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Comment by rejschaap | Hacker News Reader

Books are distraction machines on a different level. When I become immersed in books I tend to deprive myself of sleep, neglect my daily chores and procrastinate my work. I do feel much better about periods where I read a lot, otherwise I tend to incessantly grab my phone to check blogs, news sites and stock/crypto prices.

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Books are not distraction machines in the sense phones are. Book may be a distraction from something else, but when you are already reading a book, you are concentrated, attention is stable and all cognitive faculties are being trained in positive direction (keeping the whole story in mind, imagining the plot etc.). Phones, on the other hand, are distracting you while you are interacting with them. Attention is switching constantly between apps, even within a single app you may be constantly swiping through content in order to get gratification. In this mode you're UNLEARNING the stability of attention, that books help develop. There may be specific apps and games that cultivate concentration as well, but the way the average kid uses their phone is definitively detrimental to their mental capabilities.

I would say that as someone who is very addicted to books and will tend to escape reality through novels that, yes, for a certain kind of people, books can be much worse than mobile phones.

I've had days where I didn't eat because I was immersed in a story, I will skip sleep, neglect my work, not shower when I'm inside a good novel. And, that behavior will continue until I've finished reading the entire series.

Books don't exploit every psychological trick there is to try to cram as many ads in your face as possible

I'm not sure when the last time was I saw an ad on my phone. The only example I can think of would be the Kindle app telling me of comparable books, which seems no different from all the tech books I have which have book recommendations on the last pages.

>I'm not sure when the last time was I saw an ad on my phone.

Are you running a flip phone? Because most smart phones I see these days have no less than 10 apps that can present ads or notifications at almost any given time.

No, they're just trying to smugly suggest that they're superior to everyone else because they've rooted their phone to run an ad blocker.

My phone is not rooted (and it is a smart phone). Better luck next time.

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