Having worked on a product for 3 years that attempts to target this market I can tell you the sad reality, is that nobody really cares. Sure, there are clickbait headlines and companies/parents will feign interest, but when it comes to actually paying for a product or making any tangible change to usage habits, our numbers prove that nobody even tries.
For full disclosure our product turns the Internet off until they complete goals like studying, completing quizzes, commiting to GitHub, etc.
Our first launch was a DNS only solution which we assumed lacked usage because people had to change their DNS address to one we spun up for them. It lacked usage and we assumed it was because it was "too technical" for parents.
Next we create an iOS app that worked out of the box as a VPN without any setup. We don't even ask the users to register in any way or pay anything.
Lastly we created a Chrome extension because it's the easiest way for tons of kids with Chromebooks to use.
Long story short, after multiple re-launches and trying to get feedback the overall result is that it's an almost impossible task to get parents or kids to change their habits, even if they "want" to. They will make up excuses and quit nearly instantly.
I cut myself off time to time in various ways. I canceled home internet for a few months one time, another I switched to a flip phone for a month. I'll frequently remove Chrome from my phone. I have tried the greyscale thing many times. Etc.
What makes all this Hard is the plethora of legitimate use. When I canceled home internet, I was unable to log in to work from home (five minutes a day in the evenings helps keep the compute cluster rolling). When I switched to a flip phone I started cooking less- the smartphone had made planning meals & shopping easier. When I remove Chrome, inevitably a week or two later I'm on the road and want to book a hotel or find a campground or check on road construction. When I switch my phone to greyscale, weather charts & maps become impossible to read.
Personally, if I was working on code & my goalposts were a commit to GitHub- well, without access to stackoverflow I might never be able to finish.
All that said, thank you for your perspective. It is not hard to believe many people do not actually want to change.
I looked up a bunch of similar products about 5 years ago. Just last month, I looked them up again, and found that many don't exist anymore.
It's definitely a tough market. I suspect that it will be the larger corporations with enough revenue that can release such products into the market - and probably even release them as free features of an existing suite of products (e.g. iOS with Downtime, Disney's Circle[1], etc), as opposed to a standalone product.
Maybe your product worked too well, and people don't actually want to change their behavior. They just feel like they should. Same with eating right or exercising.
I've been one of those people who have had the unfortunate luck to have a computer with parental- or time controls. It pretty much only shifted my screen usage to other devices e.g. TV and got me into cybersec because I wanted a way around those restrictions.
It is difficult to get people that are stuck, and with blocks making them stuck, to change behaviour; this is as much as a human feature - that serves a purpose - as it is a bug/problem. For people to change they must believe and trust everything relating to that change - they must trust at least a little more than they distrust, and/or the reward can help outweigh the distrust and lack of motivation/desire.
I am fortunate enough to run a lifestyle business in this space. I market it as personal productivity software that lets you pick what to block and for how long, then prevents you from changing the settings until the time is reached.
It's freemium and only a one time payment for pro (ie - not investor friendly) but I really enjoy being able to work on improving it every day. I sometimes get nice emails from people which helps motivate me more.
My app is called Cold Turkey (https://getcoldturkey.com). It's for Windows and macOS only, because of the security restrictions on smart phones. It uses browser extensions (with native messaging) to do the blocking, but if you disable the extensions during a block, Cold Turkey closes your browsers until you re-enable them.
Maybe you are just too early. I think I actually know your product and I bookmarked it with the intent of setting it up. The too technical part was kind of true despite me taking on many technical challenges of this nature - Bitcoin in 2011 being one of them. However, the friction here versus the age of my kids requirement didn't line up - but I expect it will in about 3 years when they are a little older. Maybe just keep the wheels turning for a fews years.
Isn't is partially an issue of oversaturation? If I search for an app/website blocker, I'll find lots of different, free solutions. (Both apps and browser plugins) I'm using the same ones for a few years now. If anyone new joins that segment, how would they get popular?
How many businesses can I remember around addictions? What s the most famous anti-TV addiction company? Anti-cigarettes? Anti-sex addiction? If it's none, then the opportunity is not underappreciated.
Making an anti-addiction product is by its nature the opposite of a sellable product. And the people who have the frontal lobe to willingly go against their addiction, have already solved their problem.
In my own experience struggling with addiction I've found that it is a symptom rather than a cause. Once you craft a life that is actually stimulating the tech loses its hold over you pretty quickly, if not instantly (for example when you go on a weekend outing in nature and completely forget your phone). Of course, the time and energy wasted due to the dysfunctional behavior presents a chicken-and-egg roadblock against making this happen.
I recall the studies showing the difference between Vietnam veterans who got hooked on dope and those who didn't, as well as Bruce K. Alexander's Rat Park experiments.
The other thing I've learned is that control or blocking tools can be self-defeating, since they transform fighting the addiction into a perpetually unfinished task ("It's been Y time since I did X") that naturally remains to the forefront of your brain and leaves you vulnerable if you end up in an environment without those restrictions. It's ultimately easier to address the underlying causes of trying to escape through technology.
This is what I've realized about myself and addition. I get into new things fast and tend to over commit or over indulge early on and once I realize it pull back. I've got it under control now because I realized my excessive drinking or drug usage was in large part because I was bored.
Shit television or movies are much more entertaining when drunk or high. Social engagements that are not mentally stimulating to me are much more bearable when in an altered state.
I picked up a few hobbies that I really enjoy and I no longer feel the need to hit the weed vape pen 5 times on my walk home from work. I paint, do yoga multiple times a week, read a lot, and I'm more selective about the social events I go to because I've got other things I can occupy my time with.
I realize I'm just one data point but I think a lot of people use their vices to stave off boredom and make a life that is not all that interesting, interesting.
Tech addition is a bit different because it's hard to unplug entirely because many of us need to use screens for work. Removing all the social media apps from my phone and limiting my screen time at home has been huge for my ADHD brain. I don't have to have my phone at my side constantly anymore. I find myself enjoying experiences instead of trying to bottle them up for presentation on an app.
Maybe I sound a bit anti-tech but I believe a lot of people have gone too far down the rabbit hole and haven't realized it yet.
I'm a gamer and about as attached to tech as you can be without actually having mental issues over it.
My wife and I recently bought a house and I've been finding that I'd rather spend time fixing it up than playing games or doing other stuff with electronics much of the time.
That doesn't mean that I've quit wholesale, though. I eventually get physically or mentally tired and want to just relax, and it's back to the games I go.
My point is that tech isn't what drives my life, it's just one of the things that I enjoy. And actually improving our house has proven even more enjoyable.
I don't think the "solution" for "tech addiction" (as most people see it) is limiting phone time or focusing on the tech at all. Instead, the solution is for people to find a hobby that doesn't require an internet/cable connection and enjoy that instead.
And if they don't, it doesn't bother me a bit. People can do what they want, so long as it doesn't harm others.
People who have an actual "addiction" should seek professional help, though. Not some random guy that's making a startup, but someone with an actual degree in a profession that can help with mental issues.
A month or so ago, I took a two week trip across France and Spain, it was one of the most lovely experiences of my life, staying in great places, eating amazing food, etc. It was honestly about as wonderful and stimulating of an experience as I've ever had.
About halfway through it I started to realize that I was still attached to my phone. I was sitting on trains reflexively checking Twitter for the disastrous updates in American politics instead of looking out the window at the Pyrenees, or in a museum constantly reaching for my pocket.
In my personal story I took drastic action. I added parental controls to the phone, deleted some apps, made a commitment to keep the phone out of the bedroom, and other stuff, and have noticed a drastic improvement in mental health.
I don't discount your experiences, they likely work for you and I believe you. Just like how many people can go into bars without becoming alcoholics, but there are other people who need to take affirmative steps towards abstinence, and avoid certain people places and things, as they say.
But that's the nature of an addictive cycle. Not sure it actually in fact matters how great your life is, once you've acquired that addiction it's a habit that requires being affirmatively broken.
There are definitely nuggets of truth to what you say, but I can say first hand that often the biggest challenge (after admitting your flaws, of course) in battling addiction is determining what exactly it is that I am missing. If things are going well in my life generally (marriage, work, friends, spiritually, etc) and yet I still feel the pull to this coping mechanism, why is that?! I don’t have any latent trauma that I’m aware of either. It can be utterly demoralizing and confusing to continually fail for seemingly no reason at all.
A lot of the time, though, we have to quit dysfunctional behavior before we can identify what functional behavior looks like.
I totally agree with you that there is a chicken and egg problem. My typical advice for folks is to quit the behavior completely: you're correct in identifying how blocking tools cause their own problems and just mimic the same addictive behavior.
Then, at that point, it's going to be necessary to find some other behavior, but that's often a lot easier once you've got to do something... you just have to make sure that the things you choose to do are good.
Like, I gave up my codependent relationship with my ex wife, and that made it possible to give up drinking, but I still have to play a shit-ton of scales on guitar and piano and about an hour of yoga or I get weird.
Or I quit facebook, but now I do a a daily run of Kahn academy and working on electronics projects; that's a symptom, but it's a symptom that I enjoy.
A lot of "tech" stuff is kind of like a bottomless bag of potato chips. If you have nothing else to eat, you can keep reaching for another potato chip and never really feel satisfied. Slapping your own hand won't really fix the problem, but Thanksgiving dinner will have you groaning at the thought of trying to eat another potato chip.
Addiction seems to fill emotional voids like unresolved trauma, depression, ennui, unfulfilled ambition and so on. I think much like a bad habit, an addiction needs to be replaced by something else that fills the gap but is positive instead (for example exercise, working, learning, or sports) otherwise the gap is still there and will exert continued pressure to return to the addiction. That or (where possible) removing the gap entirely by working through the root emotional cause.
"I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to deliver electricity to its brain’s ventral tegmental area, which stimulates its nucleus accumbens to release dopamine, which feels…ever so good."
The idea that you can “fix” or “solve” software addiction with more software is silly to me.
First, This requires users to setup this software. Then, there is nothing stopping them from working around or disabling it at anytime. If the software can’t be disabled then the user will switch to another product.
If someone is really trying to curtail their software addiction, actual dedication will be required, not just the activation of some tool that they can easily disable with a few taps.
And because these tools will likely not work for the majority of people, Apple and Google have every incentive to incorporate them into their operating systems and gobble up the market share (which they are already doing in their latest operating systems).
A more traditional and therapeutic approach to the problem makes more sense to me, though it won’t scale well and the market doesn’t seem very big
We used to have far more focus rooms - they were called offices.
Tech is a convenient scapegoat for environments unconducive to focus and lack of interest in the task. It can also help with emotional state management which is useful over just banging your head against the wall. One use I find for HN is that it is usually pretty good at getting me in a rational and focused state of mind - it is similar to the benefit of a dedicated office vs your home PC. Productivity research in general suffers from a beancounting mentality in treating everything like it is turning an oar.
I definitely notice that. In my cube farm it's so loud that I often can't focus so I start reading Hacker News or stare at my phone as distraction. When I work from home I actually work because it's nice and quiet.
2. Realize that overcoming something is a not a viable longterm solution. If you overcome something once you have to keep overcoming it. Better option is to spend your energy figuring out how to achieve your goal by not overcoming, eg: to replace netflix, develop a passion for cooking, replace netflix with cooking.
VCs invest to make money, and I just can't see what the revenue model would be. There's no ad revenue to be had in convincing people to stop looking at their phones.
Get people to pay for an app? Any price other than free means crossing a pretty major psychological barrier.
I think thesis is absolutely ridiculous: "we need a group of new businesses to rise up and make money off of solving tech addiction"
There's not a lot of money to be made in stopping people from self-abstaining from pleasure. If someone wants to quit drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, then they can do so without having to pay for much (assuming they're not vulnerable to D.T. health wise). And while there's marginal amounts of money to be made off of nicotine patches or AA literature, these products pale in comparison to the amount of money generated by the alcohol and tobacco industries.
Is the problem to be solved actually "tech addiction" or is it really "feeling like time was spent in a way that was unsatisfying or even self-destructive?" In other words, the market opportunity isn't really "tech that curbs tech usage," it's more "helping me to feel like doing something restorative, meaningful, or rewarding, whether it's tech-based or not." Addiction itself rarely is treated simply by removing the substance: there's psychological reasons why a person is attracted to checking out versus being present or mindful. Treating the cause is quite a different proposition.
smartphones are in their smoking is cool so do it everywhere phase. the novelty will wear off. i enjoy patiently waiting in silence. if i am travelling on public transport, or sitting in waiting room, or standing in a long queue, i find my personal quiet contrasted by the various background noises relaxing and beneficial. i can remain aware of my surrounding/map, people and objects, clocks and time, scenery. i can play memorization, prediction or pattern games, revisit some old problem or simply turn my brain off and let the time pass without incident.
am i a silence addict? if i enjoyed striking up conversations with strangers everywhere i went and talked their ear off in a friendly manner, would i be a social addict? some people enjoy looking at text and images on a screen during downtime in their day, it's a habit. a potentially useful one that helps connect to a world outside of immediate physical space, should _we_ disincentivize public escapism? what about reading or drawing in public then? perhaps it's dangerous if people look at each other too much. and why don't _we_ standardize clothing so that everyone feels more equal. and do _we_ really need so many words, how about _we_ reduce it down to a few hundred useful ones and just stop teaching the others. who is we, we is us, and us is we.
if you give people freedom to do a lot of different things, they may not make good individual choices which can lead to bad collective actions. if they were individual choices they will be individually self-corrected. do you value freedom or outcomes? because you're going to need a big hammer to get all your outcome nails nice and flat. alternatively you need to build your civilization on a different moral foundation, something like social harmony or public good. you might find a strong central government, no immigration, with an insulated and culturo-ethnically homogeneous population with a tendency towards being socially and fiscally conservative, family oriented and not prone to large unfunded liabilities in domestic ponzi schemes and international military escapades; as pre-requisites to your social engineering utopian fantasies. america is about fuck you and fuck you too.
"While Apple, Google, and Facebook are beginning to offer tools to better understand how much we use their devices and services, those companies can’t viably fix technology addiction because their businesses prevent them from doing so."
Apple's business doesn't. I think Screen Time and App Limits will likely become two of Apple's main competitive advantages going forward because of it -- there's no way Google or Facebook could offer such a product for their services in any meaningful way without destroying their core business.
I’m glad to see this getting ridiculed on this forum. I would be happy to see more critique of the attitude that the problems created by irresponsible technology can be solved with more technology.
The driver of the “phone addiction” problem is obviously direct economics. Companies are organized around profit, and more phone time means more profit (especially in ad-driven models like Facebook).
So how about addressing the problems by looking at root causes?
I wouldn't say I am "addicted" to tech more than most people my age (26) but I was using my phone a lot more than I liked so I have taken some steps lately. The early results are encouraging that you can in fact use software to control yourself (no particular order).
Here are some things I did and the results.
1. Hacker News "noprocrast" setting. This is something underrated in HN, but I have set it so I can only visit every 6 hours and that my session can only be 20m long. That basically means one visit per day. I find myself not going on as much because I am "saving" my one visit for later.
2. Android "Digital Wellbeing" timers. I set a timer on my phone to limit me to 1hr of Google Chrome per day. This is my #1 most-used app. The first few days I was always hitting my limit. After a week or two my brain subconsciously started knowing about the limit and now my natural usage is < 1hr.
3. Work Profile + Do Not Disturb + Grayscale. At night my phone goes full grayscale and turns off all non-urgent notifications. My work profile also turns off. The combination of these three things makes me much less likely to engage after 9pm and get ready to wind down for bed.
4. I made an app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.habosa.not...) that helps me take control of notifications. Instead of blocking them, the app puts them in an inbox-like format. I can check them all at the end of the day without missing them entirely or letting them bother me at work. I do this for apps like NYTimes that surface interesting things but that I don't need to know about urgently.
Overall I am seeing a lot of progress! I find myself more able to, for instance, wait for the bus without playing on my phone. Hopefully over time I'll get better and better.
It seems inevitable to me that as ML-based algorithms get better at exploiting the quirks in our monkey brains and keeping us on platforms for longer and longer periods, somebody will need to develop a counter-algorithm that lives in a browser extension or (somehow) on your device and is able to recognize unhealthy engagement patterns and make you aware of them.
Actually implementing such a thing in a way that's performant and trustworthy and marketing it to people who maybe aren't consciously aware of how easily the brain can be manipulated involves a number of tough challenges, but it seems like it'll have to happen eventually.
Would anyone care about an OS (probably Android) that specifically limited the ability to use the time-suck apps (like snap/gram/tube), but still left the ability to use other things (like music/maps/camera/texting/etc)?
I tried disconnecting a while back, but felt like those were the things i was lacking because I was using a flip phone and was really frustrating. I have actually been considering picking back up this idea to focus on modifying to allow for curated list of allowable apps.
A lot of people here are skeptical, saying basically "if people don't want to be addicted to technology they should just stop using it", but I think that's simplistic.
You could say the same thing about eating, "if you're not happy with your weight then just stop eating so much" The fact that's technically true doesn't mean there's no market for diet books or people should have to do it all on their own. Weight watchers, for example, has a 4B market cap.
[+] [-] ddtaylor|7 years ago|reply
For full disclosure our product turns the Internet off until they complete goals like studying, completing quizzes, commiting to GitHub, etc.
Our first launch was a DNS only solution which we assumed lacked usage because people had to change their DNS address to one we spun up for them. It lacked usage and we assumed it was because it was "too technical" for parents.
Next we create an iOS app that worked out of the box as a VPN without any setup. We don't even ask the users to register in any way or pay anything.
Lastly we created a Chrome extension because it's the easiest way for tons of kids with Chromebooks to use.
Long story short, after multiple re-launches and trying to get feedback the overall result is that it's an almost impossible task to get parents or kids to change their habits, even if they "want" to. They will make up excuses and quit nearly instantly.
[+] [-] ip26|7 years ago|reply
What makes all this Hard is the plethora of legitimate use. When I canceled home internet, I was unable to log in to work from home (five minutes a day in the evenings helps keep the compute cluster rolling). When I switched to a flip phone I started cooking less- the smartphone had made planning meals & shopping easier. When I remove Chrome, inevitably a week or two later I'm on the road and want to book a hotel or find a campground or check on road construction. When I switch my phone to greyscale, weather charts & maps become impossible to read.
Personally, if I was working on code & my goalposts were a commit to GitHub- well, without access to stackoverflow I might never be able to finish.
All that said, thank you for your perspective. It is not hard to believe many people do not actually want to change.
[+] [-] mikeleeorg|7 years ago|reply
It's definitely a tough market. I suspect that it will be the larger corporations with enough revenue that can release such products into the market - and probably even release them as free features of an existing suite of products (e.g. iOS with Downtime, Disney's Circle[1], etc), as opposed to a standalone product.
[1] https://meetcircle.com/time-limits
[+] [-] kaffeemitsahne|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Paul-ish|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fbelzile|7 years ago|reply
It's freemium and only a one time payment for pro (ie - not investor friendly) but I really enjoy being able to work on improving it every day. I sometimes get nice emails from people which helps motivate me more.
My app is called Cold Turkey (https://getcoldturkey.com). It's for Windows and macOS only, because of the security restrictions on smart phones. It uses browser extensions (with native messaging) to do the blocking, but if you disable the extensions during a block, Cold Turkey closes your browsers until you re-enable them.
[+] [-] sooheon|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] paulcole|7 years ago|reply
This has been a known challenge for centuries. How did you address it during design of your product?
[+] [-] gymshoes|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dave_sid|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buboard|7 years ago|reply
Making an anti-addiction product is by its nature the opposite of a sellable product. And the people who have the frontal lobe to willingly go against their addiction, have already solved their problem.
[+] [-] Bakary|7 years ago|reply
I recall the studies showing the difference between Vietnam veterans who got hooked on dope and those who didn't, as well as Bruce K. Alexander's Rat Park experiments.
The other thing I've learned is that control or blocking tools can be self-defeating, since they transform fighting the addiction into a perpetually unfinished task ("It's been Y time since I did X") that naturally remains to the forefront of your brain and leaves you vulnerable if you end up in an environment without those restrictions. It's ultimately easier to address the underlying causes of trying to escape through technology.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|7 years ago|reply
Shit television or movies are much more entertaining when drunk or high. Social engagements that are not mentally stimulating to me are much more bearable when in an altered state.
I picked up a few hobbies that I really enjoy and I no longer feel the need to hit the weed vape pen 5 times on my walk home from work. I paint, do yoga multiple times a week, read a lot, and I'm more selective about the social events I go to because I've got other things I can occupy my time with.
I realize I'm just one data point but I think a lot of people use their vices to stave off boredom and make a life that is not all that interesting, interesting.
Tech addition is a bit different because it's hard to unplug entirely because many of us need to use screens for work. Removing all the social media apps from my phone and limiting my screen time at home has been huge for my ADHD brain. I don't have to have my phone at my side constantly anymore. I find myself enjoying experiences instead of trying to bottle them up for presentation on an app.
Maybe I sound a bit anti-tech but I believe a lot of people have gone too far down the rabbit hole and haven't realized it yet.
[+] [-] wccrawford|7 years ago|reply
My wife and I recently bought a house and I've been finding that I'd rather spend time fixing it up than playing games or doing other stuff with electronics much of the time.
That doesn't mean that I've quit wholesale, though. I eventually get physically or mentally tired and want to just relax, and it's back to the games I go.
My point is that tech isn't what drives my life, it's just one of the things that I enjoy. And actually improving our house has proven even more enjoyable.
I don't think the "solution" for "tech addiction" (as most people see it) is limiting phone time or focusing on the tech at all. Instead, the solution is for people to find a hobby that doesn't require an internet/cable connection and enjoy that instead.
And if they don't, it doesn't bother me a bit. People can do what they want, so long as it doesn't harm others.
People who have an actual "addiction" should seek professional help, though. Not some random guy that's making a startup, but someone with an actual degree in a profession that can help with mental issues.
[+] [-] CPLX|7 years ago|reply
A month or so ago, I took a two week trip across France and Spain, it was one of the most lovely experiences of my life, staying in great places, eating amazing food, etc. It was honestly about as wonderful and stimulating of an experience as I've ever had.
About halfway through it I started to realize that I was still attached to my phone. I was sitting on trains reflexively checking Twitter for the disastrous updates in American politics instead of looking out the window at the Pyrenees, or in a museum constantly reaching for my pocket.
In my personal story I took drastic action. I added parental controls to the phone, deleted some apps, made a commitment to keep the phone out of the bedroom, and other stuff, and have noticed a drastic improvement in mental health.
I don't discount your experiences, they likely work for you and I believe you. Just like how many people can go into bars without becoming alcoholics, but there are other people who need to take affirmative steps towards abstinence, and avoid certain people places and things, as they say.
But that's the nature of an addictive cycle. Not sure it actually in fact matters how great your life is, once you've acquired that addiction it's a habit that requires being affirmatively broken.
[+] [-] twodave|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarecrowbob|7 years ago|reply
A lot of the time, though, we have to quit dysfunctional behavior before we can identify what functional behavior looks like.
I totally agree with you that there is a chicken and egg problem. My typical advice for folks is to quit the behavior completely: you're correct in identifying how blocking tools cause their own problems and just mimic the same addictive behavior.
Then, at that point, it's going to be necessary to find some other behavior, but that's often a lot easier once you've got to do something... you just have to make sure that the things you choose to do are good.
Like, I gave up my codependent relationship with my ex wife, and that made it possible to give up drinking, but I still have to play a shit-ton of scales on guitar and piano and about an hour of yoga or I get weird.
Or I quit facebook, but now I do a a daily run of Kahn academy and working on electronics projects; that's a symptom, but it's a symptom that I enjoy.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beaconstudios|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_greyd|7 years ago|reply
"I suggest a different, even darker solution to the Paradox. Basically, I think the aliens don’t blow themselves up; they just get addicted to computer games. They forget to send radio signals or colonize space because they’re too busy with runaway consumerism and virtual-reality narcissism. They don’t need Sentinels to enslave them in a Matrix; they do it to themselves, just as we are doing today. Once they turn inwards to chase their shiny pennies of pleasure, they lose the cosmic plot. They become like a self-stimulating rat, pressing a bar to deliver electricity to its brain’s ventral tegmental area, which stimulates its nucleus accumbens to release dopamine, which feels…ever so good."
[+] [-] rootoor|7 years ago|reply
First, This requires users to setup this software. Then, there is nothing stopping them from working around or disabling it at anytime. If the software can’t be disabled then the user will switch to another product.
If someone is really trying to curtail their software addiction, actual dedication will be required, not just the activation of some tool that they can easily disable with a few taps.
And because these tools will likely not work for the majority of people, Apple and Google have every incentive to incorporate them into their operating systems and gobble up the market share (which they are already doing in their latest operating systems).
A more traditional and therapeutic approach to the problem makes more sense to me, though it won’t scale well and the market doesn’t seem very big
[+] [-] Nasrudith|7 years ago|reply
Tech is a convenient scapegoat for environments unconducive to focus and lack of interest in the task. It can also help with emotional state management which is useful over just banging your head against the wall. One use I find for HN is that it is usually pretty good at getting me in a rational and focused state of mind - it is similar to the benefit of a dedicated office vs your home PC. Productivity research in general suffers from a beancounting mentality in treating everything like it is turning an oar.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominotw|7 years ago|reply
1. Get a kitchen timer, use pomodoro technique.
2. Realize that overcoming something is a not a viable longterm solution. If you overcome something once you have to keep overcoming it. Better option is to spend your energy figuring out how to achieve your goal by not overcoming, eg: to replace netflix, develop a passion for cooking, replace netflix with cooking.
[+] [-] goplusplus|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfredward|7 years ago|reply
Get people to pay for an app? Any price other than free means crossing a pretty major psychological barrier.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbbutler|7 years ago|reply
SOCIALIST: late capitalism has created a moral rot that pervades our entire society NEOLIBERAL: but imagine if we monetized the rot
https://twitter.com/trillburne/status/750721471157198848?lan...
[+] [-] hasbroslasher|7 years ago|reply
There's not a lot of money to be made in stopping people from self-abstaining from pleasure. If someone wants to quit drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, then they can do so without having to pay for much (assuming they're not vulnerable to D.T. health wise). And while there's marginal amounts of money to be made off of nicotine patches or AA literature, these products pale in comparison to the amount of money generated by the alcohol and tobacco industries.
[+] [-] laurex|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cerealbad|7 years ago|reply
am i a silence addict? if i enjoyed striking up conversations with strangers everywhere i went and talked their ear off in a friendly manner, would i be a social addict? some people enjoy looking at text and images on a screen during downtime in their day, it's a habit. a potentially useful one that helps connect to a world outside of immediate physical space, should _we_ disincentivize public escapism? what about reading or drawing in public then? perhaps it's dangerous if people look at each other too much. and why don't _we_ standardize clothing so that everyone feels more equal. and do _we_ really need so many words, how about _we_ reduce it down to a few hundred useful ones and just stop teaching the others. who is we, we is us, and us is we.
if you give people freedom to do a lot of different things, they may not make good individual choices which can lead to bad collective actions. if they were individual choices they will be individually self-corrected. do you value freedom or outcomes? because you're going to need a big hammer to get all your outcome nails nice and flat. alternatively you need to build your civilization on a different moral foundation, something like social harmony or public good. you might find a strong central government, no immigration, with an insulated and culturo-ethnically homogeneous population with a tendency towards being socially and fiscally conservative, family oriented and not prone to large unfunded liabilities in domestic ponzi schemes and international military escapades; as pre-requisites to your social engineering utopian fantasies. america is about fuck you and fuck you too.
[+] [-] jeffbarg|7 years ago|reply
Apple's business doesn't. I think Screen Time and App Limits will likely become two of Apple's main competitive advantages going forward because of it -- there's no way Google or Facebook could offer such a product for their services in any meaningful way without destroying their core business.
[+] [-] harryf|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kgilpin|7 years ago|reply
The driver of the “phone addiction” problem is obviously direct economics. Companies are organized around profit, and more phone time means more profit (especially in ad-driven models like Facebook).
So how about addressing the problems by looking at root causes?
[+] [-] habosa|7 years ago|reply
Here are some things I did and the results.
1. Hacker News "noprocrast" setting. This is something underrated in HN, but I have set it so I can only visit every 6 hours and that my session can only be 20m long. That basically means one visit per day. I find myself not going on as much because I am "saving" my one visit for later.
2. Android "Digital Wellbeing" timers. I set a timer on my phone to limit me to 1hr of Google Chrome per day. This is my #1 most-used app. The first few days I was always hitting my limit. After a week or two my brain subconsciously started knowing about the limit and now my natural usage is < 1hr.
3. Work Profile + Do Not Disturb + Grayscale. At night my phone goes full grayscale and turns off all non-urgent notifications. My work profile also turns off. The combination of these three things makes me much less likely to engage after 9pm and get ready to wind down for bed.
4. I made an app (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.habosa.not...) that helps me take control of notifications. Instead of blocking them, the app puts them in an inbox-like format. I can check them all at the end of the day without missing them entirely or letting them bother me at work. I do this for apps like NYTimes that surface interesting things but that I don't need to know about urgently.
Overall I am seeing a lot of progress! I find myself more able to, for instance, wait for the bus without playing on my phone. Hopefully over time I'll get better and better.
[+] [-] 666lumberjack|7 years ago|reply
Actually implementing such a thing in a way that's performant and trustworthy and marketing it to people who maybe aren't consciously aware of how easily the brain can be manipulated involves a number of tough challenges, but it seems like it'll have to happen eventually.
[+] [-] chasedehan|7 years ago|reply
I tried disconnecting a while back, but felt like those were the things i was lacking because I was using a flip phone and was really frustrating. I have actually been considering picking back up this idea to focus on modifying to allow for curated list of allowable apps.
[+] [-] peacetreefrog|7 years ago|reply
You could say the same thing about eating, "if you're not happy with your weight then just stop eating so much" The fact that's technically true doesn't mean there's no market for diet books or people should have to do it all on their own. Weight watchers, for example, has a 4B market cap.
[+] [-] sharadov|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelias|7 years ago|reply