I'm starting to get annoyed with these articles. Most people cannot use things like smartphones and Facebook "responsibly". To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve. It's like telling a heroin addict to "rethink your relationship with heroin and use it more moderately".
The only realistic way to reduce the grip of the these technologies on your mind is to use fewer of them and completely opt out of the worst offenders, like FaceBook, and TickTok.
I've deleted most of my social media accounts at this point and gone back to a more basic phone and my life is noticeably better for it. Sure there are some inconveniences and some people think I'm a weirdo, but it seems like a small price to pay to get my brain back.
So much of the power these technologies have over us is not that they're so useful or wonderful, but that there's a social expectation that we use them, i.e. people sending social invites via FaceBook, stigma against the "green bubble people", etc. We use them initially because of social pressure and then get hooked. If even a small and stubborn minority opted out of some of these technologies, say 9% of the population, reasonably distributed across ages and demographics, a lot of these expectations would disappear or at least reduce.
HN is a social network for folks who are interested in technology and general interest topics -- much like other social networks.
Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.
How is HN any different? Endless stream of attention capture just like Tiktok and FB. And the people who point at the pluses sound exactly like ppl on FB and Tiktok.
HN is a good laboratory to see if your suggestions work. If it doesnt work on the few thousand here mindlessly scrolling and jabbering away where is it going to work on 2 billion.
>To think you can compete with companies that have virtually unlimited financial resources available to highjack your attention and get you hooked is completely naïve.
The problem is that ordinary people have absolutely no concept whatsoever of what all goes into an app like Facebook. They load it on their phones, open it up, and it's just a magical screen that shows them images and text. There's no understanding of it beyond that. They don't know that there is a huge office building in California full of thousands of some of the smartest people on earth who spend their entire working lives
and billions of dollars to figure out how to hack your brain more effectively.
Big tech really needs the Upton Sinclair treatment. But even then I doubt people will care.
What basic phone did you switch to? I ended up getting a cellular Apple watch because it’s “smart” enough but no distraction apps (unless you count iMessage)
What do you do all day that is so different? I use social media (and this website) to kill time. I have too much time as it is to do nothing/nothing to capture my attention, I don't need more of it just wishing I was doom scrolling on Instagram.
At least on this website I learn stuff periodically throughout the day.
This kind of article is mostly clickbait at this point. There's a lot of "interest" in these kinds of topics and they attract a lot of attention on -funny enough- the same social media platforms.
I believe the main problem with those social media apps is not an issue of time, but of productivity and determination/will-power. Think of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc... These are not social networks exactly, but all contain elements from it. I've deleted my Facebook account about 6 years ago now and slowly got off all the other ones after. Now I only use RSS to follow websites I care about. At first I felt like I'm out of a lot of loops and circles of friends, but I later realized that it was all useless anyway, people who I care about and who cared about me still text or call me. I didn't need to know about every little random thing that happens in the world unless I specifically choose to know about it. It later felt really liberating. People were taking about who marked who safe and I just managed with a text message. People talk endlessly about how good/bad social media is and I'm totally out of the entire conversation. Still to this day I meet people who find it very weird that I'm not on Facebook, or if they are as well not on Facebook then probably because they have Reddit/Tiktok/etc.
I can't stress this enough, but I really felt like my productivity was fading away about 6 years ago, after quitting I find the energy to work on the most random stuff that take weeks of work, I don't get interrupted and my interest doesn't fade away from over exposure to random stuff (even if interesting). I've asked friends who felt the same way to try to delete Tiktok (and video games from their PCs) for a month to try to work on something and they all reported great results. Every single one said that they wouldn't have been able to do it if they didn't delete app X.
My point is this; it's not about time, it's about what you get exposed to. If you feel unproductive (compared to what you were before) or think "what could 10 minutes on Tiktok do", try deleting these apps one by one. The difficulty won't be the same for all people, but it'll be manageable for EVERYONE. It's not about being on your phone all the time, it's about being on your phone because you want to do something, not just for mindless scrolling.
(I intentionally did not mention tracking or privacy reasons from this because that's whole other beast of a topic.)
I love this quote from Stephen Fry:
> Jacking out of the matrix would cast one as a hero of the kind of dystopian film that proved popular in the 70s, Logan’s Run, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451 … on the run from The Corporation, with the foot soldiers of The System hard on your heels. We really are starting to live in that kind of movie, mutatis mutandis, so surely it’s time to join the Rebels, the Outliers, the Others who live beyond the Wall and read forbidden books, sing forbidden songs and think forbidden thoughts in defiance of The One.
Um, I use social media "responsibly" and it's quite easy. I look at various social media sites I'm on perhaps two or three times a week. Takes up maybe 30 minutes of my time a week. I feel no addictive urge to use them more. Most people I know may use them a bit more, but not much. The only adults that I know who use social media a lot more do it for work.
I submit that the majority of adults use social media sites are using them "responsibly" (i.e. occasionally and non-obsessively). My opinion (with no real evidence) is that the addictiveness is overblown for most adults.
Delete Instagram and Facebook from your phone. I did and I recommend everyone do it. You can still access via browser, but obviously not as good UX (which may make you less addicted).
I get how people can get addicted to social media apps (I got addicted to FB when I was in college 2005-2007 ish), and I am happy to see articles like this and other media outlets cover social media addiction and spread awareness, its a big problem. I would not blame the apps, though.
I think the real problem is that social media turbo-charges the social dynamics of the real world:
* attention seeking - "likes" are attention, and people love attention
* social presentation - you can present the best picture of your fake life
* envy and fantasy - men and women who think they live boring lives observing the curated, filtered lives of the people they want to be
* social hierarchy - who follows who? Prettier people having more follower / friends
* etc
I fell into those traps, and fb/insta were there to indulge my insecurities - but, critically, it was insecurities that fed the into the addiction. I'm a different guy now - I spend more time on myself than observing others.
I'm poorly articulating all this, but I think there is something to be analyzed there.
Additionally, using Facebook and Instagram from your browser will constantly expose you to their obnoxious "better in the app!" banners that you can never fully dismiss. Just making another one of their dark patterns visible enough to make you (hopefully) question the intent of the company...
Also, Instagram ads are actually blockable in-browser because they haven't bothered to update the site beyond the bare minimum of compatibility updates in years. So my iPhone on a VPN running a pihole made Instagram a little more bearable until I noticed that none of my friends ever posted anything any more.
I ended up using at least Twitter and Reddit just as much through the browser after deleting the apps. Had to install the NetGuard firewall on my phone to block them.
One way to rethink your relationship with social media is to, for lack of a more succinct phrasing, get a life.
I don't mean "don't be a loser", I mean have a life with goals, projects, and real relationships. Once that life flowers, you see social media as merely a tool for the further flourishing of that life. This mindset also makes you take a hard look at the connections you make through social media. Most are 1 dimensional, and based on emotional extremes or hits of "content". Instead, follow people you actually know. Then do stuff with them out in the world.
Doing stuff, and not just surfing social media, with other people is far more rewarding than being amongst 3 billion users.
It’s much easier than I thought as a teenager too. You don’t need to be doing “cool” stuff. Just go for a hike or swim once a week and learn some craft like woodworking or electronics. Once you start there will be decades of learning to discover
Sure you could have. You even acknowledge that there may be good points in the article. But you chose to prioritize whatever positive feeling you got out of closing it and coming back to HN to make a comment about how you'd done so.
You should also consider it a hook for people who do not consider these addictive facets of social media but would listen to what another astrology fanatic would say. Meaning the article is not specifically for you. That doesn’t make it any less informational. Consider this is NPR a widely read source for the layman and they’re playing to their audience.
Christ, the replies and me-toos on this thread sound like a bunch of atheists who can't stop telling everyone around how bad Christians are because they are constantly proselytizing.
Yup. I usually really like NPR but I had to stop once I read that. Why'd they have to say they were a Libra? They could have just said "I was born to find balance". ugh.
The propositions in the article are good, although the tips proposed by the Center for Humane Technology [1] are much more tactical (they are apparently mentioned in the audio version, but I only read the article).
Also, as a complete aside, I'm not sure if the third passage [2] in the article is facetious or what, but I'm always surprised to see credibility-destroying statements like these in legitimate publications. In this day and age readers have to be ruthlessly efficient in discerning reliable information/advice from nonsense. They are on the lookout for any reason to abandon articles and content to avoid wasting valuable time and attention. There is an old direct-response copywriting dictum: "The purpose of each sentence is to get the next sentence read." The aforementioned passage does the opposite, even though the subsequent tips are pretty good.
I recently deactivated Facebook (which I only ever used via web browser) and since then I’ve been counting the number of times I unconsciously end up on the Facebook login page when I’m bored/killing time. I’ve noticed that faced with a “new tab” I’ll often just hit the f key and hit enter without thinking about it, landing me on the Facebook login page. Before I deactivated, this would result in me somewhat unconsciously scrolling through my newsfeed mindlessly consuming whatever Facebook decides I should see that day. I don’t consider myself to be mentally weak so it scares me to think about what percentage of the population does this without ever realizing it.
I use SelfControl to block these websites on my mac. I use uBlock filters to block feeds on my phone. I also log out of some websites when I'm done. It helps a lot.
Maybe age has something to do with it - yes, I used to spend too much time on Facebook. Back in 2007. I also used to drink too much alcohol. Today I just don't have time for social media other than when I'm waiting for something, like a bus or train or my boy to come out of school.
I can't program with a hangover, I can't read, I can't scratch-build radio-controlled trucks. I can't scuba dive when I'm hung over and I can't do Krav Maga while I'm online. I like these and other things more than being online. But yes, I like being online too. Pintrest is great for research when you're building a garden bench.
I guess filling my life with meat-space things I really like and enjoy means I spend comparatively very little time online.
I do wonder what people who don't have meat-space interests more important to them than being online, think about.
Pre-Corona, I'd spend approximately 2-3 hours after work online, mostly working on hobby projects or catching up with quick TV (40 minute shows feel like a waste of time, whereas 2x20 minute shows feel more productive...)
Nowadays, I have no need to leave the house. My meat-space activities are gone, so I poured myself into my hobby projects and learned that working on what you love more than 5-hours a day (out of genuine want!) quickly turns into a chore, and before you know it you're in a mindless spiral of ticking boxes that you arbitrarily set yourself to give the impression that the time spent on said hobby/chore is meaningful.
I cannot wait to get back to work. I miss my 2 hour biking commute, it was beautiful.
Social media nowadays is not just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube… I’d even count HN.
There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid amount of people way to invested in those
See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn’t call that responsible.
I think people have a bad relationship with social media because they use it to consume instead of produce. I changed my mindset from 'social media is a place where I learn about/keep in touch with my friends' to 'social media is a place where I share my art, jokes, life events, etc with my friends'. I spend less time on it because I go in with the mindset of 'What can I create right now?' instead of just mindless scrolling. Or when I am mindlessly scrolling I have more of a perspective, what do people find interesting right now?
Am I the only one bored by virtually everything on social media? Everything feels like its been curated for either teens or people with exceptionally low attention spans. I find it all very annoying (With Hacker News being the exception).
I solved the problem when I went to facebook and deleted all groups (except two - both related to family events: I personally know in the real world everyone in both groups). Often when I check facebook now it has no idea what to show me as I've seen everything, and it has to revert to showing me pictures of classmates I haven't interacted with in years - which is what I'm on Facebook for in the first place! Even then it runs out of things to show me fast.
Also, I have ~1000 facebook "friends" but I only follow 25 or so close friends who don't post too much (except my sister who posts too much). I don't find Facebook a time sync. I also only follow about 10 people on Instagram so not a time sync. I only check it once every 1-2 weeks.
I do tend to use Facebook on the desktop web browser with FB Purity installed and filtering all the worst of facebook's horrible time wasters like "so and so commented on X" and "so and so liked Y" etc.
I have a couple of hacks I use that, once developed as a habit, have been enormously helpful for me.
1) I never look at a general feed. (Which I means I just never use Twitter as that's kind of all it has) I open FB on my message url, which shows me the three things I want: messages, event notifications, and a search box to go to the four or five dedicated topic areas I use where off-topic posts aren't tolerated. Basically all the "designed to be addictive" shit is on the feed page.
2) I use Stylebot on Chrome, which allows you to add custom css overrides for every page. It's awesome. You can just turn every thing that clamours for your attention or has "suggestions" into empty whitespace.
3) I don't use any of their apps. You can't control the apps the same way.
“Navigating the internet” is dead. The majority of users are swiping at 5 second videos between 5 major platforms. The rest of the web is weird tabloids and abandoned blog spots. Try looking up a recipe and tell me you don’t get plagued with ads like you’re on XVideo.
I wonder how long before the advertisers on these platforms realize how much the social media companies are using the same variable rewards, random payoff, low friction, and rule of reciprocity to manipulate companies into continuing to buy ads? Measuring ad effectiveness is already hard, now the social media giants are both the platform and the technology for measuring "engagement".
Isn't it blindingly obvious to ad buyers that they are essentially putting coins in a slot machine, pulling the "show my ads" lever, and getting a good feeling when the metrics show their ad 'went viral'?
Take social media off your phone. Install a news feed blocker that forces you to toggle on the news feed for your site of choice when you want to scroll. That helped me cut my social media time from 1+ hour a day to less than 15 minutes.
I've never heard a convincing argument for the upside of social media. It's never looked like a good way to spend time from the outside.
I guess this is the difference between people who look at drugs and decide not to even try them vs. people who don't think about any of that and promptly get addicted.
The connection of all social media companies to either DARPA or CIA is also a strong negative trait from the get-go. Having visited East Berlin before 1989 and seen what totalitarian surveillance looks like and operates like, I'm a bit sensitive to the sight of the same all over again.
Last year at the start of the pandemic, I stopped using Facebook, Youtube, Reddit and Linkedin. Just stopped, no exceptions. It took an incredible amount of discipline at first, but now it's become a habit. Its had a net positive effect on my life and I highly recommend others to try it.
Its incredible how little I'm tempted to open these apps now. Once you're properly out of the hyper-addictive ecosystem that they create, that's it, you're unlikely to want to get back in.
It has been an absolute game changer for me in reducing my screen time. The app is really good at changing habits - it makes opening up social media apps annoying and disrupts the expected dopamine hit. My app opens are way down and I’m no longer even hitting my screen time limit for social media apps.
I feel the need to start with metrics (mostly because I do worry about the effect (good and bad) it has on my kids).
I am planning on somehow pulling screentime metrics and youtube history data together - have not really got a plan but if anyone fancies a few spare hours please shout.
(ironically those of us with kids probably have the least time to scratch this itch !)
Read something, an article or a book which is more short snippets (try Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, those five minutes will change your life). I have a list with a whole bunch of tech topics that I could read a quick MDN/wikipedia/whatever article on. If its a quick game, Call of Duty or some racing game where a race only takes a few minutes. I actually find taking a break and then gaming for five/ten minutes to be really good for my attention since it really forces me to focus completely for that time. Otherwise, just stand outside with your coffee and breathe.
Learn to enjoy doing nothing. There’s no rule that you have to constantly be doing something or need to be constantly optimizing your time. That’s just societal anxiety talking.
[+] [-] tharne|4 years ago|reply
The only realistic way to reduce the grip of the these technologies on your mind is to use fewer of them and completely opt out of the worst offenders, like FaceBook, and TickTok.
I've deleted most of my social media accounts at this point and gone back to a more basic phone and my life is noticeably better for it. Sure there are some inconveniences and some people think I'm a weirdo, but it seems like a small price to pay to get my brain back.
So much of the power these technologies have over us is not that they're so useful or wonderful, but that there's a social expectation that we use them, i.e. people sending social invites via FaceBook, stigma against the "green bubble people", etc. We use them initially because of social pressure and then get hooked. If even a small and stubborn minority opted out of some of these technologies, say 9% of the population, reasonably distributed across ages and demographics, a lot of these expectations would disappear or at least reduce.
[+] [-] Calvin02|4 years ago|reply
How much time do you spend on HN?
HN is a social network for folks who are interested in technology and general interest topics -- much like other social networks.
Do you think that people can use HN "responsibly"? The feed is algorithmic and designed to surface topics to elicit responses/engagement with the community.
[+] [-] yann2|4 years ago|reply
HN is a good laboratory to see if your suggestions work. If it doesnt work on the few thousand here mindlessly scrolling and jabbering away where is it going to work on 2 billion.
The chimp troupe is fucked.
[+] [-] ramesh31|4 years ago|reply
The problem is that ordinary people have absolutely no concept whatsoever of what all goes into an app like Facebook. They load it on their phones, open it up, and it's just a magical screen that shows them images and text. There's no understanding of it beyond that. They don't know that there is a huge office building in California full of thousands of some of the smartest people on earth who spend their entire working lives and billions of dollars to figure out how to hack your brain more effectively.
Big tech really needs the Upton Sinclair treatment. But even then I doubt people will care.
[+] [-] derwiki|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|4 years ago|reply
What do you do all day that is so different? I use social media (and this website) to kill time. I have too much time as it is to do nothing/nothing to capture my attention, I don't need more of it just wishing I was doom scrolling on Instagram.
At least on this website I learn stuff periodically throughout the day.
[+] [-] tboyd47|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayswede|4 years ago|reply
I believe the main problem with those social media apps is not an issue of time, but of productivity and determination/will-power. Think of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc... These are not social networks exactly, but all contain elements from it. I've deleted my Facebook account about 6 years ago now and slowly got off all the other ones after. Now I only use RSS to follow websites I care about. At first I felt like I'm out of a lot of loops and circles of friends, but I later realized that it was all useless anyway, people who I care about and who cared about me still text or call me. I didn't need to know about every little random thing that happens in the world unless I specifically choose to know about it. It later felt really liberating. People were taking about who marked who safe and I just managed with a text message. People talk endlessly about how good/bad social media is and I'm totally out of the entire conversation. Still to this day I meet people who find it very weird that I'm not on Facebook, or if they are as well not on Facebook then probably because they have Reddit/Tiktok/etc.
I can't stress this enough, but I really felt like my productivity was fading away about 6 years ago, after quitting I find the energy to work on the most random stuff that take weeks of work, I don't get interrupted and my interest doesn't fade away from over exposure to random stuff (even if interesting). I've asked friends who felt the same way to try to delete Tiktok (and video games from their PCs) for a month to try to work on something and they all reported great results. Every single one said that they wouldn't have been able to do it if they didn't delete app X.
My point is this; it's not about time, it's about what you get exposed to. If you feel unproductive (compared to what you were before) or think "what could 10 minutes on Tiktok do", try deleting these apps one by one. The difficulty won't be the same for all people, but it'll be manageable for EVERYONE. It's not about being on your phone all the time, it's about being on your phone because you want to do something, not just for mindless scrolling.
(I intentionally did not mention tracking or privacy reasons from this because that's whole other beast of a topic.)
I love this quote from Stephen Fry:
> Jacking out of the matrix would cast one as a hero of the kind of dystopian film that proved popular in the 70s, Logan’s Run, Zardoz, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451 … on the run from The Corporation, with the foot soldiers of The System hard on your heels. We really are starting to live in that kind of movie, mutatis mutandis, so surely it’s time to join the Rebels, the Outliers, the Others who live beyond the Wall and read forbidden books, sing forbidden songs and think forbidden thoughts in defiance of The One.
https://www.stephenfry.com/2016/04/off-the-grid/
[+] [-] rmah|4 years ago|reply
I submit that the majority of adults use social media sites are using them "responsibly" (i.e. occasionally and non-obsessively). My opinion (with no real evidence) is that the addictiveness is overblown for most adults.
[+] [-] game_the0ry|4 years ago|reply
I get how people can get addicted to social media apps (I got addicted to FB when I was in college 2005-2007 ish), and I am happy to see articles like this and other media outlets cover social media addiction and spread awareness, its a big problem. I would not blame the apps, though.
I think the real problem is that social media turbo-charges the social dynamics of the real world:
* attention seeking - "likes" are attention, and people love attention
* social presentation - you can present the best picture of your fake life
* envy and fantasy - men and women who think they live boring lives observing the curated, filtered lives of the people they want to be
* social hierarchy - who follows who? Prettier people having more follower / friends
* etc
I fell into those traps, and fb/insta were there to indulge my insecurities - but, critically, it was insecurities that fed the into the addiction. I'm a different guy now - I spend more time on myself than observing others.
I'm poorly articulating all this, but I think there is something to be analyzed there.
[+] [-] dont__panic|4 years ago|reply
Also, Instagram ads are actually blockable in-browser because they haven't bothered to update the site beyond the bare minimum of compatibility updates in years. So my iPhone on a VPN running a pihole made Instagram a little more bearable until I noticed that none of my friends ever posted anything any more.
[+] [-] colordrops|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mabub24|4 years ago|reply
I don't mean "don't be a loser", I mean have a life with goals, projects, and real relationships. Once that life flowers, you see social media as merely a tool for the further flourishing of that life. This mindset also makes you take a hard look at the connections you make through social media. Most are 1 dimensional, and based on emotional extremes or hits of "content". Instead, follow people you actually know. Then do stuff with them out in the world.
Doing stuff, and not just surfing social media, with other people is far more rewarding than being amongst 3 billion users.
[+] [-] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
I just had breakfast, put suncream on and planned a bicycle route, but instead of heading out as planned, I'm typing this comment.
Getting a life requires an initial investment. The Internet is right there.
I have done a lot to mitigate this addiction, but it's still there.
[+] [-] redisman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruffrey|4 years ago|reply
While there may be good points in the article, this indicates a low level of scientific rigor by the writer. Couldn't continue after that.
[+] [-] GavinMcG|4 years ago|reply
Sure you could have. You even acknowledge that there may be good points in the article. But you chose to prioritize whatever positive feeling you got out of closing it and coming back to HN to make a comment about how you'd done so.
[+] [-] yepthatsreality|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] negroni|4 years ago|reply
Nope. I stopped reading right there as well.
[+] [-] cratermoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottious|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwertywert_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsbk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyranjamie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bennythomson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmd509|4 years ago|reply
Also, as a complete aside, I'm not sure if the third passage [2] in the article is facetious or what, but I'm always surprised to see credibility-destroying statements like these in legitimate publications. In this day and age readers have to be ruthlessly efficient in discerning reliable information/advice from nonsense. They are on the lookout for any reason to abandon articles and content to avoid wasting valuable time and attention. There is an old direct-response copywriting dictum: "The purpose of each sentence is to get the next sentence read." The aforementioned passage does the opposite, even though the subsequent tips are pretty good.
[1] https://www.humanetech.com/take-control
[2] "I'm a Libra which means I was born to find balance, and I wanted to apply that principle to my social media behaviors and consumption."
[+] [-] powellzer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david422|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scottious|4 years ago|reply
OMG I'm so glad I'm not the only one. I deactivated it over 6 months ago and I STILL have this impulse from time to time.
[+] [-] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FourthProtocol|4 years ago|reply
I can't program with a hangover, I can't read, I can't scratch-build radio-controlled trucks. I can't scuba dive when I'm hung over and I can't do Krav Maga while I'm online. I like these and other things more than being online. But yes, I like being online too. Pintrest is great for research when you're building a garden bench.
I guess filling my life with meat-space things I really like and enjoy means I spend comparatively very little time online.
I do wonder what people who don't have meat-space interests more important to them than being online, think about.
[+] [-] tetris11|4 years ago|reply
Nowadays, I have no need to leave the house. My meat-space activities are gone, so I poured myself into my hobby projects and learned that working on what you love more than 5-hours a day (out of genuine want!) quickly turns into a chore, and before you know it you're in a mindless spiral of ticking boxes that you arbitrarily set yourself to give the impression that the time spent on said hobby/chore is meaningful.
I cannot wait to get back to work. I miss my 2 hour biking commute, it was beautiful.
[+] [-] zahrc|4 years ago|reply
There is Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube… I’d even count HN.
There a many people, possibly still the minority, but very solid amount of people way to invested in those
See those twitch donation whales, for example, the amount is big enough to have sparked a more than feasible business. I wouldn’t call that responsible.
[+] [-] reidjs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] grae_QED|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluGill|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] greggman3|4 years ago|reply
Also, I have ~1000 facebook "friends" but I only follow 25 or so close friends who don't post too much (except my sister who posts too much). I don't find Facebook a time sync. I also only follow about 10 people on Instagram so not a time sync. I only check it once every 1-2 weeks.
I do tend to use Facebook on the desktop web browser with FB Purity installed and filtering all the worst of facebook's horrible time wasters like "so and so commented on X" and "so and so liked Y" etc.
[+] [-] iainctduncan|4 years ago|reply
1) I never look at a general feed. (Which I means I just never use Twitter as that's kind of all it has) I open FB on my message url, which shows me the three things I want: messages, event notifications, and a search box to go to the four or five dedicated topic areas I use where off-topic posts aren't tolerated. Basically all the "designed to be addictive" shit is on the feed page.
2) I use Stylebot on Chrome, which allows you to add custom css overrides for every page. It's awesome. You can just turn every thing that clamours for your attention or has "suggestions" into empty whitespace.
3) I don't use any of their apps. You can't control the apps the same way.
hth
[+] [-] mastrsushi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|4 years ago|reply
Isn't it blindingly obvious to ad buyers that they are essentially putting coins in a slot machine, pulling the "show my ads" lever, and getting a good feeling when the metrics show their ad 'went viral'?
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzzy21|4 years ago|reply
I guess this is the difference between people who look at drugs and decide not to even try them vs. people who don't think about any of that and promptly get addicted.
The connection of all social media companies to either DARPA or CIA is also a strong negative trait from the get-go. Having visited East Berlin before 1989 and seen what totalitarian surveillance looks like and operates like, I'm a bit sensitive to the sight of the same all over again.
[+] [-] qolop|4 years ago|reply
Its incredible how little I'm tempted to open these apps now. Once you're properly out of the hyper-addictive ecosystem that they create, that's it, you're unlikely to want to get back in.
[+] [-] samename|4 years ago|reply
It has been an absolute game changer for me in reducing my screen time. The app is really good at changing habits - it makes opening up social media apps annoying and disrupts the expected dopamine hit. My app opens are way down and I’m no longer even hitting my screen time limit for social media apps.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|4 years ago|reply
I am planning on somehow pulling screentime metrics and youtube history data together - have not really got a plan but if anyone fancies a few spare hours please shout.
(ironically those of us with kids probably have the least time to scratch this itch !)
[+] [-] mrfusion|4 years ago|reply
Time fillers for Five to ten minutes Of downtime where I don’t want to do any deep work since I’ll probably be interrupted. Maybe some kind of game?
[+] [-] notapenny|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yepthatsreality|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callmeal|4 years ago|reply
Being quiet with your thoughts is also an option.
[+] [-] colordrops|4 years ago|reply
Or if you insist on looking at your phone, you could do 2 or 3 Duolingo lessons in that time frame.
Or meditate.