Did you read the article? It's not about buying a flip phone, it's about turning your smartphone into a slightly dumber phone, to alleviate your brain's addiction to it.
I did read the article, I don't personally have a problem with addiction. My phone only gets used when I'm either sat on the toilet, waiting for a bus/taxi, or deliberately talking to somebody.
The problem I do have with my phone is that its not actually under my control.
Purism are making a security and privacy focused phone and OS that may be of interest to you, but it's not yet available. Baseband support is 4G, and separated from the CPU: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
I think it may be healthy to reset dopamine by doing this occasionally for a week or so at a time, but I like the cheap dopamine and connectedness of my social media connections.
That's sort of what Java-supporting feature phones are meant to do, but I don't think there are many apps available and supported (WhatsApp probably still is). I got by with Opera Mini on a feature phone for years, it was painful to use but still handy.
The issue is that people have differing opinions as to what those essential apps should be... I'd imagine that it's hard to get consensus around what you need.
For what it's worth I've been trying to have a more "dumb phone" experience recently, but not by having an extremely small amount of apps. I simply removed all of the ones that are sources of distractions on a daily basis. The biggest culprit for me is Chrome. I'm realizing that I really don't have any need to have access to the entirety of the internet at all times. A couple dozen apps will give me what I actually need, and no distractions or aimlessly browsing [HN, Reddit, Facebook Instagram, etc.]
> The issue is that people have differing opinions as to what those essential apps should be... I'd imagine that it's hard to get consensus around what you need.
I don't think so. There's already a consensus around the dumbphone experience. Those featured a limited UI and and OS focused communication, so really it's just about integrating with evolved versions of standard dumbphone apps (e.g. CardDAV, messaging apps like Signal, etc).
As somebody who had an always on internet connected PDA back it times when most PDAs were black and white, I can say it will eventually pass. The sense of novelty will vanish, and the thing will not be as interesting when an average person first see it.
> As somebody who had an always on internet connected PDA back it times when most PDAs were black and white, I can say it will eventually pass.
I don't think the software and cultural environment was that same for those devices as it is for smartphones now. An old internet-connected PDA chiefly had utility apps like this guide advocates. There was nothing from giant companies whose business is to capture and sell your attention, no attention slot machines, no games built to drive in-app purchases. Things now are qualitatively different, even though the hardware might be in some ways comparable.
I lived in the time when slot machines were standing on the street in the open in Russia, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people not.
It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a bling bling slot machine is to waste time and money.
It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of 20 bling bling popups a second smartphone apps is to waste time and money and suck out clicks out of mentally infirm.
It takes no special personality to get an idea that clickfarming app must be removed, and take actions to do so.
My former high school classmate who did not manage to leave Russia is running a typical "smartphone fixer" kiosk. He said few years ago that the most common request is to "remove Google nagware and lock/destroy/delete google pay so, god forbid, your child will never ever buy anything in that Internet thing mouth breathers waste themselves on."
> I lived in the time when slot machines were standing on the street in the open in Russia, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people not.
Plenty of "normal people," even intelligent ones, are addicted to smartphones (though the degree of addiction varies). Smartphone slot machines are subtle enough to snare people would wouldn't be taken in by a traditional slot machine, even though they use the same primal re-enforcement mechanisms.
> It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of 20 bling bling popups a second smartphone apps is to waste time and money and suck out clicks out of mentally infirm.
I think this comment reflects a bizarre disconnect from everyday reality. By your logic, you're labeling a ridiculously large fraction of the population as "mentally infirm." "Basic logical reasoning" is not something people typically apply to everyday activities like smartphone use; those are typically done on autopilot and bypass it, because "basic logical reasoning" is expensive and slow.
>you're labeling a ridiculously large fraction of the population as "mentally infirm."
Well, to me it feels that people from parts of the world where one has no state institutes to fend them, tend to have more acute sense for somebody trying to abuse, fraud or attempt to extract money from them. Other than "pocket slot machines," people living there have to care about many more malignities: black mackler trying to steal your granny's apartment, bizarre religious sects trying to encroach your children, impunous sexual maniac killers on every corner, are things an average individual have to care, other than "relatively innocuous" encounters with regular racketeering/extortion/fraud.
A mentally firm person can not only tell that "wasting himself in a slot machines parlor is bad because I've been told to," but to reason that by himself about whatever malevolent encroachment on their wallet/assets/mental wellbeing/social position.
To a very average proletarian parent in Russia or China, and likely in much of the world outside of nanny state countries, it is glaringly obvious that Goog runs an equivalent of a slot machine business. And they take a 100% right conscious decision to block apps and google pay on their children smartphones.
Why an "enlightened, intelligent Western person" doesn't do the same? Were they desensitized by decades of wellbeing to the real, tangible threat of social predation?
> To a very average proletarian parent in Russia or China, and likely in much of the world outside of nanny state countries, it is glaringly obvious that Goog runs an equivalent of a slot machine business. And they take a 100% right conscious decision to block apps and google pay on their children smartphones.
[citation needed]
I'm extremely skeptical that any population as a preternatural ability to detect novel forms of scams and exploitation. The smartphone slot machines are novel in that they steal your attention, which people were not primed to be as sensitive to as attempts to steal money.
While I'm not very familiar with Russia, I have a little more familiarity with China, and I don't detect anything there that makes me think that the Chinese are more resistant to smartphone addiction. If anything makes them different, it's the preexisting cultural emphasis that children should be studying or cramming for high-stakes tests pretty much all the time to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. That has nothing to do with a "more acute sense for somebody trying to abuse, fraud or attempt to extract money from them."
That is indeed extreme.. obviously it would be preferable to have the proper motivation to stop this type of behaviour on your own but a detox period is required for that.
Personally, I would love a flip phone with a removable battery and a physical button on the side to turn WiFi hotspot functionality on/off -- with OFF being the default. Having a phone that you only need to charge once a week is a great feature!
Get a 3310 and a mobile hotspot with a data-only sim? The Huawei E5770 has 500h standby 20h activity, an ethernet port and USB power output (to act as a powerbank).
The problem with portable routers is that it requires a different plan and you always have the phone with you, so you're not in danger of forgetting it home.
Pretty cool. I was seriously looking at the new 3310 but it doesn't have GPS. Ideally would like maps/navigation. A phone with SMS, maps, and email is all I would ever need.
I was very excited by this phone but KaiOS seems worrying though hopefully I just misread: they seem to be quite closed-source even though they are based on FirefoxOS [1], the app store is closed and carrier controlled [2], and the hotspot functionality also seems to come with carrier control [3], which given the lack of openness and root capability, means that it may very well be disabled if you buy the phone through the wrong carrier.
As a basic phone with features, it still seems exciting (priced at $99USD I think) but after LineageOS, this feels like a step back in terms of openness and control.
[2] https://www.kaiostech.com/faq/#question-6 - to me, this means outdated apps or ones that will eventually die (such as the YouTube app on Sony DVD players a couple of years ago.)
If you want a dumb phone, why would you even care about locked app store? You aren't getting it to use the apps.
Same for root capability; either WiFi hotspot works with your carrier out of the box, or you don't buy the phone. If you have to fight your carrier on that, hacking every device you use on the network is not a solution anyway.
And a closed-source OS doesn't mean it's not hackable. Back in the day, you could mess a lot with Symbian.
True. The thing is that under the covers, this thing is kind of a smart phone and as such, the lack of control bothers me a bit. Your other points are valid though - one could just get this device for hotspot/call functionality and be happy.
My requirement is I need a sandboxed baseband or at least the ability to actually know it's off. There's a 4G DragonBox Prya coming out that you can put a SIP client on, and there's the ever-on-the-horizon Neo900.
My iPhone 5s (still my favourite iPhone design) died a couple of years ago (well, the battery did) and since then I use an iPod touch for apps and a cheap (£30 IIRC) dual-SIM little Nokia for telephony. The latter keeps its charge for days and I don't worry about losing it.
I confess as a news junkie I enjoy twitter, youtube, podcasts and reddit etc on my iPod but as it is wifi-only of course there are built in constraints in its use. I also have taken to going out without iPod or phone after work hours... very liberating and almost revolutionary! Nice to have an untracked-feeling if nothing else.
I moved to a Sonim XP5 two months ago. It has bluetooth, wifi, LTE, removable battery, media player, expandable storage, and can function as a hotspot. It uses a stripped down version of android for its OS
I've been implementing a similar regime on my smart phone for the last few months. After cracking a previous phone and resorting to a brick phone, I remembered how much I'd enjoyed the time I used to have with out a screen, either to read or just think.
I was eventually swayed back onto a smart phone after moving to a new city (for google maps) and now use that almost solely along with music, and occasionally chrome for fact-finding.
Would definitely recommend giving it a couple of months trial!
I really like the Lite Phone idea; browsers and the vast majority of apps are distractions. But an integrated camera is not a distraction; it's a tremendously convenient feature!
Check out Siempo (www.getsiempo.com) - it's basically a software version of the Light Phone 2 (for Android only now).
We believe the launcher approach is the most effective way to solve the problem b/c it actually gets at the root cause, which is that the smartphone interface has no protections against the persuasive techniques of addictive apps. So we made a new interface that is less distracting and more intentional.
We just launched in the Play Store and would love your thoughts and feedback!
We know :( Our next release (<2 weeks, with new onboarding flow) will only ask for one permission on first launch.
The app is currently free while in beta. We are in the process of building the UI for a Pay What You Can subscription model, which we feel aligns well with the movement away from an attention economy towards a user value economy, makes it more accessible, etc.
I would def feel more comfortable paying for it and having an ironclad guarantee you wouldn't use my data to stay solvent / pay for bankruptcy down the line.
I adhere to a lot of these rules myself and have recently noticed peers doing the same.
Another I'd add that really makes the phone boring is putting it in grayscale mode. On iOS: Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters > Grayscale. Then you can set the Accessibility Shortcut to Color Filters, and when you triple click the home button your phone goes grayscale.
I don't have it on 24/7, but do enable it any time I feel myself getting sucked in too frequently.
I figured it out after a few minutes poking around.
You'll need some way to set "secure" settings – if you're not rooted, the easiest way is via a Tasker plugin called AutoTools. Once you've set that up, create a task with an action of "AutoTools Secure Settings", then configure it as follows (under "Custom Setting" in the AutoTools menu):
That task then toggles greyscale mode, so you can hook it up to an application context or whatever. (Switch the value to 1 if you want a task that always enables greyscale, or 2 to always disable.)
If it doesn't work, diff the output of `adb shell settings list secure` from a PC with greyscale mode enabled and disabled, and use whatever name you get there.
I haven't had any social media on my phone except for aggregate websites and forums, but often I'm pointed from there to more substantial reading. I am still guilty of mindlessly thumbing through comments sometimes, though.
I have a few games and other things on there, but I haven't had a problem with getting hooked.
Choose the "color tint" color filter, set it to full-strength red, and you have a really good Night Mode as well, if you use your phone/tablet for reading in bed.
Good write up I’ve been working on a similar trajectory for my own smartphone usage. I’ve toyed with getting a dumb weekend phone but I think this might be the way to go. I don’t want to ignore technology I just want to make sure I’m in control as much as possible.
Thank you to the author for a thoughtful, nuanced take complete with actionable suggestions, that doesn't talk down the immense benefits smartphones have brought especially to the disabled.
One huge distraction-enabler is the fingerprint sensor. It makes things too easy for me - I put my hand in my pocket, put my finger on the sensor, and by the time it's in front of my face I can be mindlessly browsing reddit.
So I would add the following tip: disable the fingerprint sensor if you have one (also face recognition, etc), and replace it with an inconveniently long password. This way you really need to think about whether it's worth the time to open your phone.
I have one on 5" phone. I lately think that I would gladly go back to my old Moto G 1st gen that actually works better now on LineageOS [0] than before on original ROMs. It's smaller - it fits my pocket. It is a bit less convenient to stare at the screen, but now I think that's good. But sadly it has broken SIM slot. Maybe I will sell my phone and just buy something smaller, used with good LineageOS support. Or maybe something even more inconvenient - at most 10" 3g laptop.
[0] But last April Fools' "joke" was really testing my nerves and I'm still not settled on this.
I installed space recently and I use it just for Twitter. I don't have any other distractions. I think it has been useful so far.
http://youjustneedspace.com/
Reddit, the serial time-killer. Removing it from my phone was a tangible life improvement. And on desktop, I've moved everything to multis so that my reddit homepage is empty like a desert, so that I have to choose what to see purposefully from the sidebar. Thus I don't compulsively go to reddit and get lured by a sea of interesting links. This has helped cut the time I spend on reddit by, well IDK, I don't spend more than about an hour or two a week on it anymore.
I have been using protopage.com, which is basically what iGoogle was back in the day. I just drop in the RSS feeds for the top posts from subs I want to check out and have it limit the number of posts. I do that with HN and a few other sites as well. Although would be nice to be able to set a minimum refresh rate so newer stuff wouldn't pop up on refresh.
this is a cool tip, especially considering the security implications! afaik, police can coerce you to unlock with fingerprint, but not to give up your password
I have a small velvet bag that I use to keep my cell phone safe from scratches in my pocket. You can keep the fingerprint sensor on, but drop it in a similar bag with the sensor at the bottom; that way, you keep the fingerprint security, but there's an extra step involved before you can use it.
Delete the reddit app and logout. Have a really long password so you're too lazy to type it in. That's my trick. Used to spend hours and hours on reddit... now I'm just stuck on HN :(
That's what I did a while ago and haven't wanted to look for it again - the app was always terrible anyway. On my desktop/laptop, I now log out more as well to not have the orange notification show up if I 'accidentally' browse to the front page.
For Twitter (which I think is more 'addictive' due to the greater pool of talent about compared to hivemind posts), I need to open up my password manager and it's quite a process to log in again compared to a saved browser password (especially with two factor authentication) - quite often that hurdle is enough to have me reconsider idling away.
By the way, did you know the Twitter app requires about 5 taps or strokes before you can log out? They really try to hide that one from users.
While %s/drug/phone/g makes for an easy rhetorical trick, it also destroys a lot of essential context. It's also a bit on the offensive side if you or someone you know has dealt with actual drug addiction; as in, it cheapens it.
Picking some offenders from their list..
* You keep using your phone after it’s no longer needed to solve a problem. (Because nobody uses smartphones for fun?)
* You feel strange when you don’t have your phone. (I also feel strange when I don't have my watch, lighter, and multitool on me. This applies to all every day carry items.)
* You’ve begun having trouble doing normal daily things without your phone. (Normal daily things include responding to alerts, taking phone calls, and sending messages. I could not do my job without a smartphone, let alone a great deal of plain old human socializing. Further, IMs and SMSes are more respectful of my friends' time than phone calls which demand everybody drops what they're doing)
* You borrow money to pay for your phone. (Given the industry move to carrier financing rather than contract lock-in, I think most people now borrow money to pay for their phone)
* You drive or do other dangerous things (like use heavy machines) while you are on your phone. (People yammering on their phones in traffic has a lot more to do with a poor understanding of attention than it does this increasingly tenuous drug analogy. Besides, phone use while driving was a safety issue long before smartphones proliferated.)
* You hide some phone use or the effect it is having on you from others. (Only when the specter of Ludditism creeps through and I'd rather not be moralized to about my use of technology.)
----
Let's not even talk about the bare equation of all games to addiction (seriously?).
If you feel you're addicted to your smartphone, by all means, do whatever works for you, but if you intend on presenting that to the world, please keep the crappy logic to a minimum.
Extensively, if now your phone is only filled w/ tools and you are more prone to roaming around the internet through a browser, you may restrict and hide the Safari application on iPhone: Settings > General > Restrictions.
Also, for any apps that have group chats, I like to disable notifications for them. If someone really needs to contact me, they can send a direct message, or @ me, otherwise I will only check the group chat when I have the time or patience to do so. Or maybe I'm just getting old and stressed.
Personally, I find my smartphone addiction gets worse when I turn off all notifications. Because then FOMO takes over and I spend tons of time digging into apps to make sure I didn't "miss anything". For me, it works much better to intentionally choose the notifications I get to be the things I really want to be interrupted by. I wish there were an AI or human secretary who could make those judgements on a per-notification basis with my best interests in mind, but that doesn't seem to be a realistic option at my income level.
Another thing I do to limit my phone's dopamine rush is to delete all of the social media apps from my phone and only access them via a browser. mbasic.facebook.com is significantly less addictive that the app, while still being useful. Sometimes when I really need a break, I'll create a block list in the "Restrictions" settings on my iPhone and block Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and HN completely. I wish that there was a way for someone else to be able to remotely manage those restrictions for me, so I could uninstall all of the time-suck apps from my phone and only re-install them by getting permission from a friend who could help me honor my intentions.
Limiting FOMO was a large part of the appeal for a smartwatch to me. I could easily triage notification and dismiss from my wrist without the ability to get lost in an infinite scrolling list of whatever. The few times when it was an actionable notification, the phone came out to respond, but for most notifications, they are read and ignored.
Now that I don't wear my android watch daily, I find myself with my phone on my desk or table more. The fear of missing important notifications makes me more obsessed with all notifications.
There are various apps to try and promote healthy levels of smartphone engagement. Eg in Forest (iOS and Android, no affiliation)[0] you plant a tree and it will grow with time, but will wither away the more you play with Facebook. It will occasionally notify in case you get lost in facebooklandia.
If you object to that particular implementation, the point is there's a usage API in case you'd like to write your own app.
So probably, yeah. I assume there is some point at which the tree won't be killed since it goes on to talk about keeping a forest of trees representing stretches of time not using your phone to do anything other than run this app - hitting up its app store page describes it as a pomodoro timer, so about 25min gets you a tree.
My inner paranoid says "wow, what a great way to get people to help you mine cryptocurrency" but I will choose to assume that they're happy with the money they're making by selling it for two bucks, plus the occasional "sunshine elixir" IAP.
One other thing I do is have physically separate devices for work versus entertainment. A spare phone is my Twitter/Facebook phone. I have a separate laptop for watching videos, playing games, social media, and HN. (I also have a tablet for long-form reading: Kindle, Instapaper, The Economist etc.) It helps establish that there are separate modes, which limits FOMO for me.
I've got a burner Nokia phone that I refer to as my "ground phone". Whenever I need a break from the cloud, I swap my SIM card into it. All it really has is texting and calling. It kind of works, but using it also means I have to give up some things that I consider essential practical tools like Google Maps, my full contacts list, my reminders, and my calendar. I really think there'd be a market for some kind of smartphone that has full utilitarian functionality but doesn't support and kind of distractions.
Let me ask the crowd. Would you use a browser plugin that eliminates newsfeeds?
One of the things I struggle with is the endless novelty of a newsfeed. I can always scroll and get more. And then I can reload for another chance at finding something interesting.
There are extensions that do this for Facebook alone, but I was thinking something more general. And something that's also clever about eliminating the way companies use notifications to for similar novelty-injection, rather than true notifications.
I suspect I also need a "please temporarily show me the newsfeed" mode, possibly on some sort of time restriction, with mandatory delay, or requiring some boring work, so as to raise it from "compulsive response" to "considered choice", but still keeps people from removing the extension on the occasions they really need to see the feeds.
Would you use it? And what services would be required?
I like the delay idea. A minute delay to reflect upon your actions, or yourself or something.
Of course one can simply disable the extension. I guess you'll need testing to see what kind of delay makes the target audience not jump to disable the extension. If you're serious about this, I can send you my mail address and see if I can help with parsing feedback or something!
You might like the chrome extension "Delayed Gratification"[0]. I also use xTab[1] to limit my tab count to about 6 to prevent opening every link I come across. (The interesting ones go into my OneTab[2] to alleviate FOMO and so I know I can find them later, although I rarely need to.)
I would absolutely use this, and I've even thought of creating it. I've hacked together parts of that functionality several times. I think the problem would be that if anything like this caught on, companies would adapt their platforms to get around it. Tricksy hobbitses!
Not for me. However I seem to differ from may orhers who agree with you that I am not curious enough to miss the kitten posted next door nor the fancy meal plate of random strangers, intermingled by advertisment or is it already the other way round?
Without these notifications I stay more focused and get less stressed.
Same here. I don't need a notification for every single "like" I get on Twitter/Instagram. In fact, it's similarly rewarding when I come back to the app and see a bunch of notifications waiting, knowing that they didn't distract me.
even in terms of sheer dopamine, i find it rewarding to see a bunch of new notifications at once. to me push notifications feel more like an annoyance than a dopamine hit. i keep them turned on for sms because it's useful as a way to contact me immediately, but they're off for everything else, including email. (i never turned them on for twitter or facebook because i discovered back in the 90s that i was happier turning them off for email)
> even in terms of sheer dopamine, i find it rewarding to see a bunch of new notifications at once. to me push notifications feel more like an annoyance than a dopamine hit.
The social networks understand this. I've read that they have algorithms that will batch and spread out your dopamine hits for maximum re-enforcement effect.
>i find it rewarding to see a bunch of new notifications at once
My wife wonders why I scan all my groceries at the store and then enter my loyalty card instead of doing it up-front as the system asks for. It's because if I see the price read $130 and then I enter the card and it drops to $110, it feels like I came out ahead. Even though it's going to be the same number.
My local grocery store does that automatically—the register rings items up at the full price and then applies all the discounts at the very end while you're waiting for the card reader to be ready. And it seems to do it intentionally slowly, about two line items per second, so that it takes exactly the right amount of time to be sure you notice it without getting annoyed at having to wait.
Once I started turning application notifications off, I began to see much more clearly how manipulative they are. For instance, Facebook started emailing me, something I didn't realize I had to disable (up until then, I don't remember them mailing me anything). Twitter would pointlessly send a notification for "Person X and 42 others liked this tweet" and so on, clearly because I was opening their application less.
The intrusiveness and desperation only escalate. For me the last straw was when Facebook started sending me notifications over SMS.
If I hadn't deleted my profile, I'm pretty convinced they'd be calling me on the phone or showing up at my house with printed-out notifications by now.
I started on this path recently with email by using the Astro app, and only getting notifications for "Priority Emails" which are intelligently chosen.
The key thing is to break the cycle where Facebook (or other attention generating machines) is the personal personal equivalent of O365 or GSuite at home. Never, ever, never use the app and you've solved 80% of your problem, because you don't have this external force trying to corrupt your decisionmaking.
Not only will you not be dealing with their stalking draining your battery, but you'll get rid of the FOMO thing. Visit the site every couple of days for the events or whatever other excuse keeps you on there. You'll figure out that you're missing nothing, although Facebook in particular will get increasingly desperate and try to hook you in via bullshit emails, etc.
Once you get bad/abusive actors away from you, you'll find that your phone has robust notification and other mechanisms to help you get productive notifications.
Have you tried setting up silent notifications for the things you actually care about, and muting the rest? E.g. I get silent notifications for my personal email, which means I'm never tempted to refresh my inbox but I'm also not interrupted.
It's important though to tightly control the notifications such that you get them only for things you actually care about. E.g., unsubscribe from any & all mailing lists you don't care about.
This is the real problem, not the phone or its apps. You need to eliminate FOMO from your life. You'll be much happier for it.
I don't have a recommendation on how to do that. For me I came to the realization and acceptance that there is always more. More work, more knowledge, more news, more parties, more potential friends, more opportunities, etc. It never ends and it's impossible to know or participate in it all.
If you find yourself having anxiety from that thought you might want to see a psychologist.
Meditation is good for this. Being aware of those thoughts and understanding why you feel it can help lessen the addiction. You may even find out you don’t care but you’ve trained yourself to. Everyone’s different but I think meditation can help some aspect of their life.
You'll be much happier for it, but can you afford it?
If you've got the kind of social life and communication you need, great. And I agree that many people who are in an accidental too-much-FOMO situation probably didn't need all the extra tweets and whatnot flung their way and it's mostly junk. In that case, just turning most of it off is a reasonable idea.
But if you're in a position where the communities you need to be making more of an effort with use fast-moving, presenceless platforms for most of their socialization (Telegram, Twitter, etc.—maybe even, say, Slack?), good luck snagging those limited opportunities to learn which people to get to know better or get a word in on something important without constantly checking everything. (This might be a good argument to not do that for your next community!)
The idea of more closely regulating the feeling so that it's not overdriven and occupying your whole mindset is still relevant, but it takes on quite a different form if you can't actually afford to check out of the fast side; you have to do a trickier balancing act.
Maybe you need to find different communities. Being part of something isn't a need, it's a want, and you either accept that you want to be there and take the good with the bad, or you accept that you don't like the bad and give up on the good.
I'll grant that as a theoretical rule, but most communities are not tech communities. Suppose that you're able to pick one which is not dependent on any undesired proprietary/attention-sucking/etc. medium but is still interested in the things you're looking for. (Many communities are not very fungible.) One day:
“Hey, I like what we're doing, we should set up a group for it to make it easier to keep up with events and stuff.”
“Telegram? That's what everyone else seems to use.” “Yeah, I've already got that on my phone.” “Me too.” “Yup! And I've got this great sticker pack I want to show you…” “Hey, can you show me how to install it?” “Sure, it's easy, just…”
“Awesome, I'll set it up.” (tap, tap, tap)
(Substitute Facebook, or Discord, or whatever else.)
Gradually people just kinda forget to post things anywhere else, because it's convenient and lets them post from their phone and they get all the encouraging responses they wanted there, and so it gradually becomes common knowledge that that's the place. The choice of platform isn't in their community identity, so the default is whatever people gravitate to that doesn't require doing something unusual.
If you don't integrate psychologically with the popular platforms, you're not really choosing to not be part of a specific community, because that's what “popular” means: you're choosing that the set of communities you can explore in the first place is whittled way down, and your membership in any you do find is now precarious. “Pick a community that doesn't do that” not only raises the difficulty at the beginning, but it also doesn't save you later.
Are these some sorts of business communities where you're actually working for a tangible reward to further your career? Even if they are, this sounds really crazy and wrapped around an axle to me, if this is your steady state level of interaction, especially if this is multiple communities you're talking about. If you're bootstrapping yourself as part of a marketing or sales push, you can dedicate a time slot to working it, or consider this level of intensity as a short-term effort until you've established a more self-perpetuating network.
If that's not the case, are you really sure that you need to be doing any of that? Especially "get a word in on something important" is awfully similar to https://www.xkcd.com/386/ .
No, I'm simply saying that if they're killing themselves by maintaining such a high-stress & rigorous involvement, they should at least be getting something out of it and should ensure that that extreme level is short term, because it's not healthy.
If they're doing it only because they kind of fell into it as baseline socialization shifted, they need to step back and reconsider things because it's not healthy.
Ignoring the “business” part of your comment, because that's far from the only reason to want to have broad social ties:
Dedicating a time slot in the usual sense is very socially costly if they've gravitated to a presenceless, fast-moving platform, because psychological consensus and topic closure operates more on the perceived speed of communication of the group. If 90% of the other people respond within an hour, and you get there eight hours later, the conversation's moved on, so if everyone else is in the habit of checking their phone every fifteen minutes, there's pressure for you to be too. So, yes, you can “dedicate a time slot” at the end of every pomodoro, if that's what you meant.
This is more true in “channel”-based environments where “new in thread” is inconvenient or unavailable. If you're not careful, you can even be disruptive. Even on slow-moving, old-style Web forums, “necroposting” is considered rude; a chat-like medium with little to no threading support can just lower the threshold for it from weeks to hours if there's enough activity.
For the other part, I'll grant that “get a word in on something important” was badly worded, though I can't think of a better phrase this instant. I was imagining things like “we've changed the meetup location because someone raised a problem, is this okay with everyone or does someone need a ride” or “I'd like comments on which direction I should go with the next part of this piece” or “I'm going to see if some of us can do X together tomorrow, I want three more people, who's with me”. All of these can easily render your participation irrelevant if you show up too late, and “too late” is by default defined by what's usual and convenient, not by abstract considerations of what's good for people's habit formation.
I was also kind of thinking about _FOMO_, but just in terms of messaging apps. For instance, if I were supposed to be getting a ride with someone and my notifications were off, wouldn't I have to be checking my phone more since i'm now manually checking for messages about the lift, instead of being pushed them as they come in.
It seems to me that message notifications, at least, do keep me from checking my phone.
This similar mindset helped me break away from playing League of Legends all of the time. Just understanding that I've been through it all and nothing new or different would happen helped me to just move on. I didn't have to accept the toxic community.
I don't know what it is about league, but it seems to attract the absolute worst of people. Most of the gaming communities I am a part of are very welcoming and friendly. I went to a tournament for league once and the team that beat us came over to gloat and remind us of every mistake immediately afterwards. They only stopped once my wife started actually crying from the verbal abuse.
Needless to say, I cut my losses with that community.
Others have mentioned this is a separate issue from the smartphone (although smartphones to make it easier for us to enable FOMO).
In my experience (most, if not all) FOMO disappeared in my early thirties and once I gained a more settled life. And while I do still check HN, twitter-lists daily (usually more than once a day when commuting, or having a break) I have noticed how on a busy day (or a weekend day), I completely forget about that.
Maybe age, and changes in lifestyle have been most responsible for this, but I also find that I'm less impressed by new stuff now than I used to be, so I'm much less likely to feel that I'm missing something out.
I do. I have an Apple Watch with a SIM chip in it and I leave my phone at home all the time. I still get text messages and emails, so I know if something urgent is going on, but it is also a bit of a pain to reply, so I find, more often than not, I don't. It helps me to plan my responses to specific times during the day.
Thanks for this. We're considering smartphones for our soon-to-be "tween" children, however I've considered pairing them with a smartwatch, in an attempt to keep them from developing this same "dependence". I doubt it will work for them (Snapchat/Instagram etc.) however it might work for me/us.
Sort of. My pebble lets me reply to many types of messages, but not all. It also does support music controls which is also useful.
So there are more times I can just leave it either on a charger or somewhere in the house and not worry about where it is exactly. Until I get an MMS or a phone call.
It's not a perfect solution, but I find part of the process of being less involved with my phone is acceptance of the fact that I might not be able to be able to address every need at every moment and that's ok.
Mine hasn't, as there were too many things which didn't quite work. (Uber, lack of podcasts, difficult to play language lessons as MP3s, etc.)
Instead I made my smartphone much dumber, and it isn't really distracting now. But, I'm hoping a future watch os will have a better third party app development framework and allow it to be truly phone independent. I bought the watch hoping for phone independence.
I just got a Pixel the other day after being phone-less for about 3 months. I only need it to do ARCore development, so I keep it powered-off.
* I had to print out directions to get to new places, which had me learn my way around.
* People were much less flaky since they couldn't text me at the last minute to cancel our plans.
* I no longer had a crutch in difficult social situations, which helped me actually get to know strangers and form new relationships.
I might still use it as a GPS when traveling, but I otherwise can't see why it's necessary for people/machines to be able to steal your attention at a moment's notice.
Of course, this isn't do-able for a lot of people, as their work/life depends on it. And it's possible to reap the above benefits without going fully phone-less. But for those interested, it's not as bad as it seems to drop the phone altogether.
I respect what you're doing, but I noticed it's the friends like you (off Facebook, never answers texts) that stopped getting invited to stuff.
Scenario 1: housewarming party 3 weeks away. My phoneless friend doesn't get the Facebook invite used to corrall the other 30 people coming. She also doesn't get the group FB message (nobody uses group SMS anymore in my friend group). A fluke of busyness means I don't see her for those 3 weeks and she thus misses the party.
Scenario 2: my roommate and I just got home from work, and decide to go out. We text phoneless friend and other friend. Other friend shows up. Three hours later we close our tabs, and get a text from phoneless friend. "I just saw this!! Are you guys still out??"
It's a core value of mine that people should be allowed to live however the hell they very well please as long as it doesn't hurt others, but I genuinely feel like without a minimum level of connectedness (at the very least relatively easy access via SMS), they're kinda hurting themselves. As close as a friend as they may be, if the barrier to entry to hanging out with them is providing them step by step directions to the bar we're at as well as making sure all plans are 48 hours ahead and by the way I have to trade voicemails to even inform them... Eeeh...
Standard replies to this kind of post:
>If lack of connectedness is an obstacle to people hanging out with you, they weren't worth your time / that good of friends anyway.
I counter with the idea mass culture movements require participation to, well, participate. My bestest friend ever doesn't have to participate to remain in that state, sure, but I guess if all you want in life is a tiny circle of three of your besties then power to you.
> People were more genuine and less flaky before cellphones
I lived before and after cellphones and in my experience, people were just as flaky back then, it just didn't seem that way because we were all hanging out less. Either way, cut flaky people out o your life homey. It's not as big of a deal to flake out of impromptu Wednesday trivia night at a random bar, only possible at the drop of the hat as my friends like to do, with cellphones. It also allows us to avoid the "fuck I don't wanna be here, normally I do but today was exhausting" aspect of cyclical plans (say regular DND night) because we can all communicate those feelings early and quickly make new plans with the smaller group.
I'm having the weird experience of being the first grade level through a new high school.
One nice thing about that is there's no one older than us already using Facebook. Everything that needs to be organized is done through email, which is boring to some, but at least everyone has it.
At the start of the school year I got a few friends to switch over to Telegram (for group chats). I would have prefered something end to end encrypted and decentralized, but at least it's not Facebook Messenger. Some people do use Instagram (Facebook-for-Pictures) and Snapchat, but it's not anywhere near universal.
So I'm set on my phone with only my self hosted email and Telegram. Not sure how I'm going to deal with things after school, but hopefully people switch off Facebook by then.
I'll never force anyone to get a phone, smartphone, use texts, or whatever, but for the people who are that disconnected, well, they add a friction to social interaction that ends up excluding them.
At the end of the day they're outside my own set of social norms, which now, in 2018, include "must be relatively easy to connect with".
Agree on all of your points. I am a hermit that deleted FB and only responds to a few people via text. It's a decision I made that I'm still currently happy with. If something were to happen to my existing core friends though, it might be a pain finding new ones.
Sure, it requires more effort to stay connected. Like I said, I know a lot of people need their phone/FB for their day-to-day business. But it can be done without you ending up as a recluse.
I didn't drop off the map with my friends, and I made a few friends that I otherwise never would have met. I still had a PC, so it's not like I couldn't be contacted. Most people that I hang out with use Discord/Telegram, anyways. If your friends all use SMS/MMS/FB to communicate, then you probably can't do it.
I think the key is to make it clear that you -do- want to be invited to things. People will let you know. It's also a plus to be a fun person to hang out with, and don't talk about how great it is to not have a phone.
I use my phone as utility only, I put the details on how in another post here. I would also miss out on scenario 1, because while I don't have FB on my phone, I do have an account, opened only in a Firefox Container on my desktop. I also don't receive emails from invites/messages or anything FB related. It waits for me.
I wouldn't miss out on scenario 2, because my phone notifies me of texts and calls (and nothing else).
I dislike the 1st scenario just off the basis of giving FB so much credit, friends should reach out via traditional methods that most of us have like SMS. Then you're not benefiting Facebook Corp so much by designing your life around it. Just distasteful, in my view. It also allows people to communicate & live a modern life with just a basic phone, which should be more than enough.
I’m I the only one who get fomo by using my smartphone? Consider all the experiences and face to face conversations you miss by looking at others on social media or when you are playing candy crush.
I find I get hooked into my smartphone when I want stimulation without needing to focus. It's not a FOMO thing, it's a "I can put this down at any time but don't want to thing."
For me it's the browser. What I did yesterday on Firefox for Android:
- installed uBlock Origin (also First Party Isolation and HTTPS Everywhere),
- disabled JavaScript via about:config javascript.enabled,
- and added .css| rule to uBlock Origin (I would still like to disable CSS entirely, this only half works).
Basically I would like to have "links2 -g" [0] for Android. There is also an extension for Firefox to automatically enable reader mode [1]. It waits for additional WebExtensions API. I want to omit CSS, because of:
- too small or too big font size,
- no proper text wrapping,
- wrong contrast, too big margins,
- position:fixed bars that are so trendy right now.
Basically I want to bail out of modern web. However I would probably use modern web apps on proper browser when I want an app, but just not when I want to read some information.
I know that there are sites with good content that will be broken because of it. But it will be only a minor collateral damage.
I added to my long todo-list a modern pure HTML browser for Android and Linux. What would also help is a different search engine. Of course I also have one in my todo-list. A search engine that would _not_ index ad serving sites. Also as an option it could not show JavaScript enabled sites.
I know about Million Short, but it does not cut it.
Such a pair of a browser and a search engine is, or rather will be, my answer.
Also it's sad a smartphone with it's array of sensors is not a proper tricorder...
But doesn't it have the same index as Google? I would probably prefer to have my idea of a search engine implemented before the browser one. Because then not only the search interface would be light and serving me instead of corporate interests, but also all the found sites. Also I could use it on regular browser.
I think you can have links on Android using something like Termux [https://termux.com] (but you probably won't enjoy it that much on a small screen with a touch keyboard).
Maybe I will try it if the font can be set to something big, but I'm one of those bastards that prefer proportional fonts even for source code. However it's still not "links -g" - this one supports images. Images are mostly useless on most pages, but with uBlock Origin I also limit images bigger than 50kB, that filters out most junk, but probably also have a lot of false positives.
elinks actually kind of supports touch input in Termux. I tend to use it when I'm in a spot with very bad data coverage and need to check something. It's surprisingly usable.
When the first Motorola Droid came out, I found a "tricorder" app with a lot of the sensor data output with a LCARSish UI. It may have since been lawyered out of existence.
I've seen it. Sadly it's just a nice thin interface over WebKit. I guess I could customize it to do somewhat what I want, but it would still run on WebKit. On Linux I can use alternative browsers like links -g, WebSurf or Dillo, but on mobile there are no such luxuries.
I would just like to have the target experience (and lightness) out of the box, but on all platforms.
The browser is the time-sink for me too. Unfortunately, iOS makes it difficult to get Safari out of your life. My dream is a content blocker that requires you to unlock it in order to browse the time-sink sites you choose to greylist; and each time you unlock it, unlocking gets more arduous.
Thing is, I don't want to block it entirely. Sometimes you just need to look stuff up. Just limit time spent on time suck sites. The real problem is that there's no way to tell the OS to open links from other apps into a different browser that you can add better controls to.
I also use Firefox but did not know about the Automatic reader mode, thanks! I used Dark background with White text extension which loads images. I can't get Automatic reader mode to work on Firefox Beta from Play Store, any ideas? I turned on all pages in the extension settings.
BTW Termux has w3m and Links2 on the repo.
For me, the key has been deleting all social media accounts. Feels like I just freed up 30% of my time. When you delete social media, you pay yourself in time.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 252 ms ] threadWe need a solid open baseband that runs at 3G speeds at the very least.
The problem I do have with my phone is that its not actually under my control.
I wish there was a "dumbphone" that supported and extremely small number of utility apps, like Signal.
For what it's worth I've been trying to have a more "dumb phone" experience recently, but not by having an extremely small amount of apps. I simply removed all of the ones that are sources of distractions on a daily basis. The biggest culprit for me is Chrome. I'm realizing that I really don't have any need to have access to the entirety of the internet at all times. A couple dozen apps will give me what I actually need, and no distractions or aimlessly browsing [HN, Reddit, Facebook Instagram, etc.]
I don't think so. There's already a consensus around the dumbphone experience. Those featured a limited UI and and OS focused communication, so really it's just about integrating with evolved versions of standard dumbphone apps (e.g. CardDAV, messaging apps like Signal, etc).
I don't think the software and cultural environment was that same for those devices as it is for smartphones now. An old internet-connected PDA chiefly had utility apps like this guide advocates. There was nothing from giant companies whose business is to capture and sell your attention, no attention slot machines, no games built to drive in-app purchases. Things now are qualitatively different, even though the hardware might be in some ways comparable.
I lived in the time when slot machines were standing on the street in the open in Russia, and yes, mentally infirm people were wasting themselves on them. Normal people not.
It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of a bling bling slot machine is to waste time and money.
It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of 20 bling bling popups a second smartphone apps is to waste time and money and suck out clicks out of mentally infirm.
It takes no special personality to get an idea that clickfarming app must be removed, and take actions to do so.
My former high school classmate who did not manage to leave Russia is running a typical "smartphone fixer" kiosk. He said few years ago that the most common request is to "remove Google nagware and lock/destroy/delete google pay so, god forbid, your child will never ever buy anything in that Internet thing mouth breathers waste themselves on."
Plenty of "normal people," even intelligent ones, are addicted to smartphones (though the degree of addiction varies). Smartphone slot machines are subtle enough to snare people would wouldn't be taken in by a traditional slot machine, even though they use the same primal re-enforcement mechanisms.
> It takes a particular lack of basic logical reasoning to not to understand that the the purpose of 20 bling bling popups a second smartphone apps is to waste time and money and suck out clicks out of mentally infirm.
I think this comment reflects a bizarre disconnect from everyday reality. By your logic, you're labeling a ridiculously large fraction of the population as "mentally infirm." "Basic logical reasoning" is not something people typically apply to everyday activities like smartphone use; those are typically done on autopilot and bypass it, because "basic logical reasoning" is expensive and slow.
Well, to me it feels that people from parts of the world where one has no state institutes to fend them, tend to have more acute sense for somebody trying to abuse, fraud or attempt to extract money from them. Other than "pocket slot machines," people living there have to care about many more malignities: black mackler trying to steal your granny's apartment, bizarre religious sects trying to encroach your children, impunous sexual maniac killers on every corner, are things an average individual have to care, other than "relatively innocuous" encounters with regular racketeering/extortion/fraud.
A mentally firm person can not only tell that "wasting himself in a slot machines parlor is bad because I've been told to," but to reason that by himself about whatever malevolent encroachment on their wallet/assets/mental wellbeing/social position.
To a very average proletarian parent in Russia or China, and likely in much of the world outside of nanny state countries, it is glaringly obvious that Goog runs an equivalent of a slot machine business. And they take a 100% right conscious decision to block apps and google pay on their children smartphones.
Why an "enlightened, intelligent Western person" doesn't do the same? Were they desensitized by decades of wellbeing to the real, tangible threat of social predation?
[citation needed]
I'm extremely skeptical that any population as a preternatural ability to detect novel forms of scams and exploitation. The smartphone slot machines are novel in that they steal your attention, which people were not primed to be as sensitive to as attempts to steal money.
While I'm not very familiar with Russia, I have a little more familiarity with China, and I don't detect anything there that makes me think that the Chinese are more resistant to smartphone addiction. If anything makes them different, it's the preexisting cultural emphasis that children should be studying or cramming for high-stakes tests pretty much all the time to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. That has nothing to do with a "more acute sense for somebody trying to abuse, fraud or attempt to extract money from them."
https://www.thekitchensafe.com
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_3310_(2017)
So? You can get a voice-only plan for the dumbphone and a data-only plan for the AP.
> and you always have the phone with you
Given the AP is useless on its own, you can just leave it in your laptop/tablet bag (whichever you're using).
* 25 days on standby, 8.5 hours LTE voice calls
* removable battery
* WiFi hotspot functionality
* 4G network connectivity
* KaiOS will have basic apps (Google maps, FB, Google assistant and reportetly WhatsApp in near future)
https://www.nokia.com/en_in/phones/nokia-8110-4g
As a basic phone with features, it still seems exciting (priced at $99USD I think) but after LineageOS, this feels like a step back in terms of openness and control.
[1] https://www.kaiostech.com/faq/#question-14
[2] https://www.kaiostech.com/faq/#question-6 - to me, this means outdated apps or ones that will eventually die (such as the YouTube app on Sony DVD players a couple of years ago.)
[3] https://www.kaiostech.com/faq/#question-16
Same for root capability; either WiFi hotspot works with your carrier out of the box, or you don't buy the phone. If you have to fight your carrier on that, hacking every device you use on the network is not a solution anyway.
And a closed-source OS doesn't mean it's not hackable. Back in the day, you could mess a lot with Symbian.
I confess as a news junkie I enjoy twitter, youtube, podcasts and reddit etc on my iPod but as it is wifi-only of course there are built in constraints in its use. I also have taken to going out without iPod or phone after work hours... very liberating and almost revolutionary! Nice to have an untracked-feeling if nothing else.
I was eventually swayed back onto a smart phone after moving to a new city (for google maps) and now use that almost solely along with music, and occasionally chrome for fact-finding.
Would definitely recommend giving it a couple of months trial!
Lite Phone 2: Campaign https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/light-phone-2-design#/
Edit: I say should; I should clarify that I think the pricepoint is waaay to hipster for me.
We believe the launcher approach is the most effective way to solve the problem b/c it actually gets at the root cause, which is that the smartphone interface has no protections against the persuasive techniques of addictive apps. So we made a new interface that is less distracting and more intentional.
We just launched in the Play Store and would love your thoughts and feedback!
The app is currently free while in beta. We are in the process of building the UI for a Pay What You Can subscription model, which we feel aligns well with the movement away from an attention economy towards a user value economy, makes it more accessible, etc.
https://github.com/jeffmer/micropython-upyphone
https://forum.micropython.org/viewtopic.php?t=4038
Another I'd add that really makes the phone boring is putting it in grayscale mode. On iOS: Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters > Grayscale. Then you can set the Accessibility Shortcut to Color Filters, and when you triple click the home button your phone goes grayscale.
I don't have it on 24/7, but do enable it any time I feel myself getting sucked in too frequently.
Does anyone know how to do this? I have tried to do something with Tasker but couldn't figure it out.
You'll need some way to set "secure" settings – if you're not rooted, the easiest way is via a Tasker plugin called AutoTools. Once you've set that up, create a task with an action of "AutoTools Secure Settings", then configure it as follows (under "Custom Setting" in the AutoTools menu):
That task then toggles greyscale mode, so you can hook it up to an application context or whatever. (Switch the value to 1 if you want a task that always enables greyscale, or 2 to always disable.)If it doesn't work, diff the output of `adb shell settings list secure` from a PC with greyscale mode enabled and disabled, and use whatever name you get there.
Unfortunately I can't find it anymore. I've been trying hard.
I too would love to live on a black and white phone with certain exceptions (in my case mainly camera and maps).
If anyone knows/remembers this app, you'd make my day :)
I haven't had any social media on my phone except for aggregate websites and forums, but often I'm pointed from there to more substantial reading. I am still guilty of mindlessly thumbing through comments sometimes, though.
I have a few games and other things on there, but I haven't had a problem with getting hooked.
So I would add the following tip: disable the fingerprint sensor if you have one (also face recognition, etc), and replace it with an inconveniently long password. This way you really need to think about whether it's worth the time to open your phone.
[0] But last April Fools' "joke" was really testing my nerves and I'm still not settled on this.
For Twitter (which I think is more 'addictive' due to the greater pool of talent about compared to hivemind posts), I need to open up my password manager and it's quite a process to log in again compared to a saved browser password (especially with two factor authentication) - quite often that hurdle is enough to have me reconsider idling away.
By the way, did you know the Twitter app requires about 5 taps or strokes before you can log out? They really try to hide that one from users.
Picking some offenders from their list..
* You keep using your phone after it’s no longer needed to solve a problem. (Because nobody uses smartphones for fun?)
* You feel strange when you don’t have your phone. (I also feel strange when I don't have my watch, lighter, and multitool on me. This applies to all every day carry items.)
* You’ve begun having trouble doing normal daily things without your phone. (Normal daily things include responding to alerts, taking phone calls, and sending messages. I could not do my job without a smartphone, let alone a great deal of plain old human socializing. Further, IMs and SMSes are more respectful of my friends' time than phone calls which demand everybody drops what they're doing)
* You borrow money to pay for your phone. (Given the industry move to carrier financing rather than contract lock-in, I think most people now borrow money to pay for their phone)
* You drive or do other dangerous things (like use heavy machines) while you are on your phone. (People yammering on their phones in traffic has a lot more to do with a poor understanding of attention than it does this increasingly tenuous drug analogy. Besides, phone use while driving was a safety issue long before smartphones proliferated.)
* You hide some phone use or the effect it is having on you from others. (Only when the specter of Ludditism creeps through and I'd rather not be moralized to about my use of technology.)
----
Let's not even talk about the bare equation of all games to addiction (seriously?).
If you feel you're addicted to your smartphone, by all means, do whatever works for you, but if you intend on presenting that to the world, please keep the crappy logic to a minimum.
Another thing I do to limit my phone's dopamine rush is to delete all of the social media apps from my phone and only access them via a browser. mbasic.facebook.com is significantly less addictive that the app, while still being useful. Sometimes when I really need a break, I'll create a block list in the "Restrictions" settings on my iPhone and block Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and HN completely. I wish that there was a way for someone else to be able to remotely manage those restrictions for me, so I could uninstall all of the time-suck apps from my phone and only re-install them by getting permission from a friend who could help me honor my intentions.
Now that I don't wear my android watch daily, I find myself with my phone on my desk or table more. The fear of missing important notifications makes me more obsessed with all notifications.
If you object to that particular implementation, the point is there's a usage API in case you'd like to write your own app.
[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.forestapp
"Whenever you want to focus, plant a tree.
The tree will grow in the following time.
The tree will be killed if you leave this app."
So probably, yeah. I assume there is some point at which the tree won't be killed since it goes on to talk about keeping a forest of trees representing stretches of time not using your phone to do anything other than run this app - hitting up its app store page describes it as a pomodoro timer, so about 25min gets you a tree.
My inner paranoid says "wow, what a great way to get people to help you mine cryptocurrency" but I will choose to assume that they're happy with the money they're making by selling it for two bucks, plus the occasional "sunshine elixir" IAP.
Snapchat, twitter, text message, facebook message.
All while I'm trying to figure out why my middle-wear isnt working. I catch myself shitposting on instagram instead of running my app.
One other thing I do is have physically separate devices for work versus entertainment. A spare phone is my Twitter/Facebook phone. I have a separate laptop for watching videos, playing games, social media, and HN. (I also have a tablet for long-form reading: Kindle, Instapaper, The Economist etc.) It helps establish that there are separate modes, which limits FOMO for me.
One of the things I struggle with is the endless novelty of a newsfeed. I can always scroll and get more. And then I can reload for another chance at finding something interesting.
There are extensions that do this for Facebook alone, but I was thinking something more general. And something that's also clever about eliminating the way companies use notifications to for similar novelty-injection, rather than true notifications.
I suspect I also need a "please temporarily show me the newsfeed" mode, possibly on some sort of time restriction, with mandatory delay, or requiring some boring work, so as to raise it from "compulsive response" to "considered choice", but still keeps people from removing the extension on the occasions they really need to see the feeds.
Would you use it? And what services would be required?
I like the delay idea. A minute delay to reflect upon your actions, or yourself or something.
Of course one can simply disable the extension. I guess you'll need testing to see what kind of delay makes the target audience not jump to disable the extension. If you're serious about this, I can send you my mail address and see if I can help with parsing feedback or something!
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/delayed-gratificat...
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/xtab/amddgdnlkmoha...
[2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...
Without these notifications I stay more focused and get less stressed.
The social networks understand this. I've read that they have algorithms that will batch and spread out your dopamine hits for maximum re-enforcement effect.
My wife wonders why I scan all my groceries at the store and then enter my loyalty card instead of doing it up-front as the system asks for. It's because if I see the price read $130 and then I enter the card and it drops to $110, it feels like I came out ahead. Even though it's going to be the same number.
If I hadn't deleted my profile, I'm pretty convinced they'd be calling me on the phone or showing up at my house with printed-out notifications by now.
I consider this (I have it too) to be almost full fledged clinical addiction. It toys with your mind and distort your life in unhealthy ways.
Not only will you not be dealing with their stalking draining your battery, but you'll get rid of the FOMO thing. Visit the site every couple of days for the events or whatever other excuse keeps you on there. You'll figure out that you're missing nothing, although Facebook in particular will get increasingly desperate and try to hook you in via bullshit emails, etc.
Once you get bad/abusive actors away from you, you'll find that your phone has robust notification and other mechanisms to help you get productive notifications.
It's important though to tightly control the notifications such that you get them only for things you actually care about. E.g., unsubscribe from any & all mailing lists you don't care about.
This is the real problem, not the phone or its apps. You need to eliminate FOMO from your life. You'll be much happier for it.
I don't have a recommendation on how to do that. For me I came to the realization and acceptance that there is always more. More work, more knowledge, more news, more parties, more potential friends, more opportunities, etc. It never ends and it's impossible to know or participate in it all.
If you find yourself having anxiety from that thought you might want to see a psychologist.
If you've got the kind of social life and communication you need, great. And I agree that many people who are in an accidental too-much-FOMO situation probably didn't need all the extra tweets and whatnot flung their way and it's mostly junk. In that case, just turning most of it off is a reasonable idea.
But if you're in a position where the communities you need to be making more of an effort with use fast-moving, presenceless platforms for most of their socialization (Telegram, Twitter, etc.—maybe even, say, Slack?), good luck snagging those limited opportunities to learn which people to get to know better or get a word in on something important without constantly checking everything. (This might be a good argument to not do that for your next community!)
The idea of more closely regulating the feeling so that it's not overdriven and occupying your whole mindset is still relevant, but it takes on quite a different form if you can't actually afford to check out of the fast side; you have to do a trickier balancing act.
“Hey, I like what we're doing, we should set up a group for it to make it easier to keep up with events and stuff.”
“Telegram? That's what everyone else seems to use.” “Yeah, I've already got that on my phone.” “Me too.” “Yup! And I've got this great sticker pack I want to show you…” “Hey, can you show me how to install it?” “Sure, it's easy, just…”
“Awesome, I'll set it up.” (tap, tap, tap)
(Substitute Facebook, or Discord, or whatever else.)
Gradually people just kinda forget to post things anywhere else, because it's convenient and lets them post from their phone and they get all the encouraging responses they wanted there, and so it gradually becomes common knowledge that that's the place. The choice of platform isn't in their community identity, so the default is whatever people gravitate to that doesn't require doing something unusual.
If you don't integrate psychologically with the popular platforms, you're not really choosing to not be part of a specific community, because that's what “popular” means: you're choosing that the set of communities you can explore in the first place is whittled way down, and your membership in any you do find is now precarious. “Pick a community that doesn't do that” not only raises the difficulty at the beginning, but it also doesn't save you later.
If that's not the case, are you really sure that you need to be doing any of that? Especially "get a word in on something important" is awfully similar to https://www.xkcd.com/386/ .
If they're doing it only because they kind of fell into it as baseline socialization shifted, they need to step back and reconsider things because it's not healthy.
Dedicating a time slot in the usual sense is very socially costly if they've gravitated to a presenceless, fast-moving platform, because psychological consensus and topic closure operates more on the perceived speed of communication of the group. If 90% of the other people respond within an hour, and you get there eight hours later, the conversation's moved on, so if everyone else is in the habit of checking their phone every fifteen minutes, there's pressure for you to be too. So, yes, you can “dedicate a time slot” at the end of every pomodoro, if that's what you meant.
This is more true in “channel”-based environments where “new in thread” is inconvenient or unavailable. If you're not careful, you can even be disruptive. Even on slow-moving, old-style Web forums, “necroposting” is considered rude; a chat-like medium with little to no threading support can just lower the threshold for it from weeks to hours if there's enough activity.
For the other part, I'll grant that “get a word in on something important” was badly worded, though I can't think of a better phrase this instant. I was imagining things like “we've changed the meetup location because someone raised a problem, is this okay with everyone or does someone need a ride” or “I'd like comments on which direction I should go with the next part of this piece” or “I'm going to see if some of us can do X together tomorrow, I want three more people, who's with me”. All of these can easily render your participation irrelevant if you show up too late, and “too late” is by default defined by what's usual and convenient, not by abstract considerations of what's good for people's habit formation.
It seems to me that message notifications, at least, do keep me from checking my phone.
Needless to say, I cut my losses with that community.
Others have mentioned this is a separate issue from the smartphone (although smartphones to make it easier for us to enable FOMO).
In my experience (most, if not all) FOMO disappeared in my early thirties and once I gained a more settled life. And while I do still check HN, twitter-lists daily (usually more than once a day when commuting, or having a break) I have noticed how on a busy day (or a weekend day), I completely forget about that.
Maybe age, and changes in lifestyle have been most responsible for this, but I also find that I'm less impressed by new stuff now than I used to be, so I'm much less likely to feel that I'm missing something out.
So there are more times I can just leave it either on a charger or somewhere in the house and not worry about where it is exactly. Until I get an MMS or a phone call.
It's not a perfect solution, but I find part of the process of being less involved with my phone is acceptance of the fact that I might not be able to be able to address every need at every moment and that's ok.
Instead I made my smartphone much dumber, and it isn't really distracting now. But, I'm hoping a future watch os will have a better third party app development framework and allow it to be truly phone independent. I bought the watch hoping for phone independence.
* I had to print out directions to get to new places, which had me learn my way around.
* People were much less flaky since they couldn't text me at the last minute to cancel our plans.
* I no longer had a crutch in difficult social situations, which helped me actually get to know strangers and form new relationships.
I might still use it as a GPS when traveling, but I otherwise can't see why it's necessary for people/machines to be able to steal your attention at a moment's notice.
Of course, this isn't do-able for a lot of people, as their work/life depends on it. And it's possible to reap the above benefits without going fully phone-less. But for those interested, it's not as bad as it seems to drop the phone altogether.
Scenario 1: housewarming party 3 weeks away. My phoneless friend doesn't get the Facebook invite used to corrall the other 30 people coming. She also doesn't get the group FB message (nobody uses group SMS anymore in my friend group). A fluke of busyness means I don't see her for those 3 weeks and she thus misses the party.
Scenario 2: my roommate and I just got home from work, and decide to go out. We text phoneless friend and other friend. Other friend shows up. Three hours later we close our tabs, and get a text from phoneless friend. "I just saw this!! Are you guys still out??"
It's a core value of mine that people should be allowed to live however the hell they very well please as long as it doesn't hurt others, but I genuinely feel like without a minimum level of connectedness (at the very least relatively easy access via SMS), they're kinda hurting themselves. As close as a friend as they may be, if the barrier to entry to hanging out with them is providing them step by step directions to the bar we're at as well as making sure all plans are 48 hours ahead and by the way I have to trade voicemails to even inform them... Eeeh...
Standard replies to this kind of post:
>If lack of connectedness is an obstacle to people hanging out with you, they weren't worth your time / that good of friends anyway.
I counter with the idea mass culture movements require participation to, well, participate. My bestest friend ever doesn't have to participate to remain in that state, sure, but I guess if all you want in life is a tiny circle of three of your besties then power to you.
> People were more genuine and less flaky before cellphones
I lived before and after cellphones and in my experience, people were just as flaky back then, it just didn't seem that way because we were all hanging out less. Either way, cut flaky people out o your life homey. It's not as big of a deal to flake out of impromptu Wednesday trivia night at a random bar, only possible at the drop of the hat as my friends like to do, with cellphones. It also allows us to avoid the "fuck I don't wanna be here, normally I do but today was exhausting" aspect of cyclical plans (say regular DND night) because we can all communicate those feelings early and quickly make new plans with the smaller group.
One nice thing about that is there's no one older than us already using Facebook. Everything that needs to be organized is done through email, which is boring to some, but at least everyone has it.
At the start of the school year I got a few friends to switch over to Telegram (for group chats). I would have prefered something end to end encrypted and decentralized, but at least it's not Facebook Messenger. Some people do use Instagram (Facebook-for-Pictures) and Snapchat, but it's not anywhere near universal.
So I'm set on my phone with only my self hosted email and Telegram. Not sure how I'm going to deal with things after school, but hopefully people switch off Facebook by then.
I'll never force anyone to get a phone, smartphone, use texts, or whatever, but for the people who are that disconnected, well, they add a friction to social interaction that ends up excluding them.
At the end of the day they're outside my own set of social norms, which now, in 2018, include "must be relatively easy to connect with".
Times have changed.
I didn't drop off the map with my friends, and I made a few friends that I otherwise never would have met. I still had a PC, so it's not like I couldn't be contacted. Most people that I hang out with use Discord/Telegram, anyways. If your friends all use SMS/MMS/FB to communicate, then you probably can't do it.
I think the key is to make it clear that you -do- want to be invited to things. People will let you know. It's also a plus to be a fun person to hang out with, and don't talk about how great it is to not have a phone.
I wouldn't miss out on scenario 2, because my phone notifies me of texts and calls (and nothing else).
I dislike the 1st scenario just off the basis of giving FB so much credit, friends should reach out via traditional methods that most of us have like SMS. Then you're not benefiting Facebook Corp so much by designing your life around it. Just distasteful, in my view. It also allows people to communicate & live a modern life with just a basic phone, which should be more than enough.
- installed uBlock Origin (also First Party Isolation and HTTPS Everywhere),
- disabled JavaScript via about:config javascript.enabled,
- and added .css| rule to uBlock Origin (I would still like to disable CSS entirely, this only half works).
Basically I would like to have "links2 -g" [0] for Android. There is also an extension for Firefox to automatically enable reader mode [1]. It waits for additional WebExtensions API. I want to omit CSS, because of:
- too small or too big font size,
- no proper text wrapping,
- wrong contrast, too big margins,
- position:fixed bars that are so trendy right now.
Basically I want to bail out of modern web. However I would probably use modern web apps on proper browser when I want an app, but just not when I want to read some information.
I know that there are sites with good content that will be broken because of it. But it will be only a minor collateral damage.
I added to my long todo-list a modern pure HTML browser for Android and Linux. What would also help is a different search engine. Of course I also have one in my todo-list. A search engine that would _not_ index ad serving sites. Also as an option it could not show JavaScript enabled sites.
I know about Million Short, but it does not cut it.
Such a pair of a browser and a search engine is, or rather will be, my answer.
Also it's sad a smartphone with it's array of sensors is not a proper tricorder...
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22links2+-g%22&tbm=isch
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/automatic-rea...
https://surf.suckless.org/
It's webkit, not firefox-based, but works great with tiling windowmanagers.
I would just like to have the target experience (and lightness) out of the box, but on all platforms.
trickle -s -t 1 -d 16 -u 8 netsurf-gtk
You'll enjoy the delays.
Links may be in Termux, but it's not the graphical one. But I will check it out.