios where someone should be held personally accountable for getting distracted or losing time, but this is not one of them. It's entirely possible and quite common for certain kinds of content to trick and manipulate the brain. It's not their personal fault for falling victim, just as it's not someone's personal fault for getting robbed.
Plus, not everyone can focus or resist distractions the same. Not everyone can expect to even be able to. Many people who suffer from ADHD, for example, have a particularly hard time with this.
you are wrong, I am however one of those people who say that if you are allergic to peanuts, you do not get to scream "make peanuts illegal", but you instead accept that you have a task of making sure what you stuff your face with does not contain peanuts.
I think it's reasonable to disallow peanuts in shared public spaces that people with allergies cannot realistically avoid. Certain people can have life-threatening allergic reactions to even the scent of peanuts.
what if two people in the entire world was deadly allergic to apple or perhaps avocado?
It sucks, but if you are extraordinary, you have some precautions you have to take in your life. Additionally if you are THAT sensitive to something like peanuts, you would be totally crazy to simply trust that ink on a page would protect you. You would take precautions
> what if two people in the entire world was deadly allergic to apple or perhaps avocado?
That's the thing though. Peanut allergy is the second most common food allergy. Around 1 in 100 people have a peanut allergy. I can't seem to find data on what the average sensitivity to peanut is, but in a shared space such as a school, 1 in 100 is a real consideration.
> it is called "personal accountability", I know its very hated on in the modern world, but please...
It's hated because people almost exclusively invoke it as a thought-terminating cliche instead of actually discussing the practicalities of cultivating and relying on it at scale.
> It's not the device, it's the users' choice in how they use it.
This right here. But I take it in a different way. That tool is mine. I get to chose how it is used. Advertisers seem to think they own some of my time to get 'free things'. Application makers seem to think they own some of my time to try to get more money out of me thru the use of dark patterns. The phone companies seem to think they own some of my time and sell my data because I pay them. Other people seem to think they own my time because I have the thing and should be on call 24/7 whenever they want to get ahold of me.
When they first came up with the idea of the current smart phone. It was really cool. Then I have realized that everyone is using it to grab my time from me. All of them seem to get mad when I set the thing down on a table somewhere and ignore it and enjoy the things I want to do.
App makers (and mobile phone companies) are competitive marketplaces with alternatives. They're trying to find viable business models to fund feature development and make a profit. Can't fault them for that: users can pick another option.
Who I can fault is mobile OS/platform owners.
It's a duopoly, and they've repeatedly and strategically made user-hostile decisions that strip choice away from mobile device owners.
All of the ills you mentioned wouldn't be ills if OS features enabled user control of them.
Google is obviously the more egregious (user freedom features and need to boost quarterly profits are inversely related), but I don't think Apple would be taking a pro-privacy stance if it conflicted with their business model and they didn't see it as a strategic differentiator.
Technology enters because it's useful. Stays because it's addictive.
You can praise all good usages of technology. Then you make a pie chart of real usages and the biggest piece of the cake will be porn, violent content, etc.
Dear SJWs, stop downvoting the parental post if you just don't know the mentioned substance is a really good local anesthetic with short but powerful effect and having close to zero post-effects after a singular use.
My phone helps gets me to places I can go and touch things. And take photos with it. It's just a tool. Encourage those uses. It's not the device, it's the users' choice in how they use it.