[HN Gopher] Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Rela...
___________________________________________________________________
Glued to Your Phone? Here's How to Rethink Your Relationship with
Social Media
Author : r0n0j0y
Score : 84 points
Date : 2021-07-23 09:51 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| zahrc wrote:
| Social media nowadays is not just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
| and TikTok.
|
| There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube... I'd even
| count HN.
|
| There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid
| amount of people way to invested in those
|
| See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big
| enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn't
| call that responsible.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I'd struggle to place Discord, HN and possibly Reddit into the
| "social media" category. They sure aren't dead websites and
| they sure have a community, but they don't feel the same way as
| Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Maybe it's the lack of name
| recognition that makes them feel different.
| Calvin02 wrote:
| Yeah, and if you look at all the engagement tactics that the
| NPR, NYTimes, or the CNN apps use, they are basically saying:
| spend your time here and not there.
|
| Most of the internet is vying for your attention and asking you
| to spend more time on their site than the others.
|
| To truly come up with meaningful solutions, we need to look at
| the entire problem. Otherwise we're just moving marbles around.
| zahrc wrote:
| I think there is not just one problem, people have different
| needs and holes to fill.
|
| The social media platforms attract different demographics,
| because they fit in different niches.
|
| The reason why people are drawn to Facebook, differs from
| 4chan.
|
| On Instagram people want to be discovered and seen, creating
| and sharing art and take the credit for it.
|
| While people go to 4chan to be anonymous, which generates
| questionable content.
|
| I personally go on HN because the community is close to home,
| but why is that?
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| I spend way too much time reading HN and reddit. Most of the
| time I'm not even logged in, but I'm still pretty much
| addicted. I also don't really see any reason to treat these
| sorts of sites differently.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I want to quit this stuff but I can't seem to find anything to
| fill the void.
|
| Time fillers for Five to ten minutes Of downtime where I don't
| want to do any deep work since I'll probably be interrupted.
| Maybe some kind of game?
| callmeal wrote:
| Back in the before times, we would carry around a crossword or
| sudoku puzzle as time fillers.
|
| Being quiet with your thoughts is also an option.
| colordrops wrote:
| Learn guitar. Can easily be done in 10 minute chunks, though
| the more time you put in, the more you get out.
|
| Or if you insist on looking at your phone, you could do 2 or 3
| Duolingo lessons in that time frame.
|
| Or meditate.
| notapenny wrote:
| Read something, an article or a book which is more short
| snippets (try Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, those five minutes
| will change your life). I have a list with a whole bunch of
| tech topics that I could read a quick MDN/wikipedia/whatever
| article on. If its a quick game, Call of Duty or some racing
| game where a race only takes a few minutes. I actually find
| taking a break and then gaming for five/ten minutes to be
| really good for my attention since it really forces me to focus
| completely for that time. Otherwise, just stand outside with
| your coffee and breathe.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Learn to enjoy doing nothing. There's no rule that you have to
| constantly be doing something or need to be constantly
| optimizing your time. That's just societal anxiety talking.
| elchin wrote:
| I highly recommend Indistractable by Nir Eyal
| tharne wrote:
| I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people
| cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To
| think you can compete with companies that have virtually
| unlimited financial resources available to highjack your
| attention and get you hooked is completely naive. It's like
| telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin
| and use it more moderately".
|
| The only realistic way to reduce the grip of the these
| technologies on your mind is to use fewer of them and completely
| opt out of the worst offenders, like FaceBook, and TickTok.
|
| I've deleted most of my social media accounts at this point and
| gone back to a more basic phone and my life is noticeably better
| for it. Sure there are some inconveniences and some people think
| I'm a weirdo, but it seems like a small price to pay to get my
| brain back.
|
| So much of the power these technologies have over us is not that
| they're so useful or wonderful, but that there's a social
| expectation that we use them, i.e. people sending social invites
| via FaceBook, stigma against the "green bubble people", etc. We
| use them initially because of social pressure and then get
| hooked. If even a small and stubborn minority opted out of some
| of these technologies, say 9% of the population, reasonably
| distributed across ages and demographics, a lot of these
| expectations would disappear or at least reduce.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > to get my brain back.
|
| What do you do all day that is so different? I use social media
| (and this website) to kill time. I have too much time as it is
| to do nothing/nothing to capture my attention, I don't need
| more of it just wishing I was doom scrolling on Instagram.
|
| At least on this website I learn stuff periodically throughout
| the day.
| [deleted]
| tharne wrote:
| > What do you do all day that is so different?
|
| I read (paper books) more, exercise more, started doing yoga
| more frequently. I've made it a point to call friends more
| too. At this stage in my life, time is at premium so I think
| we're in very different situations.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| 50%+ of my friend interactions are me staying in touch
| (text/ messaging) by sending them a funny meme from
| Instagram
| throwawayswede wrote:
| This kind of article is mostly clickbait at this point. There's
| a lot of "interest" in these kinds of topics and they attract a
| lot of attention on -funny enough- the same social media
| platforms.
|
| I believe the main problem with those social media apps is not
| an issue of time, but of productivity and determination/will-
| power. Think of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok,
| Snapchat, etc... These are not social networks exactly, but all
| contain elements from it. I've deleted my Facebook account
| about 6 years ago now and slowly got off all the other ones
| after. Now I only use RSS to follow websites I care about. At
| first I felt like I'm out of a lot of loops and circles of
| friends, but I later realized that it was all useless anyway,
| people who I care about and who cared about me still text or
| call me. I didn't need to know about every little random thing
| that happens in the world unless I specifically choose to know
| about it. It later felt really liberating. People were taking
| about who marked who safe and I just managed with a text
| message. People talk endlessly about how good/bad social media
| is and I'm totally out of the entire conversation. Still to
| this day I meet people who find it very weird that I'm not on
| Facebook, or if they are as well not on Facebook then probably
| because they have Reddit/Tiktok/etc.
|
| I can't stress this enough, but I really felt like my
| productivity was fading away about 6 years ago, after quitting
| I find the energy to work on the most random stuff that take
| weeks of work, I don't get interrupted and my interest doesn't
| fade away from over exposure to random stuff (even if
| interesting). I've asked friends who felt the same way to try
| to delete Tiktok (and video games from their PCs) for a month
| to try to work on something and they all reported great
| results. Every single one said that they wouldn't have been
| able to do it if they didn't delete app X.
|
| My point is this; it's not about time, it's about what you get
| exposed to. If you feel unproductive (compared to what you were
| before) or think "what could 10 minutes on Tiktok do", try
| deleting these apps one by one. The difficulty won't be the
| same for all people, but it'll be manageable for EVERYONE. It's
| not about being on your phone all the time, it's about being on
| your phone because you want to do something, not just for
| mindless scrolling.
|
| (I intentionally did not mention tracking or privacy reasons
| from this because that's whole other beast of a topic.)
|
| I love this quote from Stephen Fry:
|
| > Jacking out of the matrix would cast one as a hero of the
| kind of dystopian film that proved popular in the 70s, Logan's
| Run, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451 ... on the run from
| The Corporation, with the foot soldiers of The System hard on
| your heels. We really are starting to live in that kind of
| movie, mutatis mutandis, so surely it's time to join the
| Rebels, the Outliers, the Others who live beyond the Wall and
| read forbidden books, sing forbidden songs and think forbidden
| thoughts in defiance of The One.
|
| https://www.stephenfry.com/2016/04/off-the-grid/
| derwiki wrote:
| What basic phone did you switch to? I ended up getting a
| cellular Apple watch because it's "smart" enough but no
| distraction apps (unless you count iMessage)
| paganel wrote:
| Not the OP but I'm personally using an iPhone SE. It's good
| enough for HackerNews and i.reddit.com but when it comes to
| apps like FB or Instagram I get bored pretty quickly, maybe
| the smaller screen plays a part in that, I can't tell
| exactly.
| redisman wrote:
| I'm on the SE and it's really not curbing my addictions at
| all. Everything works if somewhat painful because it's a
| bit smaller. I think I'll need something much more
| restricted
| dont__panic wrote:
| Still using a 2016 SE. I'm convinced that the small screen
| encourages me to read more text content (by discouraging me
| from consuming image content since it's only an OK viewing
| experience). And whether or not a site is unusable on the
| SE's 4" screen is an excellent litmus test of whether that
| site is worth visiting in the first place. Sites with giant
| popup banners that are so wide the "x" in the corner is off
| my screen? Not worth my time anyway.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Still using a 2016 SE.
|
| Same. And I've got 2 new ones in the box sitting in my
| closet should this one break. I'll never buy a new phone
| again until Apple releases another 4 inch screen. The new
| "mini" iPhones are literally the size of an iPhone 6.
| tharne wrote:
| I used the SE for a long time too, for the exact same
| reason, the small screen. It's a fantastic phone. I have a
| fairly addictive personality when it comes to tech so I had
| to end up taking more extreme measures.
| tharne wrote:
| The Sunbeam F1 Orchid: https://sunbeamwireless.com/
|
| It's WAY more basic than most people are willing to live
| with, but it's been working surprisingly well for me. Like I
| said in my original comment, there are definitely some
| inconveniences, no way around that, but it's been worth it.
|
| Honestly, the biggest downside to using a flip phone is that
| you start noticing exactly how much people are on their
| phones and it becomes both creepy and annoying. You start to
| feel like you're the last man standing in a zombie movie.
|
| One thing I particularly like about the Sunbeam phone is that
| it's sold my a small American company with amazing customer
| service. I asked a question about the phone via the contact
| form on the website and got a prompt and very thoughtful
| answer from one of the owner's of the company.
| benedikt wrote:
| what's the camera like ?
| tharne wrote:
| I'd classify it as "not bad, but not nearly as good as
| your iPhone"
| rmah wrote:
| Um, I use social media "responsibly" and it's quite easy. I
| look at various social media sites I'm on perhaps two or three
| times a week. Takes up _maybe_ 30 minutes of my time a week. I
| feel no addictive urge to use them more. Most people I know may
| use them a bit more, but not much. The only adults that I know
| who use social media a lot more do it for work.
|
| I submit that the majority of adults use social media sites are
| using them "responsibly" (i.e. occasionally and non-
| obsessively). My opinion (with no real evidence) is that the
| addictiveness is overblown for most adults.
| everdrive wrote:
| You could say the same for overeating, or drinking too much.
| Some people have no issue with overeating, but at least in
| America most people are too fat. ie, they cannot intake
| calories responsibly.
| tharne wrote:
| When something involves a small percentage of the
| population, it's typically an individual issue/failure.
| When it becomes the vast majority of people, like in the
| case of obesity, you have to seriously consider that the
| issue is in large part systemic. I seriously doubt, for
| instance, that in the last 20-30 years, 80% of the American
| population suddenly woke up and lost all willpower when it
| comes to food, especially now that the obesity problem
| appears to be spreading to other countries.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >My opinion (with no real evidence)
|
| Here is some actual evidence.
|
| > Across mobile devices and computers, GlobalWebIndex reports
| that we now spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per
| person, per day using social media [1] (in the US, it is
| 2:03)
|
| [1] https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-bil
| lio...
| throwaway413 wrote:
| "Perhaps two or three times a week, maybe 30 min"
|
| Post your usage stats. No need to guess about it when you can
| look it up in an instant and verify.
| httpsterio wrote:
| Phone use is ubiquitous and people are glued to their screens
| even when walking down the street or talking with their
| family.
|
| Our opinions are being shaped by all sorts of propaganda we
| encounter on every corner online and it has never been easier
| to end up radicalized. I think it's definitely not under
| control.
| tharne wrote:
| Perhaps we run in different circles. I constantly notice
| compulsive smart phone use. At work it's very common to see 8
| people load into an elevator and like clockwork 6 or 7 of
| them will instantly pull out their phones.
|
| Any little piece of downtime where folks might have to be
| alone with their thoughts, or make small talk with people
| they don't already know, you can see people mindlessly
| grabbing their phones. You see this in line at the grocery
| store, kids and adults in school while do this while class
| starts, or the very second it ends.
|
| You see a shocking number of people in restaurants who appear
| to be on dates where both people are glued to their phone.
| I'd certainly classify that as addictive behavior -- i.e.
| when a healthy young man is more interested in what's on his
| phone than he is in the attractive woman sitting across the
| table from him. Something is very wrong there.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| Im doing it at this exact moment!
| adkadskhj wrote:
| So i agreed with you until:
|
| > I'd certainly classify that as addictive behavior -- i.e.
| when a healthy young man is more interested in what's on
| his phone than he is in the attractive woman sitting across
| the table from him. Something is very wrong there.
|
| We can definitely debate online life vs "in the flesh" -
| but it seems small minded to me for you to suggest someones
| preferences for experience are only the result of unhealthy
| addiction.
|
| Many would argue your allowance of modern life, from TVs to
| cars to in city restaurants/etc. That you (or that person,
| i guess) didn't make a home cooked meal, or go experience
| nature together - to be an addiction to the modern and
| lacking in down to earth, honest and real connections.
|
| Not that i agree with any of that of course. My point is
| that i think there is a perfectly valid possible course
| where someone prefers to experience their life in cities,
| in the woods, or in more virtual spaces.
|
| The reality though, and where i agree with you - is that i
| don't think we actually have a virtual space that _isn't_
| fueled entirely be addiction. Powered by highly financed
| and motivated teams of people.
|
| I just think we need to be cognizant of alternative life
| styles. Just because commonly certain lifestyles result in
| unhealthy behavior doesn't inherently mean that lifestyle
| shouldn't be followed at all. If that was the case i think
| this argument should probably switch to avoiding much of
| modern life. As it is full of unhealthy habits and poor
| balances. We'll be living in the woods pretty soon if we
| can't recognize the possible healthy and balanced ways to
| live in the unhealthy-unbalanced minefield that is so many
| alternate forms of life.
| jjulius wrote:
| There is a lot of "I" and "my" usage in your post. _I_ submit
| that you 're only arriving at your conclusion anecdotally,
| using a dataset (you and your like-minded peers, whose use
| you can't actually track) that is not reflective of average
| users worldwide.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| Agreed. The tech is just more powerful than the human will.
| Going back to a basic phone (or even no phone) seems to be the
| only way out of this.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >To think you can compete with companies that have virtually
| unlimited financial resources available to highjack your
| attention and get you hooked is completely naive.
|
| The problem is that ordinary people have absolutely no concept
| whatsoever of what all goes into an app like Facebook. They
| load it on their phones, open it up, and it's just a magical
| screen that shows them images and text. There's no
| understanding of it beyond that. They don't know that there is
| a huge office building in California full of thousands of some
| of the smartest people on earth who spend their entire working
| lives and billions of dollars to figure out how to hack your
| brain more effectively.
|
| Big tech really needs the Upton Sinclair treatment. But even
| then I doubt people will care.
| yann2 wrote:
| How is HN any different? Endless stream of attention capture
| just like Tiktok and FB. And the people who point at the pluses
| sound exactly like ppl on FB and Tiktok.
|
| HN is a good laboratory to see if your suggestions work. If it
| doesnt work on the few thousand here mindlessly scrolling and
| jabbering away where is it going to work on 2 billion.
|
| The chimp troupe is fucked.
| tboyd47 wrote:
| There are some subtle ways HN is different.
|
| I think GP's important insight here is that people need to
| start being selective about their social media engagement and
| ditching their smartphones entirely.
|
| I've used a flip phone for a couple of years now and I would
| never go back to a smartphone. Having a rich interface to the
| internet in my pocket is too addictive and does not enrich my
| life at all. More importantly, I feel like I'm part of the
| solution to the world's vanishing privacy problem. Yes, I'm
| just 1 person without a smartphone against 1,000 with
| smartphones, but by existing this way, I am preserving a
| lifestyle of deliberate technology use that I know is
| smarter, healthier, and worth preserving.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| You're not alone, man. I sometimes still use my smartphone,
| but I'm trying to ditch it completely. It's too tempting,
| to the extent where it's life-damaging or life-destroying.
| Calvin02 wrote:
| I think you're cherry picking a bit.
|
| How much time do you spend on HN?
|
| HN is a social network for folks who are interested in
| technology and general interest topics -- much like other
| social networks.
|
| Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is
| algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit
| responses/engagement with the community.
| wpasc wrote:
| I don't think that's an apt comparison. The difference in
| degree becomes a difference in kind IMO. HN doesn't send you
| alerts or notifications that are optimally spaced based on
| A/B testing. HN isn't personalized per user to maximize each
| individuals HN time. The HN top doesn't refresh on command
| and provide a fully new page on each refresh (new topics come
| up but if you refresh the page every 12 seconds you will see
| very little change vs any engagement app that always tries to
| give you something new).
|
| HN can be a time draw, but it's based on a somewhat
| transparent vote/flag system. Features of other social media
| sites/apps like A/B testing, personalization, variably spaced
| notifications, daily digests to draw you in are features that
| are extraordinarily well designed for our dopamine-reward
| system.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| hacker News is definitely part of the problem. I've started
| to use three rules to evaluate habits similar to hacker news.
| eliminate things that:
|
| 1) are unproductive 2) I do not enjoy 3) are pathological
| (This includes things that float around in your head and
| create negative thoughts after you do it. coming back to a
| very negative political argument as an example of this)
|
| I'm not perfect at applying them but it has dramatically
| improved my life because it has given me a tool to evaluate
| social media use And I have successfully ramped down use of
| social media that made my life worse.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I've done something similar, cutting Facebook, Instagram,
| Snapchat, and all other major social media apps out of my
| life over the past few years. I would agree that HN is an
| issue as well, and that I should probably moderate my time on
| it.
|
| However, I also can't deny that I've genuinely learned a lot
| from links shared on HN, and I can also attribute nearly my
| entire push to eliminate social media from my life to HN.
|
| Additionally, HN, like a few other "hobby forums" I belong
| to, doesn't try to manipulate me to spend more time on the
| site so it can show me more ads. It only shows me content
| that other users have posted and shared -- unlike Facebook or
| Instagram, I don't see an ad every 2-3 posts or comments.
| That means something to me. Right now, all of those "hobby
| forums" teach me more about things I care about than they
| stress me out or piss me off or steal my time. Toward the
| end, Facebook was just a thing that ate up 10-15 minutes of
| my time multiple times per day. I can at least point to
| genuinely interesting facts I've learned from browsing HN.
|
| And most importantly, I mostly do it during work hours anyway
| :-).
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Is HN social media? It's media, its sort of social, but I
| don't know anyone on it personally.
|
| I tend think of social media as non-anonymous (onymous?),
| because it seems far from a "real" social interaction when it
| is a faceless (possibly non-human) text account. But could
| just be me redefining things.
| jetrink wrote:
| > The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to
| elicit responses/engagement with the community.
|
| I don't think that's entirely fair. For instance, posts with
| a large number of comments or a high ratio of comments to
| votes (I can't remember which) are actually penalized, since
| that is an indicator that the topic is controversial. The
| flag feature is another example in that it is a way for users
| to veto low value posts that might otherwise get high
| engagement.
| tharne wrote:
| > How much time do you spend on HN?
|
| Too much :)
| playpause wrote:
| HN can be addictive, but it's different in several relevant
| ways. It has no notifications. Its user base is relatively
| small and industry specific. It has no infinite scroll. It is
| plain text so it doesn't reward semi-mindless scrolling like
| media rich social networks. It has a dead simple noprocrast
| feature that doesn't play games. It virtually never changes
| its design, unlike social networks that are constantly
| tweaking things to increase engagement. In fact the people
| who run and moderate HN seem pretty intent on slowing down
| growth, so they can keep it focused and stay on top of
| moderation. Of course it can still be addictive but it's in a
| different category from TikTok etc.
| Dave_TRS wrote:
| HN is also different in that it's full of serious
| thoughtful discussion about things that matter. It's
| certainly addictive, but after I get sucked in I don't feel
| the same regret as with FB because at least I learned
| something about a variety of topics and saw what some
| intelligent people's take was on each
| tornato7 wrote:
| To add to that, Facebook/Instagram shows approx. one
| advertisement for every three posts you see. It's a
| constant barrage on your psyche that I'm happy to avoid on
| HN.
| playpause wrote:
| Good point. Also the ads aren't targeted, as far as I can
| tell. And there's no personalised feed, it's the same
| list of links for everyone.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I think HN is not social media, unless you stay long enough
| to start recogning names in the comment section (BTW, hi
| TeMPOraL!). It can be used responsibility, but for me it can
| be very addictive. I try not to engage, yet here you are to
| witness my failure.
| liokoch wrote:
| Using social media doesn't automatically qualify you to have a
| toxic relationship with it. It depends on the person if they
| decide to use it as entertainment. But one should practice self-
| discipline in navigating and interactive with SNS.
| qolop wrote:
| Last year at the start of the pandemic, I stopped using Facebook,
| Youtube, Reddit and Linkedin. Just stopped, no exceptions. It
| took an incredible amount of discipline at first, but now it's
| become a habit. Its had a net positive effect on my life and I
| highly recommend others to try it.
|
| Its incredible how little I'm tempted to open these apps now.
| Once you're properly out of the hyper-addictive ecosystem that
| they create, that's it, you're unlikely to want to get back in.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Delete Instagram and Facebook from your phone. I did and I
| recommend everyone do it. You can still access via browser, but
| obviously not as good UX (which may make you less addicted).
|
| I get how people can get addicted to social media apps (I got
| addicted to FB when I was in college 2005-2007 ish), and I am
| happy to see articles like this and other media outlets cover
| social media addiction and spread awareness, its a big problem. I
| would not blame the apps, though.
|
| I think the real problem is that social media turbo-charges the
| social dynamics of the real world:
|
| * attention seeking - "likes" are attention, and people love
| attention
|
| * social presentation - you can present the best picture of your
| _fake_ life
|
| * envy and fantasy - men and women who think they live boring
| lives observing the curated, filtered lives of the people they
| want to be
|
| * social hierarchy - who follows who? Prettier people having more
| follower / friends
|
| * etc
|
| I fell into those traps, and fb/insta were there to indulge my
| insecurities - but, critically, it was insecurities that fed the
| into the addiction. I'm a different guy now - I spend more time
| on myself than observing others.
|
| I'm poorly articulating all this, but I think there is something
| to be analyzed there.
| colordrops wrote:
| I ended up using at least Twitter and Reddit just as much
| through the browser after deleting the apps. Had to install the
| NetGuard firewall on my phone to block them.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Additionally, using Facebook and Instagram from your browser
| will constantly expose you to their obnoxious "better in the
| app!" banners that you can never fully dismiss. Just making
| another one of their dark patterns visible enough to make you
| (hopefully) question the intent of the company...
|
| Also, Instagram ads are actually blockable in-browser because
| they haven't bothered to update the site beyond the bare
| minimum of compatibility updates in years. So my iPhone on a
| VPN running a pihole made Instagram a little more bearable
| until I noticed that none of my friends ever posted anything
| any more.
| oplav wrote:
| I started exclusively using Instagram on my phone through
| mobile Safari and the experience is much better. There are no
| ads in either stories or the timeline. I don't have any ad
| blocking set up on my phone.
|
| The "Discover" section also isn't as snappy as the app, so I
| find myself rarely using it. That section is what used to be
| my largest time sink when I used the app.
| jmd509 wrote:
| The propositions in the article are good, although the tips
| proposed by the Center for Humane Technology [1] are much more
| tactical (they are apparently mentioned in the audio version, but
| I only read the article).
|
| Also, as a complete aside, I'm not sure if the third passage [2]
| in the article is facetious or what, but I'm always surprised to
| see credibility-destroying statements like these in legitimate
| publications. In this day and age readers have to be ruthlessly
| efficient in discerning reliable information/advice from
| nonsense. They are on the lookout for _any_ reason to abandon
| articles and content to avoid wasting valuable time and
| attention. There is an old direct-response copywriting dictum:
| "The purpose of each sentence is to get the next sentence read."
| The aforementioned passage does the opposite, even though the
| subsequent tips are pretty good.
|
| [1] https://www.humanetech.com/take-control
|
| [2] "I'm a Libra which means I was born to find balance, and I
| wanted to apply that principle to my social media behaviors and
| consumption."
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| Maybe age has something to do with it - yes, I used to spend too
| much time on Facebook. Back in 2007. I also used to drink too
| much alcohol. Today I just don't have time for social media other
| than when I'm waiting for something, like a bus or train or my
| boy to come out of school.
|
| I can't program with a hangover, I can't read, I can't scratch-
| build radio-controlled trucks. I can't scuba dive when I'm hung
| over and I can't do Krav Maga while I'm online. I like these and
| other things more than being online. But yes, I like being online
| too. Pintrest is great for research when you're building a garden
| bench.
|
| I guess filling my life with meat-space things I _really_ like
| and enjoy means I spend comparatively very little time online.
|
| I do wonder what people who don't have meat-space interests more
| important to them than being online, think about.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Pre-Corona, I'd spend approximately 2-3 hours after work
| online, mostly working on hobby projects or catching up with
| quick TV (40 minute shows feel like a waste of time, whereas
| 2x20 minute shows feel more productive...)
|
| Nowadays, I have no need to leave the house. My meat-space
| activities are gone, so I poured myself into my hobby projects
| and learned that working on what you love more than 5-hours a
| day (out of genuine want!) quickly turns into a chore, and
| before you know it you're in a mindless spiral of ticking boxes
| that you arbitrarily set yourself to give the impression that
| the time spent on said hobby/chore is meaningful.
|
| I cannot wait to get back to work. I miss my 2 hour biking
| commute, it was beautiful.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| Interesting. I have too many ideas and far too little time. I
| wish I didn't have to work so I could do the hobby full time.
| Alas it doesn't pay as well as the day job.
| powellzer wrote:
| I recently deactivated Facebook (which I only ever used via web
| browser) and since then I've been counting the number of times I
| unconsciously end up on the Facebook login page when I'm
| bored/killing time. I've noticed that faced with a "new tab" I'll
| often just hit the f key and hit enter without thinking about it,
| landing me on the Facebook login page. Before I deactivated, this
| would result in me somewhat unconsciously scrolling through my
| newsfeed mindlessly consuming whatever Facebook decides I should
| see that day. I don't consider myself to be mentally weak so it
| scares me to think about what percentage of the population does
| this without ever realizing it.
| david422 wrote:
| That's what I do with Hacker News. Hello :/
| powellzer wrote:
| Oh I totally do this with Hacker News too, which is why I
| typically block access during work hours. I feel better about
| it if I'm consciously giving myself a break to read HN. Right
| now I'm using the LeechBlock Extension which allows for timed
| overrides.
| scottious wrote:
| > I've noticed that faced with a "new tab" I'll often just hit
| the f key and hit enter without thinking about it
|
| OMG I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I deactivated it over 6
| months ago and I STILL have this impulse from time to time.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I feel the need to start with metrics (mostly because I do worry
| about the effect (good and bad) it has on my kids).
|
| I am planning on somehow pulling screentime metrics and youtube
| history data together - have not really got a plan but if anyone
| fancies a few spare hours please shout.
|
| (ironically those of us with kids probably have the least time to
| scratch this itch !)
| linuxftw wrote:
| What's with all the NPR spam? Who reads this garbage? There seems
| to be a contingent of people trying to turn HN into a
| CNN/WaPo/NYT/NPR news feed. GTFO.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I have a couple of hacks I use that, once developed as a habit,
| have been enormously helpful for me.
|
| 1) I never look at a general feed. (Which I means I just never
| use Twitter as that's kind of all it has) I open FB on my message
| url, which shows me the three things I want: messages, event
| notifications, and a search box to go to the four or five
| dedicated topic areas I use where off-topic posts aren't
| tolerated. Basically all the "designed to be addictive" shit is
| on the feed page.
|
| 2) I use Stylebot on Chrome, which allows you to add custom css
| overrides for every page. It's awesome. You can just turn every
| thing that clamours for your attention or has "suggestions" into
| empty whitespace.
|
| 3) I don't use any of their apps. You can't control the apps the
| same way.
|
| hth
| swiley wrote:
| Just block all of it and throw out your phone. If people need you
| they have your email and landline number.
| samename wrote:
| I recently got the app One Sec - https://one-sec.app/
|
| It has been an absolute game changer for me in reducing my screen
| time. The app is really good at changing habits - it makes
| opening up social media apps annoying and disrupts the expected
| dopamine hit. My app opens are way down and I'm no longer even
| hitting my screen time limit for social media apps.
| grae_QED wrote:
| Am I the only one bored by virtually everything on social media?
| Everything feels like its been curated for either teens or people
| with exceptionally low attention spans. I find it all very
| annoying (With Hacker News being the exception).
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Take social media off your phone. Install a news feed blocker
| that forces you to toggle on the news feed for your site of
| choice when you want to scroll. That helped me cut my social
| media time from 1+ hour a day to less than 15 minutes.
| [deleted]
| mabub24 wrote:
| One way to rethink your relationship with social media is to, for
| lack of a more succinct phrasing, get a life.
|
| I don't mean "don't be a loser", I mean have a life with goals,
| projects, and real relationships. Once that life flowers, you see
| social media as merely a tool for the further flourishing of that
| life. This mindset also makes you take a hard look at the
| connections you make through social media. Most are 1
| dimensional, and based on emotional extremes or hits of
| "content". Instead, follow people you actually know. Then do
| stuff with them out in the world.
|
| Doing stuff, and not just surfing social media, with other people
| is far more rewarding than being amongst 3 billion users.
| redisman wrote:
| It's much easier than I thought as a teenager too. You don't
| need to be doing "cool" stuff. Just go for a hike or swim once
| a week and learn some craft like woodworking or electronics.
| Once you start there will be decades of learning to discover
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| I've never heard a convincing argument for the upside of social
| media. It's never looked like a good way to spend time from the
| outside.
|
| I guess this is the difference between people who look at drugs
| and decide not to even try them vs. people who don't think about
| any of that and promptly get addicted.
|
| The connection of all social media companies to either DARPA or
| CIA is also a strong negative trait from the get-go. Having
| visited East Berlin before 1989 and seen what totalitarian
| surveillance looks like and operates like, I'm a bit sensitive to
| the sight of the same all over again.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I connect with a lot of people on social media that I wouldn't
| connect with otherwise. Whether it's worth the tradeoff is up
| for debate. Could I connect with them in some more deliberate
| manual way like directly emailing or calling them? Sure, but
| would I do it? Probably not.
| bluGill wrote:
| I solved the problem when I went to facebook and deleted all
| groups (except two - both related to family events: I personally
| know in the real world everyone in both groups). Often when I
| check facebook now it has no idea what to show me as I've seen
| everything, and it has to revert to showing me pictures of
| classmates I haven't interacted with in years - which is what I'm
| on Facebook for in the first place! Even then it runs out of
| things to show me fast.
| greggman3 wrote:
| Same. Groups are the worst time sink.
|
| Also, I have ~1000 facebook "friends" but I only follow 25 or
| so close friends who don't post too much (except my sister who
| posts too much). I don't find Facebook a time sync. I also only
| follow about 10 people on Instagram so not a time sync. I only
| check it once every 1-2 weeks.
|
| I do tend to use Facebook on the desktop web browser with FB
| Purity installed and filtering all the worst of facebook's
| horrible time wasters like "so and so commented on X" and "so
| and so liked Y" etc.
| reidjs wrote:
| I think people have a bad relationship with social media because
| they use it to consume instead of produce. I changed my mindset
| from 'social media is a place where I learn about/keep in touch
| with my friends' to 'social media is a place where I share my
| art, jokes, life events, etc with my friends'. I spend less time
| on it because I go in with the mindset of 'What can I create
| right now?' instead of just mindless scrolling. Or when I am
| mindlessly scrolling I have more of a perspective, what do people
| find interesting right now?
| happylrac wrote:
| I found that Cal Newport's "Digital Minimalism" book a great help
| in making sure that my social media usage was confined and
| intentional.
| mastrsushi wrote:
| "Navigating the internet" is dead. The majority of users are
| swiping at 5 second videos between 5 major platforms. The rest of
| the web is weird tabloids and abandoned blog spots. Try looking
| up a recipe and tell me you don't get plagued with ads like
| you're on XVideo.
| ruffrey wrote:
| > I'm a Libra which means I was born to find balance
|
| While there may be good points in the article, this indicates a
| low level of scientific rigor by the writer. Couldn't continue
| after that.
| bennythomson wrote:
| Stopped reading as soon as I saw that
| scottious wrote:
| Yup. I usually really like NPR but I had to stop once I read
| that. Why'd they have to say they were a Libra? They could have
| just said "I was born to find balance". ugh.
| nsbk wrote:
| Same here. Very off-putting. How do I know that the rest of the
| article is not just hocus-pocus?
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| You could skim it halfway into the article.
| qwertywert_ wrote:
| There is a huge rise in popularity with astrology it is
| honestly getting concerning .. ironically social media is
| fuelling that growth (tiktok mainly)
| negroni wrote:
| > I'm a Libra which means I was born to find balance
|
| Nope. I stopped reading right there as well.
| kyranjamie wrote:
| Agreed. Instantly stopped reading at this point, and came to
| find comments thinking the same.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| You should also consider it a hook for people who do not
| consider these addictive facets of social media but would
| listen to what another astrology fanatic would say. Meaning the
| article is not specifically for you. That doesn't make it any
| less informational. Consider this is NPR a widely read source
| for the layman and they're playing to their audience.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| > Couldn't continue after that.
|
| Sure you could have. You even acknowledge that there may be
| good points in the article. But you chose to prioritize
| whatever positive feeling you got out of closing it and coming
| back to HN to make a comment about how you'd done so.
| maximus-decimus wrote:
| What they mean is the person lost all credibility in their
| eyes and they can't take anything they say seriously.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I disagree, but substantively what's it matter?
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