[HN Gopher] Dopamine, Smartphones and You: A battle for your time
___________________________________________________________________
Dopamine, Smartphones and You: A battle for your time
Author : dsnr
Score : 244 points
Date : 2021-10-13 09:44 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sitn.hms.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (sitn.hms.harvard.edu)
| nobody0 wrote:
| "The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to
| divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is
| unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.
|
| This is all that men have been able to make themselves happy. And
| those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men
| unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which
| they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in
| itself would not screen us from the sight of death and
| calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from
| these, does screen us." (Pensees, Blaise Pascal)
| qq4 wrote:
| About the only thing I find addicting on my phone is checking the
| weather everyday. My working hypothesis is that many people want
| to waste (or spend, call it what you want) their time on their
| devices, so they install applications that will help them do so.
| superkuh wrote:
| Hearing ignorant computer science people talking about "dopamine"
| is just as bad as hearing people call their computer monitor
| their PC. It's wrong and it leads to bad conclusions.
|
| > smartphones and the social media platforms they support are
| turning us into bona fide addicts. While it's easy to dismiss
| this claim as hyperbole, platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and
| Instagram leverage the very same neural circuitry used by slot
| machines and cocaine to keep us using their products as much as
| possible.
|
| This _is_ hyperbole and it 's not wrong at the same time. You
| know what else uses the very same neural circuitry as used by
| slot machines and cocaine? Reading a boook. Talking a walk.
| Petting your dog. Existing.
|
| Dopaminergic populations of cells existing in a dozen different
| functional populations among the brain and project nearly
| everywhere. And if they're trying to claim that reward prediction
| circuitry is 'hijacked' they're going to need to show some
| evidence. Cocaine _hijacks_ the brains reward prediction
| circuitry by directly acting on the dopamine re-uptake proteins.
| There is nothing intrinsically addicting or anything at all that
| can "hijack" the reward prediction circuitry in a smartphone
| screen. It is simply another stimuli filtered through your normal
| senses going the normal routes. It is _NOT_ hijacking anything.
|
| Tech bros need to stop talking about neuroscience like they
| understand it. For the most part, they don't and it leads to
| embarassing and dangerous claims like this article makes.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > It is simply another stimuli filtered through your normal
| senses going the normal routes.
|
| So is this:
|
| https://www.thoughtco.com/the-giant-jewel-beetle-1968152
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > You know what else uses the very same neural circuitry as
| used by slot machines and cocaine? Reading a boook. Talking a
| walk. Petting your dog. Existing.
|
| And yet people will prefer slot machines, cocaine, and to some
| extent social media once they get addicted. Does that not
| indicate that while they use the same pathways, they do so in a
| much stronger way?
| nostrebored wrote:
| https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Trevor...
|
| Trevor has multiple articles attributed partially to him while
| affiliated with Harvard Medical School?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Yes he does. The answer is right there in that link.
| joeberon wrote:
| You were supposed to read it as if the question mark was
| not there. It was a "question mark of incredulity and
| disbelief" not a "question mark of question".
| taurath wrote:
| Could you expand on how slot machines are different than social
| media on brain systems? I think you've got a good definitional
| point, and I roll my eyes whenever the word dopamine is used,
| but isn't it speaking of the addictive cycle or an overactive
| reward system?
| sva_ wrote:
| > Tech bros need to stop talking about neuroscience like they
| understand it.
|
| The author:
|
| > Trevor Haynes is a research technician in the Department of
| Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.
|
| I think it's not hyperbole to assume that algorithms which
| maximize user engagement time will hijack all sorts of neural
| processes involved in forming habits.
| jstx1 wrote:
| You can't just assume this. Whether it happens or not is the
| central question.
| sva_ wrote:
| :s/assume/hypothesize
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| All right, that's it: No more commenting on Hacker News.
| polskibus wrote:
| please add [2018] to title
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I am always curious to read an expose of the (hypothesized)
| neural mechanisms at work here.
|
| This is principally because the medium (it is some combination of
| the personal computer and the smart telephone) is not strictly
| _new_ in its ability to engage the user. Industrial citizens
| spent a great deal of their time viewing television prior to the
| internet era, what is new is the rapid feedback those seeking to
| engage their audiences have. The A /B test, use of user data, et
| cetera, these are all mechanisms by which the software developer
| increases the attention-commanding power of his software.
|
| But of course, the software developer is not typically interested
| in or aware of the psychology (a complicated field) and is
| instead focused on outcomes. In reality, the software developer
| is conducting large scale psychological experiments on how to
| best entrance the user, but the language used for this process is
| more of business and technique than it is strictly of science.
| Darmody wrote:
| This morning on my way to work I was listening to a podcast talk
| talked about dopamine "fasting".
|
| Recommended if you're interested in knowing s bit more.
|
| https://es.player.fm/1BKMFGF
| marban wrote:
| Also helpful if you work out daily for ~90+ mins and need a
| kicker to get you through. Could be a pre-workout supp or just
| music. Occasional skipping/reducing will do the trick.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Interesting that these topics always focus on _smartphones_ or
| _the Internet_. It 's as if we talked about smoking in terms of
| "lighters are causing addiction", or "holding cylindrical objects
| in your hands is addictive". Or, about alcohol, in terms of
| "ingesting beverages is a social problem".
|
| It's not the Internet itself that is the problem. It's not the
| devices - even extremely convenient ones, like always-connected
| smartphones. There are particular types of services that are
| problematic, provided by concrete companies, who optimize their
| addictive and distracting potential _on purpose_ , advertise them
| heavily, and make money off the problems they cause. These are
| well-thought _business decisions_ , made by well-known people.
| And yet, as a society, we shrink away from talking about them,
| preferring instead to put blame on incidental topics: the
| Internet, the smartphones, the engineers building the hardware
| and software[0].
|
| I wish for a day when we collectively wake up and focus on the
| actual root cause, when we come to the conclusion that some
| business models just shouldn't exist. We've done it in the past,
| and because of that we[1] enjoy physically safe food, toys,
| medicine, appliances. But either we've lost our way in the last
| decades, defaulting to an asinine view that "all is fine as long
| as there is demand", or the process of understanding and
| mitigating threats to society takes too damn long. Maybe it's the
| latter - but that's not good, because the kind of abuse we throw
| at each other is following the economic and technological growth
| curves.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Or, a related favorite of mine, "the AI". As if wild
| machine learning algorithms frolicked in the forest, and
| occasionally came out of the woods on their own, to take over
| some business or governmental decision process. No human making a
| self-serving decision to involve an unsuitable ML model in a
| system it doesn't belong in was ever involved.
|
| [1] - People in wealthier countries, at least.
| titzer wrote:
| I used to work for Google. Google generally is full of smart,
| well-meaning people who believe the work they are doing
| benefits the internet and humanity in general.
|
| But holy F is the business model, when scaled to $130+ billion
| yearly revenue, an absolute disaster. Google has taken upon
| itself to turn the entire internet into an ad-laden funhouse
| designed to trap you and suck all of your time.
|
| Google is not solely to blame, but they are uniquely delusional
| and uniquely successful at monetizing _other people 's
| contributions, knowledge, talent, and businesses_ to their own
| benefit. Google set the standard model for monetization at
| every stage of the internet's development. Google set up
| everything to be the central clearing house for information and
| normalized the expectation that everything you do would come
| with some kind of advertising interruption.
|
| As far as I am concerned, Facebook and social media and all the
| other bad things on the internet just followed in the wagon
| ruts, then paved highways that Google created.
|
| We've accepted the internet and the web as they are because
| _Google wanted to be big._
|
| Now, if Google had wanted to stay small, maybe grow at 5% per
| year, instead of 23% per year--that's doubling every 4 years
| btw--, then the internet would not be so full of ads. The
| internet would not be so much in your face. Datacenters would
| be smaller, tracking would be less, webpages would be lighter,
| faster, with more long-form content, etc.
|
| The internet is the way it is because it has been a giant pie-
| eating contest where the winners have to eat 23% more pie than
| they did last year. No wonder it's so fucked up.
| titzer wrote:
| Just for perspective, here's Google's revenue in 2002 ($0.4
| billion) vs 2020 ($180 billion, 450x)) [1]
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/266206/googles-annual-
| gl...
|
| o
|
| ->
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
|
| oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo oooooooooo
| sizzle wrote:
| Did this factor into you leaving big G?
| civilized wrote:
| Is there a good article detailing how this works? Despite all
| the "dark side of tech" drama I still see Google as basically
| OK as a company. Some missteps, yes, but from my perspective,
| all I really know is they make a lot of great stuff that I
| use constantly because it's great. It's not obvious to me how
| they're involved in all of this.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| real time bidding, banner ads, ad markets. Anything that
| comprehensively covers the history of web specific
| advertising is a good place to start.
|
| Even if ads aren't useful (getting leather belt ads after
| buying a leather belt... even ads for the same product),
| the incentive is to continue serving them because the
| company trying to sell shit is still winning to target all
| "belt searchers"
| bnralt wrote:
| > Interesting that these topics always focus on smartphones or
| the Internet... These are well-thought business decisions, made
| by well-known people. And yet, as a society, we shrink away
| from talking about them, preferring instead to put blame on
| incidental topics: the Internet, the smartphones, the engineers
| building the hardware and software[0].
|
| I mean, this article says as much:
|
| > While there is nothing inherently addictive about smartphones
| themselves, the true drivers of our attachments to these
| devices are the hyper-social environments they provide. Thanks
| to the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and others,
| smartphones allow us to carry immense social environments in
| our pockets through every waking moment of our lives.
|
| The article even opens with a former executive at Facebook
| talking about how how guilty they feel for making addictive
| feedback loops that are damaging to society.
| carlgreene wrote:
| I disagree with this I think. The problem _is_ smartphones and
| the ability to be constantly stimulated on the internet.
|
| Web2.0 introduced more addicting and stimulating sites and
| apps, but Web 1.0 still allowed me to kill time (on my
| computer) searching rudimentary message boards, games, and news
| sites.
|
| The introduction of smart phones gave us a 24/7 portal to the
| internet world and facilitated the building of these
| mechanisms.
|
| This goes far beyond Facebook, IG, Twitter, and the other "big
| name offenders". The pervasiveness of texting and email deserve
| a similar finger pointing.
|
| Smartphones are dopamine machines and they allow us to enter
| that world at any time. Spotify, email, texting, Facebook,
| Snapchat, games, slack, hackernews, cnn, etc... ALL become
| instantly accessible on our smart phones and keep our brains
| chasing more rewarding stimulus.
| rackjack wrote:
| Lighters let you use cigarettes, heroin, weed, etc. If you
| become psychologically dependent on these substances, is your
| lighter the problem? What do we mean by "the problem"
| anyways? Depending on how you define "the problem", it can be
| the cigarette, the lighter, or the smoker, or some
| combination of all three.
|
| The issue is not "the problem", whose fault it is, blame. It
| is responsibility. Who shoulders the cost for the issue of
| smoking? As it turns out: all of them. Cigarette companies
| have to put health warnings on their packs. Lighters cannot
| be sold to those under 18. Cigarettes are highly taxed to
| discourage smokers from buying them. All three are
| "negatively" impacted because we, as a society, agreed that
| smoking is bad and should be discouraged.
|
| Similarly with Facebook, smartphones, and end users.
| erfgh wrote:
| If you don't want to spend time on a smartphone, don't spend
| time on a smartphone. I don't have a smartphone myself and I am
| not interested in getting one. But banning something because
| you don't like it is nothing short of totalitarian.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| The 'I don't even HAVE a TV' trope. It demonstrates a lack of
| empathy, that because YOU don't have a problem, a significant
| percentage of the population might not be in a different
| situation.
| godshatter wrote:
| Some of us saw it coming and nipped it in the bud, or saw
| what it was doing to us and did something about it. I cut
| the cable 20 years ago or so after wasting one weekend
| flipping through channels, not finding anything I liked,
| and realized it was a problem and took steps to mitigate
| it. Same story with FB - a friend got me into Farm Town
| when that was a thing and I realized I had the choice to
| make that my life for the foreseeable future or nope out of
| it.
|
| I'm not the OP, but when I suggest that someone walk away
| from FB or whatever is causing them problems at the moment
| and let them know that I did the same, it's supposed to let
| them know that they do have choices and that it is possible
| for some people to be able to do that, so maybe they should
| try it? It's not a lack of empathy, it's a suggestion on
| how to get out of a problem I very much empathize with.
|
| Of course not everyone can. I have my own problems I
| consistently fail to nope out of, too.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Perhaps I've not expressed myself clearly. It's not about the
| smartphone. Smartphones are a red herring. They're not the
| problem. The problem are some _particular services_
| accessible through that phone.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > But banning something because you don't like it is nothing
| short of totalitarian.
|
| Where is the line? I don't like murder. Is banning murder
| totalitarian? I don't like unfair elections. Is banning
| election tampering totalitarian?
|
| Every law and rule in all of society exists to prevent
| something that someone (or lots of people) don't like. We
| usually draw abstractions on top of these likes and dislikes
| - things like "rights" and "morals". Everyone has to draw the
| line somewhere, so deriding someone for drawing that line
| "because you don't like it" is reductionist and silly.
| bloqs wrote:
| The line is: what does societies weakest member look like.
| How do we stop those people being exploited. You then apply
| the action to everyone above that point.
| dahfizz wrote:
| That's your line. Clearly this is not universally
| accepted as the best way to form a society.
| billiam wrote:
| I think we have a lot of examples of what happens when
| the wealthy and powerful get anything they want (see the
| right of kings, predestination, Social Darwinism,
| fascism, etc) and we blame the poor and weak for all
| their problems and victimize them. There is a big
| difference between making life, liberty, and the pursuit
| of happiness available to most vulnerable and
| disadvantaged in your society and "forming" your society
| around it. In the US we only made basic rights we take
| for granted available under law to gay and disabled
| people in the last two of three decades.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Typically you place the line at hurting someone else. If
| your own personal choice only affects you then that's a you
| problem. To go the next step and take freedoms away from
| people that are able to handle themselves. The two examples
| you gave directly affect others.
|
| One exception might be children since they aren't developed
| enough to make logical decisions on their own.
|
| IMO government restrictions should be a last resort, not
| the first option you consider. Additionally, they tend not
| to work as well as you might think on many things (e.g.
| drug war, prohibition)
| go_elmo wrote:
| Youre right. If you dont like heroin just stop using it. Its
| easy and just a personal decision nothing more, right?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Are you suggesting that making heroin illegal has stopped
| its usage?
|
| Strange since it's currently an epidemic.
| wyre wrote:
| I believe they're replying to GP's assertment to stop
| using smartphones.
|
| > If you don't want to spend time on a smartphone, don't
| spend time on a smartphone.
| conqrr wrote:
| Yeah imagine getting a dopamine from checking emails. It's
| designed to be checked occasionally, atleast most web apps are.
| We need more of that. Once a day feed from Facebook. Scroll
| limit on YouTube.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Not everyone is susceptible to this, but it's quite possible to
| compulsively use the old, non-manipulative internet. You can
| get dopamine mini-hits from refreshing an old-school forum
| thread or benign news page.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Or even (dun dun dunnnnn) Hackernews.
|
| The problem is simply the fact that there's always something
| new to see. It doesn't require evil masterminds. It's a magic
| rectangle in your pocket that shows you something new every
| time you look at it. Of course it's addictive.
| civilized wrote:
| To your point about business decisions, Facebook's recent ban
| of the Unfollow Everything extension is exemplary of everything
| that's wrong with ad-driven social media. The problem is not
| too much choice, but too little:
|
| - I can't easily delete old posts
|
| - I can't easily control who or what I am exposed to
|
| - In some cases, I have no control at all. For example, on the
| rare occasion I go to FB, the red dot on the video icon is
| still begging me to watch FB's 4th-rate YouTube full of random
| terrible videos. There is no way for me to turn this off, to my
| knowledge.
|
| - Everything is defaulted to the most intrusive, attention-
| sucking settings. I am never asked if I want something new. It
| is shoved in my face and then I have to go figure out how to
| turn it off. As a willful, tech-savvy person I can manage this,
| but I imagine that many people just go with the flow and get
| swept into unhealthy patterns by the relentless tide of nudges.
|
| I don't know if it's feasible or desirable to ban a service
| like FB categorically, but imposing minimal standards of user
| control could be a step up from where we are now.
|
| And if FB/Twitter/etc can't be profitable when users are in
| control... well, maybe that tells us everything we need to know
| about the true human value of today's social media matrix.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| You can actually turn off the notification dots, at least in
| the iPhone app.
|
| If you go to the "Menu" tab you can long press on any of the
| categories and you'll get the option to turn off notification
| dots.
|
| I didn't know about this until reading your post and poking
| around in the app to see if it was possible.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| But that's precisely the point...they -don't-want-you- to
| have control or moderate the stream. They want to sell your
| attention and getting more of your attention makes them more
| money. Letting you turn off the annoying stuff is
| antithetical to their business model.
|
| And things like Youtube have honed it to a fine degree.
| They're a single source for certain kinds of content and
| using a roku, you CAN'T skip some adds. The Ad delivery is
| 'well, you can skip some, but you have to watch this Liberty
| commercial, and hey, skip now skips both ads, but since
| you've done that, now you're doing to sit through both of the
| next ads.
|
| Not to mention the video producers have sponsors, and the
| small ones are forced to shill theirselves through patreon to
| stand a chance of making a living at it...or at least
| breaking even on the costs of the content.
| Pomade wrote:
| Atleast on windows and linux you can block these sites. Try
| doing it on Android.
| rileyphone wrote:
| While it's fun to blame commercial manipulators on the other
| side of our habitual browsing habits, and it's true to a
| certain extent, I think it's reductive to place all the blame
| on them. My own personal poisons are reddit and HN comments,
| neither of which I'd put in the category of conscious
| manipulators. The problem moreso lies in the fact that I can
| have a tiny urge for this content and in 3 seconds be
| satisfied. This is a very short feedback loop, roughly on par
| with the amount of time it takes for the drag from a cigarette
| to hit. The "root cause", in my opinion, is that humans are
| inclined to seek dopamine hits and technology has made them far
| too available, unlike any other time in our history.
| nullc wrote:
| > are reddit and HN comments, neither of which I'd put in the
| category of conscious manipulators.
|
| Reddit is absolutely in the family of conscious
| manipulators-- even if it is somewhat less effective at it
| than facebook or twitter.
|
| Particularly many of the characteristics of the 'new'
| interface were designed specifically with the intent of
| increasing "engagement" and they use those usage metrics to
| drive their further optimizations.
|
| (e.g. infinite scroll, inlining images in the scroll to
| reduce clicking, aggressively pushing the mobile app and/or
| login to improve tracking. They've also recently started
| half-logging-out users who've opted out of 'new', so you have
| to click login to get your preference honored).
| hattmall wrote:
| I guess I am replying for the dopamine. All of the other
| things I have / need to do require more effort. Is typing out
| a few replies after I have breakfast my morning cigarette in
| a different time?
|
| A healthier habit?? The problem may be there's no defined
| end. What did people in the past who didn't smoke do?
| Newspaper? Magazines?
| snarf21 wrote:
| You are right and the problem is that it is so cheap and
| extremely profitable for these businesses at scale. In my
| opinion, the only way out is to start taxing all digital ad
| revenue. All these services are specifically constructed to
| create faux outrage to keep people coming back. However, you
| can't make someone understand something when their job depends
| on them not understanding it (Upton Sinclair). News has been
| replaced with click-bait infotainment. People have no interest
| in actually learning what happened. They just want to click
| LIKE and tell their partner about how person X is so right and
| is pwning the morons on the other side. It is sad that the
| oligarchy has convinced us all that our neighbor is our enemy
| while they rob us blind.
| zbyforgotpass wrote:
| The problem is that what is addictive to someone is harmless
| for someone other. You cannot ban everything that makes someone
| addicted.
|
| When you have a market niche - then sooner or later it will be
| filled. It does not make much sense to blame "concrete
| companies" - because once you close them they will be replaced
| by others. You need to make laws that would close the niche of
| providing the 'particular types of services that are
| problematic' entirely. And making those laws is difficult -
| because forbidding something always limits the freedom. There
| are lots of people here who believe that drugs should be legal.
|
| And it is internet and smartphones that created these market
| niches putting us into that awkward position. It is also
| practical to focus talk on them - because there are concrete
| advice on how to configure your (or your children) smartphone
| (or internet connection) to make it less addictive. It is
| something that can be done without any collective action
| problems.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Exactly, I find it strange as I have a Facebook account but
| almost never use it, except for speaking to family. The last
| time I made a post was when I was visiting the US and was
| able to randomly meet 2 friends there just by chance, since
| they happened to be working nearby too.
|
| Like you can say people spend too much time on TikTok, but if
| it wasn't TikTok, it'd be Twitch, or YouTube, or Netflix, or
| Instagram, or Reddit, etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Like you can say people spend too much time on TikTok,
| but if it wasn 't TikTok, it'd be Twitch, or YouTube, or
| Netflix, or Instagram, or Reddit, etc._
|
| Right, because they're pretty much the same category of
| service, addressing the same niche.
|
| To both yours and GP's points: it is true that "what is
| addictive to someone is harmless for someone other". This
| is true for alcohol, tobacco and gambling too. Yet we know
| that unchecked, these three cause tremendous social
| problems - and so we've adjusted both regulations and
| culture to find a balance between freedom and protecting
| the vulnerable.
| lecanucker wrote:
| Some things are objectively addictive. For instance,
| alcohol is an objectively addictive drug. If you don't
| have trouble controlling drinking now, that's excellent,
| but if someone were to somehow force you to drink 6
| drinks a day for a year you would certainly start to
| develop physiological signs of addiction. On day 366 when
| you were free to not drink, you would feel a craving.
| There is no such thing as a person who _cannot_ become
| addicted to it. It is the drug which is addictive, and
| not some failing /property of the person who became
| addicted.
|
| In particular with social media, I don't like the framing
| of it as "what is addictive to someone is harmless for
| someone other". The addictive-ness is baked into the
| product whether or not an addiction is manifest in any
| individual user. Viewing the addictive-ness of say,
| Facebook, as a problem only "for some people" rather than
| as a property of Facebook, shifts blame away from the
| engineers and execs who purposefully make their product
| addictive, onto users who find themselves (somewhat
| innocently) addicted to an the addictive thing.
|
| Don't want to be pedantic but I think it's an important
| point.
| cbtacy wrote:
| In reality, there are proven issues with heavy use of
| smartphones.
|
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/691462
| amelius wrote:
| > We've done it in the past, and because of that we enjoy
| physically safe food, toys, medicine, appliances.
|
| Everybody wants safety. But nobody wants their smartphone taken
| away. It's an unpopular move. That's why it doesn't happen.
|
| Anyway, I think that we should take away the incentive of
| social media companies to be so addictive by banning ads on
| these platforms.
| pnutjam wrote:
| I'll assume you just don't understand. He's clearly talking
| about stuff like Facebook and Youtube designing their systems
| to suck you in, not to mention all the games designed to hit
| your dopamine reward center.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, but (to the average user) what good is a smartphone
| without Facebook and Youtube?
|
| Take away social media and Youtube, and you might as well
| go back to a Nokia dumbphone.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| There's still e-mail, IMs, weather widgets, mobile
| banking, turn-by-turn navigation, maps, calculator,
| camera, photo editor, music players, taxi apps, delivery
| trackers, guitar tuners, games, and a bunch of other
| things many non-tech people use on their smartphones
| every day.
|
| Not to mention, the browser, giving access to everything
| on the Internet - not just social media. This is doubly
| important for people on the go, and people who can't
| afford to also own a laptop or a desktop computer at home
| (assuming they have one).
| Atheros wrote:
| Heck, we could keep social media as-is and merely ban
| likes and engagement-based sorting. That would be
| sufficient.
| pnutjam wrote:
| It's not the service, it's how the service is designed.
| hammock wrote:
| >It's as if we talked about smoking in terms of "lighters are
| causing addiction", or "holding cylindrical objects in your
| hands is addictive"
|
| Your example is funny because I think you are saying these
| things (lighter, generic cylinder) are NOT addictive and
| focusing on them misses the point- but in my mind, even as a
| nonsmoker, there IS something primordially satisfying about
| flicking a lighter and the sound it makes, or holding and
| rolling a cylinder between my fingers, like a pen or a cigar.
| That feeling has to be a contributing factor, in my mind.
| calebm wrote:
| I had noticed myself using Facebook too often, and recently
| deleted the app from my mobile phone (and am not signed into FB
| via my mobile browser). And I've been surprised how much less I
| check into Facebook when my only way to check it is on my laptop.
| tharne wrote:
| These articles always fall short at the end by suggesting we be
| more mindful when it comes to how we use smartphones. It's about
| as easy to use a smartphone in moderation as it is to do heroin
| in moderation. There are trillion dollar companies and some of
| the world's best engineers working as hard as they can to boot
| your "engagement" and keep you hooked. Good luck fighting that as
| a one-man army.
|
| Just get rid of the smartphone. You really don't need it. On
| balance, it's probably not making your life better. We tend to
| focus on the few benefits and ignore the all-in costs. I tossed
| my smartphone a while back and was expecting disaster. It never
| came, other than a few mild inconveniences. If you absolutely
| need to, get a cheap android just for work that gets shut off and
| put in a drawer at the end of the day.
|
| The most pernicious thing about the smartphone is that we've
| convinced ourselves that it's 100% impossible to live a happy and
| productive life without it.
| j7ake wrote:
| This feels analogous to Coca Cola framing their plans as a
| "battle for your stomach".
| Levitz wrote:
| More and more I feel that the real damage is not done to time,
| but to attention.
|
| It is fairly simple to reorganize your time, it does take
| willpower but once you do it that's all your time back to you.
|
| On the other hand it requires actual effort and practice to be
| conscious and present in the task at hand after getting used to
| mindless entertainment, it requires a process to gradually take
| it back. I worry about the upcoming generations that deal with
| this in their growing stages.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think reading books is a good way of practicing
| concentration. The moment you stop paying attention to the
| text, the reading falls apart completely. It gives a very
| direct feedback when your mind has wandered.
|
| You can get away with skimming texts on the Internet, indeed
| you kind of have to with all the ads, inline links, and other
| visual cruft clamoring for your attention, but that usually
| does not work particularly well with books, especially if it's
| a more demanding read.
|
| Reading can be shockingly hard if you haven't done it in a
| while, but it rapidly gets a lot easier.
| farias0 wrote:
| I don't know, reading books to me is very easy, but I find
| hard to focus on work. I conditioned myself to instinctively
| alt-tab from my IDE every time a problem gets frustrating to
| the point I often do this without realizing, meanwhile my
| "reading workflow" haven't been poisoned yet. So my thesis is
| that this is less related to losing attention/willpower
| overall and it's more related to creating distracting habits.
| fendy3002 wrote:
| In my experience the worst contributor is mobile games. Daily
| login reward, daily quests / tasks, etc. They divert your
| attention because you feared to miss those rewards. It's less
| effective for adult but very harmful to teens.
|
| However I found that missing one day of it and not spending any
| cash to those games helps with getting out of it.
| 5px wrote:
| What's ironic too is that these "daily" rewards offer so much
| leeway to the end user to get away with not actually hitting
| daily. In example, Timehop, has recorded days without me
| actually visiting the app - rather keeping the streak on the
| app seems to be more for my dopamine gain even if its number
| is invalid. Egg, Inc, a game I play on my phone has daily
| rewards. On its system, I have 24 hours until after my daily
| reward is given (or so I presume, I haven't missed one in
| months :/) that it gives me in difference to make sure I come
| into the app. It's annoying but the patterns are so apparent
| that it surprises me how many people don't notice them.
| Ettaa wrote:
| It's possible this experiment will affect each of its
| participants.
|
| Even though I try to control my attention when I'm unaware my
| finger always slips to the new tab opening a page for quick
| dopamine shots.
| 0des wrote:
| Just a heads up, your account appears to be shadow banned.
| camillomiller wrote:
| This is spot on. The feeling can be described as having been
| made dumber. The good news is that this skill is highly
| sensitive to training. Getting back to deep focus after social
| media have ravaged your brain is the new going from coach
| potato to running a 10K.
| joeberon wrote:
| My concentration and attention abilities are destroyed by
| computers and media. It doesn't seem to be retrainable, even
| after meditating 30 minutes to an hour a day for a year, using
| concentration on breath method, I still do not seem able to
| recover any kind of flow state or concentration. I think it is
| permanently damaged in my brain.
| vaylian wrote:
| Armchair psychologist here: Have you tried games? Either
| physical (e.g. sports) or digital (ideally single player,
| desktop computer games)? If you have fun, it is much easier
| to get into a flow state.
| joeberon wrote:
| Yes, I play about an hour a night, but I don't really get
| into the flow of them, I'm usually checking my phone during
| loading screens or cutscenes. I'm sure physical sports
| would be somewhat easier. Making music can sometimes do it
| in the right situation. The problem is though that I can't
| make it happen at will, but I really would like to be able
| to concentrate on my work as a physicist, e.g. reading a
| paper even if I'm not that interested in it personally is
| quite important to be able to do but it takes me days.
| pkrznaric wrote:
| It might help if you introduce more things to focus in
| and out on. I find that when I'm playing a game I'm not
| as interested in/has down time, by having something like
| music playing softly in the background, I'm able to focus
| in better during slow periods.
|
| Some amount of LoFi beats, classical, or music in another
| language might help a bit even if you feel you need to
| 'focus in' by just providing a bit more stimulation? I
| find that without music it's much harder for me to enter
| my flow state when programming even if I 'stop hearing'
| the music once I get into what I'm working on.
|
| But everyone's different, that's just something that
| works for me, but I hope that you keep up the hard work.
| Focus is hard, and you're taking some important steps to
| try and restore yours.
| joeberon wrote:
| I already listen to techno when I'm working. The problem
| is that when I'm not intrinsically/emotionally interested
| in a task I struggle to force myself to focus on it. It
| seems like focus is not something I can control, I always
| would rather distract myself with low effort dopamine
| fodder (youtube, twitter, reddit, hacker news, tiktok,
| looking for new music to put on, etc.)
|
| I've been trying for years. I was introduced to
| technology very young, and have been using the internet
| since I was about 8 to 10 years old. I'm 27 now, I've
| been seriously trying to improve my focus since I was
| about 22, but nothing stuck. If intensive meditation
| cannot help me, I'm not sure if anything can, except
| maybe some kind of drugs.
| wyre wrote:
| Have you talked to a doctor about ADHD and possible
| treatment methods? The pharmacology behind prescribed
| stimulants work to flood our dopamine receptors greatly
| weakening that urge to check our phone for those sweet,
| sweet, notifications.
| joeberon wrote:
| I'm British, and in the UK it's extremely hard to get
| adult ADHD diagnosis. Basically you have to go to a
| private doctor and even then they are quite strict. Due
| to my high academic achievement (doctor in quantum
| physics) they will probably say I don't have it. The
| situation there for adult ADHD is so bad that basically I
| just gave up on the whole thing and decided that I didn't
| have it.
|
| I live in Germany now, but unfortunately I don't speak
| German anywhere near well enough to get a consultation.
| wyre wrote:
| Are there no English speaking doctors in Germany?
|
| A specialist in the UK might be worth talking to. You've
| tried many natural alternatives and nothing helps you
| with your work. Meditating every day for a year is a big
| accomplishment and it says a lot for it to not help.
| infinitezest wrote:
| I have no expertise on the subject so my diagnosis basically
| means nothing but I suspect that the explosion in ADHD
| diagnoses has something to do with this. If you constantly
| exist in an environment that is built to fracture and segment
| and compete for your time it doesn't seem surprising to me at
| all that you're going to have a very difficult time allocating
| attention.
| nicbou wrote:
| When people quit drugs, they need something to feel the void it
| leaves. It's one thing to stop consuming, but it's another to
| replace it with a meaningful activity.
|
| I feel the same about tackling internet addiction. The computer
| is off, now what?
| Levitz wrote:
| Absolutely, I feel it truly gives insight into how an
| addiction works.
|
| If every morning you wake up and smoke a cigarette right by
| the window while you brew coffee, then the day you decide to
| stop there are two forces at hand: first, the addiction to
| nicotine, but there is also the void left by the activity of
| smoking.
|
| When you quit social media or whatever smartphone boredom
| annihilator, what do you do on the bus back home? On the
| waiting room or queue of whatever place you find yourself at?
| In any of those small idle moments?
|
| For me I've found the answer to be obvious but not very
| exciting: I get bored. I get bored and let my mind wander,
| ideally this means I'm not merely unfocused, but rather at
| rest mentally, otherwise I dedicate some time to this or that
| thought that would surely have assaulted me right at the time
| in which I should be falling asleep. I think society has
| gotten into an habit of never being bored, I don't think
| that's healthy.
| ravenstine wrote:
| In my experience it takes will power initially, but after I
| reached _escape velocity_ I no longer needed much will power.
|
| I'm talking about the day that I decided to "mute' my life.
| This was back in 2014 (I can't believe it's already been that
| long). Set my phone so that texts no longer caused alert sounds
| or vibration, only calls from those in my contacts would ring
| through, and I deleted crap like Facebook (and didn't log in
| again for over a year).
|
| It took conscious effort initially, but then you adjust quicker
| than you think after you realize that exactly 0% of texts you
| will ever receive actually need your immediate attention. Maybe
| you the reader get important texts all the time, and I sort of
| feel sorry if you do, but I never ever do. If someone ever
| actually needs to reach me they will call, and they are never
| some rando number not in my contacts.
|
| These devices and the services surrounding them don't
| necessarily deserve all the negative credit we attribute to
| them. People get addicted to things not just because those
| things have addicting qualities but because those people's
| needs aren't getting met in other areas. Technology makes it
| really easy to tickle those addiction centers in our brains, if
| you will, so that's the most common way to cope for people whom
| are missing something. It's not a personal failing (most of the
| time anyway) because even knowing that you are addicted, or
| that there's more to addiction than the surface level, is
| actually a really hard thing.
|
| The other side of the equation is that not being addicted can
| be _isolating_ in modern society. In my own life I sometimes
| have a hard time socializing with others, not out of shyness or
| anything like that, but because most people don 't know how to
| relate to me when they find out that I don't surf social media,
| binge watch entertainment, or play video games for hours on
| end. They say "so what do you do with all that free time?" When
| I tell them that I am spending nearly all that time building
| things and learning, unless I'm among serious nerds, they don't
| get how my lifestyle is fulfilling to me. Truth be told, _not_
| living vicariously through the imaginary lives of others doesn
| 't have to be boring.
|
| I think there's a few kinds of people; the kind who don't get
| fulfillment or enjoyment outside of entertainment, and the kind
| who can be self-fulfilled but also deep down realize that it
| would separate them from much of society, which can be a scary
| thing. It might not be a conscious thought, but I think it's
| probably there.
| huachimingo wrote:
| Beware of becoming The Steppenwolf.
| marto1 wrote:
| > In my experience it takes will power initially, but after I
| reached escape velocity I no longer needed much will power.
|
| That one hits the nail on the head. It comes down to what you
| consider normal. Once you get rid of a bad habit to the point
| it seems obnoxious both on conscious AND subconscious level
| it becomes very easy not to indulge.
|
| It works more or less the same way for good habits too, I
| think.
| nkzd wrote:
| I also struggle with this. My attention span is terrible. What
| is the process you used to gradually take it back? Can you
| recommend and resources regarding this topic?
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Meditation, exercise, good diet. You train your brain just
| like you train anything else.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I am struggling literally right now with this. Two days in a
| binge of commenting stuff on social networks, my tasks are
| dangerously late.
| wibagusto wrote:
| Honestly my suggestion is to get rid of all social media. How
| many hours to master a new skill are wasted away with
| pointless debates and conversations?
|
| I have been off of social media for years now and I couldn't
| go back.
|
| Really, ask yourself if your conversations on social media
| are yielding something productive to society or if it's just
| wasting time.
|
| If you want social, get a group together and meet in person.
| Go do something.
| afarrell wrote:
| Alongside this, maybe set yourself up on calendly.com with
| some open time slots and tell people: "I'm
| taking a break from social media. If you'd like to get in
| touch with me, email foo@bar.com or click on [my calendar
| link](https://calendly.com/) and pick a time for a phone
| call"
|
| Will some people think you're odd for doing this? Yes. But
| it is better to miss out on 10 shallow connections and gain
| 1 deep one. Face the FOMO.
|
| > productive to society
|
| A better question: Are you really deeply connecting with
| the people you talk to or are you just wandering?
| wibagusto wrote:
| Please don't forget that these platforms are designed to
| be addicting.
|
| What you're suggesting is akin to: "why not smoke
| occasionally to take the edge off."
|
| It's about losing mental focus if you ask me. If you're
| an occasional user, your mind is still going to be roped
| in.
|
| They have an army of scientist who've proven these facts
| already and social media companies exploit us all.
|
| I agree with the idea of establishing deeper connections:
| but take them offline and have a cup of tea or video
| chat. There's simply better options.
| afarrell wrote:
| Calendly no more addicting or engaging than a dentist's
| website. It just lets you schedule a phone call or video
| chat.
| joeberon wrote:
| Quitting social media is not really about FOMO, it's
| about the fear of being bored due to not having anything
| else to fill that time.
| marban wrote:
| https://hubermanlab.com has lots of episodes on dopamine --
| Highly recommended podcast.
| nelox wrote:
| Yeah, I can't get enough of that one.
| kashyapc wrote:
| On understanding dopamine, FWIW, I recommend two excellent
| resources: one is Robert Sapolsky's 720-page tome, _Behave_ --he
| gives a robust intro to dopamine in the second chapter, "One
| Second Before", and expands on it further in the book.
|
| The other is prof. Andrew Huberman's podcast. He recently did a
| 2-hour episode[1] on dopamine. The segment on smartphones and how
| they alter our dopamine circuits starts at 01:15:28[2]
|
| [1] https://hubermanlab.com/controlling-your-dopamine-for-
| motiva...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU&t=4528s
| arvinsim wrote:
| Other books that focus more on action steps?
| didericis wrote:
| Not a book, but these action steps are common:
|
| - Disable phone notifications
|
| - Create checklists of small things you want to do
|
| - Work in cafes and places with background noise/other people
|
| - Schedule activities with others
| kashyapc wrote:
| For the patient reader/listener, the mentioned book and
| podcast have several ideas to implement. Obviously, there are
| no shortcuts but methods that require discipline.
|
| As a quick example, one suggestion is to not reward yourself
| everytime the same way. Let's say, you really enjoy running
| with music. Sometimes just toss a coin whether you get to
| listen to music while running or not. In other words, reward
| yourself intermittently. It is far more likely to sustain the
| baseline excitement/dopamine levels over time. If we reward
| ourselves all the time the same way, the baseline levels tend
| to drop.
|
| I'm explaining it poorly, but Huberman and Sapolsky add a lot
| more colour to this.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-13 23:02 UTC)