Bo Burnham put it succinctly, although he was talking about children on apps: "When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids."
The smartphone is a perverted implementation of the goal that people use to fantasize about back in the early days of the computer revolution: a personal terminal to the world of audio, text, and video information stored in databases across all of humanity. It's of course worth talking about how they compel us to certain behaviors via push notifications, dark patterns, nasty design, etc. but also--obviously we'd be addicted to personal terminals that let us access all the publicly available digitized information in the history of the world.
>Bo Burnham put it succinctly, although he was talking about children on apps: "When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids."
Ok but is the issue the information, or is the issue the presentation?
I am an outlier, but I used to cure insomnia with excessive reading. I reckon if I had no other outlet, I would probably choose information over sleep.
But we know that the 5 websites put a lot of energy into making them extremely desirable to cruise for hours, regardless of content. It feels like everyone has my unique problem, but its not really "information" they are after, its this one giant never ending pit of despair and bullying.
>"When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids."
But when they power the device on, instead of reading all the information ever published in the history of the world, they watch vacuous tiktok videos where losers talk in the most annoying voices possible TAP LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE.
This should be obvious, I suppose. Gluttons aren't eating pounds of filet mignon and bags of truffles, they're chowing down on pseudo-manufactured crunchythings that are only distantly related to food.
> When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids
They are not tired enough if they choose to use their smartphone, that's an education issue.
Children are taught the value of a good night of sleep, they are taught by having fulfilling daily lives and exhausting. If you let them be like a plant, yeah they will be just as dumb as a plant.
"Short of powering off or walking away, what can we do to manage this dependency? We can access device settings and activate only those features we truly require, adjusting them now and again as our habits and lifestyles change."
I think this is how some people feel about the dating apps. They promise love, affection, and future, but only manipulate our emotions.
As someone who actively avoids political rage bait, was trained in rhetoric, was raised by public persuasion oriented public speakers.
The idea that the most resonant rage bait that exists at any given moment is instantly, algorithmically, propagated to our public officials and the politically engaged is insane.
All this while culture has now been trained to blindly celebrate bias, has been inculcated with a learned helplessness toward bias, have become poisoned against the idea that anyone has the goal of accuracy or objectivity and really does just wants accurate models of the world.
Notice under “Managing dependency”, the focus is exclusively on technological solutions.
There is no technological solution to this. We have the equivalent of unlimited crack in everyone’s pocket 24/7 with no possible oversight over its use and no way to reel it back in. The genie has been out of the bottle for a while now.
Just like gluttony, there is no solution, only management strategies and they’re all very human.
Sensible education about these things starting at K1. Social and outreach programs for addicts. Etc
It is not like 'unlimited crack' because that is a chemically addictive substance that bypasses any need for stimuli enjoyment and directly increases wanting. Multi-media screens do not and cannot do this. Can we agree on that? Science does. At the very least they have to initially be intrinsically rewarding. They are a very different kind of stimuli and pretending they are chemical drugs that immediately bypass perception and directly cause wanting is dangerous misinformation. I am not saying people don't have problems. But this is not at all an addiction like chemical addictions. Applying chemical addiction paradigms will lead to the same calls for use of government violence in regulation. An outcome far more damaging than the situation.
Of course there is, even if it's not for everyone. You can abandon the profit-seeking duopoly and embrace GNU/Linux on smartphones. No tracking, no invasive apps or notifications. Works for me (except HN).
I find it helps to leave the phone at home when I'm running errands. It helps that I work from home so I can mostly just leave it in my bedroom all day.
But solutions?
Here's my take, will gladly take input (Android):
Two profiles: profile 1 has no notifications, reading apps (ebooks) and shouldn't have a browser (mine does and shouldn't); profile 2 has all apps, inclusively all of profile 1 apps. Idea: have an "offline" phone. Good for battery. Whenever I need IoT or something else, I shrug and change profile.
Use desktop apps/desktop browser: should work. Doesn't much. When I'm on laptop I tend to do terminal stuff, social apps feel like wasting time, do it fast and multitasking mode. Multitasking is not really what I want to train my attention span. Sometimes I turn on notifications but put system notifications in DnD so I can check what's notificated every half an hour or so.
Use Waydroid to have social apps: should work, never worked.
Special profiles on social apps: my current social apps have only institutional accounts being followed. Some decorum is kept, and with it, sanity. Exceptions: Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Linkedin, where I follow regular people. But I really should implement something similar for my LinkedIn account.
Alternate sites/apps/mode of usage: use WhatsApp/Telegram to interact, say hi to some people online on Facebook Messenger, install Discourse; on group chats avoid links or include a short summary written by an human of why people should open your link and a quick "what's on the link" description.
These are my takes to extract some humanness from my machine mobile phone.
If this works for you, then great, do it as long as it works. But for me this will never work. What actually has worked though, is being in an enjoyable environment (surrounded by friends and family, lab / hobby equipment, quality books and poetry, or just spending a couple of hours outside) that can grab my attention better than those social media apps. Also, I regularly delete and recreate my social media accounts.
Additionally, a very effective way of becoming less attached to the phone is to occasionally "forget" to bring it out with you, but that only works if you for example don't need maps or aren't expected to take a phone call. The key-point here is the irregularity, because then over time you will get used to replacing smartphone usage with some other joyful (or idle) activities instead of just moving the dopamine rush hour around. Furthermore I believe that embracing boredom is a must, and I just accept that sometimes I will be bored with nothing to do for a couple of hours and that's when I get most creative.
I always feel conflicted when I see this problem phrased as "smartphones". I understand why but at the same time I wonder how much, if any, it detracts from solving the actual problems.
The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even social media, could be amazing technologies. We use them poorly, but that's a different issue in of itself. It is their utility that is a big part of why they won't go away. But that also makes them ripe for abuse. Anything with value will be such a target. So even though I know "smartphones" is a shorthand for "surveillance capitalism and 'engagement based' social media", I do worry that it abstracts the problems too much, making it just seem like by getting rid of our smart phones we could fix everything.
We've been using this tactic for years and tbh, I don't think it has had any meaningful success. Maybe it is time to try a different approach? I think the average person can handle a little nuance. And by breaking it down a little more we might be better at addressing the real issues. No one wants to give up the GPS in their pocket, but in 2025 do we really need that data to leave our device (except when explicitly sharing with someone like friends and family)? We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[0] To anyone who works on feed ranking systems and engagement:
I'm genuinely curious, are you seeking to better measure engagement and look at ways to optimize different kinds of engagement? From the outside it seems like only the lazy measurements are being used, and let's be honest, arguing on the internet generates more comments and misinformation as well. Any bad comment that gets lots of responses falls down the ranking (top viewing), only to end up being replaced with similar comments which causes the process to repeat. Brandolini's law, right?
But what are the issues? Is sentiment analysis just not good enough? Is a lack of desire? Momentum?
I would seriously like to understand. Feel free to respond with an anonymous account. And please don't downvote responses, even if you disagree. Maybe we all can have an understanding that we can use votes to express our interest in the conversation (upvoting honest but disagreeable responses, downvoting quips and "mic drops") rather than our to express our agreement with a particular comment? We get to decide what votes mean, right?
[1] Follow-up
Can we at least tone down notifications? It is absolutely insane how complicated it is getting. I need to leave my bank notifications on to ensure I get notified of a fraudulent charge but that same notification system is being used to advertise to me savings bonds and referral bonuses. Same thing happens to emails. Let's be honest here, too many false alarms makes people ignore true alarms. Alarm fatigue is a real thing. If you don't believe me, watch what people do with a faulty smoke detector in an apartment. They just remove it!
Sometimes I wonder if I’m using my phone, or if it’s using me.
I know things like notifications and vibrations are designed to grab my attention, but the phone always seems to know exactly when I’m at my weakest.
The moment I feel even a little bored or empty, my finger just taps open that familiar app before I even realize it.
Have any of you found ways to break out of this cycle of being led around by your phone?
> Sometimes I wonder if I’m using my phone, or if it’s using me.
It's always both. The phone is a doorway. On one side is you trying to exploit the resources on the other side. On the other side is the rest of the world, trying to exploit you.
Yes and my comment is just relaying what professionals have to say about the phenomenon:
Bottom line up front: the way out is to set aside some time for a menial task that isn't mentally taxing.
Screens are a particularly effective means of avoiding processing one's emotions. Those, of course, don't go away by themselves so if you don't take time to deal with them, you create a dependency.
The moment before going to sleep is typically when piled up emotions and intrusive thoughts return, so that's also when the temptation to set them aside is the greatest.
Resisting that temptation, but giving in to it eventually is dangerous, because next time the signal is stronger.
Let's be clear. It is not the actual smartphones that do this; machines are designed and programmed by humans. Companies can choose to use technology to manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes, and many do choose just that, often for financial gain.
I don't understand how having faceid, a touchscreen, vibration, gps would manipulate my emotions.
Makes no sense.
Developers using these features to build app that makes you addicted ? Yes. But these features in itself are not manipulatives or triggering reflexes.
I just don't understand the author reasoning...
I don't use addictive social media on my phone and when I receive notification, my phone makes a sound, it vibrates and yet I don't feel urged to look at it.
I actively dislike my phone. It's an entirely to expensive platform that I "need" to own, to interact with certain parts of society. The screen is to small to be useful for media consumption, without making me sick. It's also to small to be useful as a web browser, except in an emergency.
It is great to have GPS and mobile payments, and Uber if you're in the US as it's pretty much impossible to locate a regular taxi. Other than that it's ... for making phone calls, texting is done better view a desktop app, though I need the smartphone to activate the account (Signal).
Claiming that the phone is manipulating is a bit of a stretch. One roundabout why I can see the phone manufacturers being complicit is in pushing what a phone can and should do. If you remove the manipulating apps, then you end up with people replacing their phone way less frequently. E.g. the iPhone 7 is still a good phone, it has texting (and iMessage or Signal), calling, security updates, notes and updated maps. It probably sucks at running Instagram and TikTok (though I'd assume it plays videos just fine). Apple just isn't really going to make a ton of that original sale anymore.
> I don't use addictive social media on my phone and when I receive notification, my phone makes a sound, it vibrates and yet I don't feel urged to look at it.
the hysterical mob has decided it is literal crack rocks and EVERYONE ELSE cannot be trusted to not get hopelessly addicted to it, however they can use social media to of course decry its evils
> sharing biometric data through pre-loaded health and wellness apps.
I've been thinking about finally getting a smartwatch to keep tabs on my sleep and encourage me to do more exercise, like jogging for a certain amount of time or something. Suggestions for privacy respecting, ideally FOSS solutions?
I've switched to a CAT S22 Android builder's flip phone, and my usage has dropped significantly. The screen is so small and fiddly that it makes me feel sick using it for extended periods - exactly what you want from an adictive substance like a smart phone. Having to physically open it to use it, and then waiting 5 seconds before it lights up, creates a psychic barrier to just 'quickly checking for updates'. The camera is like an early 2000s cheap digicam - just about good enough for documenting things but it hardly beckons you to want to photograph your life constantly for social media. It's a PITA to use and that's why it's perfect for everyday use.
Everything we interact with has an emotional impact. And smart phones trigger our reflexes because they are literally tools for communication.
> Most of these features were developed decades ago for other uses. GPS was created by the U.S. military in the early 1970s, then was adopted by hikers and sailors to both navigate and to allow others to locate them if necessary.
> Vibration alerts were created for pagers in the late 1970s for professionals — from hospital staff to travelling salespeople — to notify them of an important phone call.
> Sound alerts became more widespread with Tamagotchi and other 1990s digital pets. Those toys are especially significant when discussing today’s psychological dependency on portable devices.
To me, smartphones are a godsent. I use mine to communicate, get public transport information, have text read to me, describe pictures, get a GPS fix and help me navigate the city as a pedestrian, use devices where I wouldn't be able to read the displays, and so many other things I can't even list right now. I even met my partner of 14 years via Messenger. I occasionally scroll through facebook to find events I might go to, and amuse myself over comments on various divisive and not so diviseve posts. I am blind. My life would be clearly less fun without them. Tools are just that, tools. What you make of them is your call.
Some say it's not the phone, it's the app a company makes.
So is it the company that is bad?
Company products and services are a result of the system of regulations. The market is a playground where companies survive, thrive, and die, always trying to maximize total future profit, which is dictated by the shape of what is allowed and what things humans will pay for.
The cause of "bad stuff" like "addiction" to a legal product/service is human nature. If a human will pay for something that is legal, there will be a market for it.
In other words: it's not the company, it's the system.
That's like saying we should ban knife because it could kill people. Please. Every adult can make an informed choice on what "manipulates" them. If they can't, if they prefer convenience over critical thinking, then you don't stand a chance and will be exploited by the capitalistic overlords.
> also an issue of privacy
Welcome to the age of obsessive and relentless mass surveillance. Want privacy? Impossible unless you have discipline and patience to not give in to the digital overlords
42 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 69.5 ms ] threadThe smartphone is a perverted implementation of the goal that people use to fantasize about back in the early days of the computer revolution: a personal terminal to the world of audio, text, and video information stored in databases across all of humanity. It's of course worth talking about how they compel us to certain behaviors via push notifications, dark patterns, nasty design, etc. but also--obviously we'd be addicted to personal terminals that let us access all the publicly available digitized information in the history of the world.
Ok but is the issue the information, or is the issue the presentation?
I am an outlier, but I used to cure insomnia with excessive reading. I reckon if I had no other outlet, I would probably choose information over sleep.
But we know that the 5 websites put a lot of energy into making them extremely desirable to cruise for hours, regardless of content. It feels like everyone has my unique problem, but its not really "information" they are after, its this one giant never ending pit of despair and bullying.
But when they power the device on, instead of reading all the information ever published in the history of the world, they watch vacuous tiktok videos where losers talk in the most annoying voices possible TAP LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE.
This should be obvious, I suppose. Gluttons aren't eating pounds of filet mignon and bags of truffles, they're chowing down on pseudo-manufactured crunchythings that are only distantly related to food.
They are not tired enough if they choose to use their smartphone, that's an education issue.
Children are taught the value of a good night of sleep, they are taught by having fulfilling daily lives and exhausting. If you let them be like a plant, yeah they will be just as dumb as a plant.
I think this is how some people feel about the dating apps. They promise love, affection, and future, but only manipulate our emotions.
The idea that the most resonant rage bait that exists at any given moment is instantly, algorithmically, propagated to our public officials and the politically engaged is insane.
All this while culture has now been trained to blindly celebrate bias, has been inculcated with a learned helplessness toward bias, have become poisoned against the idea that anyone has the goal of accuracy or objectivity and really does just wants accurate models of the world.
We are lighting ourselves on fire.
There is no technological solution to this. We have the equivalent of unlimited crack in everyone’s pocket 24/7 with no possible oversight over its use and no way to reel it back in. The genie has been out of the bottle for a while now.
Just like gluttony, there is no solution, only management strategies and they’re all very human.
Sensible education about these things starting at K1. Social and outreach programs for addicts. Etc
i think you might be slightly overreacting there bud. and smartphones dont connect to a different internet, youre on social media right now.
Of course there is, even if it's not for everyone. You can abandon the profit-seeking duopoly and embrace GNU/Linux on smartphones. No tracking, no invasive apps or notifications. Works for me (except HN).
We could all stop any time we want, but we don't. :(
Two profiles: profile 1 has no notifications, reading apps (ebooks) and shouldn't have a browser (mine does and shouldn't); profile 2 has all apps, inclusively all of profile 1 apps. Idea: have an "offline" phone. Good for battery. Whenever I need IoT or something else, I shrug and change profile.
Use desktop apps/desktop browser: should work. Doesn't much. When I'm on laptop I tend to do terminal stuff, social apps feel like wasting time, do it fast and multitasking mode. Multitasking is not really what I want to train my attention span. Sometimes I turn on notifications but put system notifications in DnD so I can check what's notificated every half an hour or so.
Use Waydroid to have social apps: should work, never worked.
Special profiles on social apps: my current social apps have only institutional accounts being followed. Some decorum is kept, and with it, sanity. Exceptions: Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Linkedin, where I follow regular people. But I really should implement something similar for my LinkedIn account.
Alternate sites/apps/mode of usage: use WhatsApp/Telegram to interact, say hi to some people online on Facebook Messenger, install Discourse; on group chats avoid links or include a short summary written by an human of why people should open your link and a quick "what's on the link" description.
These are my takes to extract some humanness from my machine mobile phone.
Additionally, a very effective way of becoming less attached to the phone is to occasionally "forget" to bring it out with you, but that only works if you for example don't need maps or aren't expected to take a phone call. The key-point here is the irregularity, because then over time you will get used to replacing smartphone usage with some other joyful (or idle) activities instead of just moving the dopamine rush hour around. Furthermore I believe that embracing boredom is a must, and I just accept that sometimes I will be bored with nothing to do for a couple of hours and that's when I get most creative.
Mode 1: I'm bored, show me something interesting, all notifications are available
Mode 2: I want to do something specific, don't show me anything but a tool for selecting an app / task (list of apps, search box, whatever).
The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even social media, could be amazing technologies. We use them poorly, but that's a different issue in of itself. It is their utility that is a big part of why they won't go away. But that also makes them ripe for abuse. Anything with value will be such a target. So even though I know "smartphones" is a shorthand for "surveillance capitalism and 'engagement based' social media", I do worry that it abstracts the problems too much, making it just seem like by getting rid of our smart phones we could fix everything.
We've been using this tactic for years and tbh, I don't think it has had any meaningful success. Maybe it is time to try a different approach? I think the average person can handle a little nuance. And by breaking it down a little more we might be better at addressing the real issues. No one wants to give up the GPS in their pocket, but in 2025 do we really need that data to leave our device (except when explicitly sharing with someone like friends and family)? We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[0] To anyone who works on feed ranking systems and engagement:
I'm genuinely curious, are you seeking to better measure engagement and look at ways to optimize different kinds of engagement? From the outside it seems like only the lazy measurements are being used, and let's be honest, arguing on the internet generates more comments and misinformation as well. Any bad comment that gets lots of responses falls down the ranking (top viewing), only to end up being replaced with similar comments which causes the process to repeat. Brandolini's law, right?
But what are the issues? Is sentiment analysis just not good enough? Is a lack of desire? Momentum?
I would seriously like to understand. Feel free to respond with an anonymous account. And please don't downvote responses, even if you disagree. Maybe we all can have an understanding that we can use votes to express our interest in the conversation (upvoting honest but disagreeable responses, downvoting quips and "mic drops") rather than our to express our agreement with a particular comment? We get to decide what votes mean, right?
[1] Follow-up
Can we at least tone down notifications? It is absolutely insane how complicated it is getting. I need to leave my bank notifications on to ensure I get notified of a fraudulent charge but that same notification system is being used to advertise to me savings bonds and referral bonuses. Same thing happens to emails. Let's be honest here, too many false alarms makes people ignore true alarms. Alarm fatigue is a real thing. If you don't believe me, watch what people do with a faulty smoke detector in an apartment. They just remove it!
It's always both. The phone is a doorway. On one side is you trying to exploit the resources on the other side. On the other side is the rest of the world, trying to exploit you.
Bottom line up front: the way out is to set aside some time for a menial task that isn't mentally taxing.
Screens are a particularly effective means of avoiding processing one's emotions. Those, of course, don't go away by themselves so if you don't take time to deal with them, you create a dependency.
The moment before going to sleep is typically when piled up emotions and intrusive thoughts return, so that's also when the temptation to set them aside is the greatest.
Resisting that temptation, but giving in to it eventually is dangerous, because next time the signal is stronger.
Makes no sense.
Developers using these features to build app that makes you addicted ? Yes. But these features in itself are not manipulatives or triggering reflexes.
I just don't understand the author reasoning...
I don't use addictive social media on my phone and when I receive notification, my phone makes a sound, it vibrates and yet I don't feel urged to look at it.
It is great to have GPS and mobile payments, and Uber if you're in the US as it's pretty much impossible to locate a regular taxi. Other than that it's ... for making phone calls, texting is done better view a desktop app, though I need the smartphone to activate the account (Signal).
Claiming that the phone is manipulating is a bit of a stretch. One roundabout why I can see the phone manufacturers being complicit is in pushing what a phone can and should do. If you remove the manipulating apps, then you end up with people replacing their phone way less frequently. E.g. the iPhone 7 is still a good phone, it has texting (and iMessage or Signal), calling, security updates, notes and updated maps. It probably sucks at running Instagram and TikTok (though I'd assume it plays videos just fine). Apple just isn't really going to make a ton of that original sale anymore.
the hysterical mob has decided it is literal crack rocks and EVERYONE ELSE cannot be trusted to not get hopelessly addicted to it, however they can use social media to of course decry its evils
I've been thinking about finally getting a smartwatch to keep tabs on my sleep and encourage me to do more exercise, like jogging for a certain amount of time or something. Suggestions for privacy respecting, ideally FOSS solutions?
Everything we interact with has an emotional impact. And smart phones trigger our reflexes because they are literally tools for communication.
> Most of these features were developed decades ago for other uses. GPS was created by the U.S. military in the early 1970s, then was adopted by hikers and sailors to both navigate and to allow others to locate them if necessary.
> Vibration alerts were created for pagers in the late 1970s for professionals — from hospital staff to travelling salespeople — to notify them of an important phone call.
> Sound alerts became more widespread with Tamagotchi and other 1990s digital pets. Those toys are especially significant when discussing today’s psychological dependency on portable devices.
Seriously???
So is it the company that is bad?
Company products and services are a result of the system of regulations. The market is a playground where companies survive, thrive, and die, always trying to maximize total future profit, which is dictated by the shape of what is allowed and what things humans will pay for.
The cause of "bad stuff" like "addiction" to a legal product/service is human nature. If a human will pay for something that is legal, there will be a market for it.
In other words: it's not the company, it's the system.
Lol. What a way to steer understanding from the cause of this phenomenon.
Smartphone is merely a tool used by organisations for achieving own most often financial goals.
It's like to say "TV manipulate people's emotions" while talking about tv advertisement industry.
We now know the causes are instagram/tiktok or may be even the new llms even though less likely. Why not just say that?
> also an issue of privacy
Welcome to the age of obsessive and relentless mass surveillance. Want privacy? Impossible unless you have discipline and patience to not give in to the digital overlords