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sorwin | 2 years ago

The addiction isnt to the smartphone, but to social media applications. It's the constant pumping of information and misinformation, as well as a false sense of reality.

Teens (and other age groups) are constantly bombarded with topics, issues, and information which they have to make sense of. Quite often, this information is pretty depressing, rage inducing, or emotionally manipulative in one way or another. They learn from this - instead of having a curated view of the world and information from their parents, elders, siblings, etc.

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Calvin02|2 years ago

I think you should ask a teen what social media is to them.

My nieces and nephews are constantly messaging each other. 95% of their usage is messaging. It is spread across several apps. Discord for gaming, IG for trends, TT for short videos, etc.

This is how they stay in touch with friends.

They aren’t obsessively doom scrolling, which I found quite interesting.

barbazoo|2 years ago

> The addiction isnt to the smartphone, but to social media applications.

I wish this was true. Even for me a grown up, professional, responsible person, I have a hard time not wasting time on the internet altogether on my phone. It takes a lot for me not to fall back into the habit of mindlessly readying news pages, subreddits, yes, HN, etc. I would have to uninstall the browser which at some point I might try but how would you even do that on an off the shelf Android?!

Point being, I used to think having to fall back to a browser is the solution to breaking the habit, but for many of us it's not.

nate_meurer|2 years ago

Me too. The news addiction and doom scrolling sometimes consumed entire fucking weeks.

I completely fixed it with LeechBlock on my PCs and AdGuard on my phone. Both pull blacklists from a big list of forbidden websites that I maintain on PasteBin. Here's my version for Adguard:

https://pastebin.com/raw/HRhewh9x

I let myself use LeechBlock's override for five minutes at a time, but if I find myself using it too much I start to feel dirty and I'll lock down the block set for a few days. Sort of a detox that I can invoke instantly and impulsively, and that might be the most important thing that keeps me on track.

I never turn off AdGuard on my phone because it also provides the ad blocking, without which I find the Internet completely unusable.