[iris2004]

I'll assume for a moment it's not a rhetorical question and state the obvious - phones (i.e. apps) have been designed to be addictive.

It's not a failure of willpower but rather it's you losing (predictively) to decades of market research and teams of PhDs employed to exploit your brain. It's asymmetrical warfare. It's like cigarettes of the past except instead of chemists optimising addictive additives it's programmers optimising attention stealing notifications and dark patterns.

[glitchc]

If phones are so addictive, how come I can put mine away? I'm human too, not special. Many things are designed to be addictive: TV, alcohol, sugar and salt are also addictive. Shall we ban them all?

We bring the big bad banhammer down whenever someone cannot deal with their addiction. Every ban erodes our freedoms, bit by bit.

Why not just go live in China? There the authorities are happy to tell you what you can and cannot do with every aspect of your life.

[I_Am_Nous]

>If phones are so addictive, how come I can put mine away?

You are not everybody. There are people more susceptible to addiction than you, and likely people less susceptible to addiction than you as well. Should the Sacklers have been allowed to keep lying about the addictive qualities of Oxycontin despite there being people who "cannot deal with their addiction?"

[iris2004]

> Every ban erodes our freedoms, bit by bit.

That's basically reductio ad absurdum and a common refrain I see on HN. Restricting the worst dark patterns in software is not an affront to human freedom. Banning selling cigarettes to kids is not the same as Uighur concentration camps.