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Comment by WhompingWindows | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else here trying to reduce their use of technology outside of the workplace? My hobbies are music, painting, and woodworking, and it's all I can muster to focus on a screen from 9-5. I do comment here on HN and I peruse other websites, but I don't actively engage with any social media except HN.

I just find myself questioning the merits of attention spent on these social media platforms, given the information quality and density is so much lower than HN.

Maybe this is where TikTok has succeeded: short, snappy, quickly accessed videos; much more informational content than textual or image-based FB or Reddit, not to mention more skillfully executed, right? It's like a short-form, Twitter-ified entertainment version of YT.

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All of these apps are just a gigantic waste of time, and proven to be highly manipulative and emotionally draining. I've managed to avoid all of them, including FB which I only keep to message family members and friends.

The fact that normally astute, rational, intelligent individuals find themselves mindlessly clicking through games or video apps goes to show how addictive and manipulative these apps are. Some of my friends realize this, but they still waste time on them as if they cannot stop. It's sad. The top comment is correct, it's a modern/high-tech addictive substance.

Those applications will be a great waste of time, but they are there to solve the problem behind all social media: loneliness and seeking care. You can distract your mind with other things for a while, but sooner or later you will fall back on social networks, unless you stop being alone or have enough attention.

I think that living beings do not know how to survive alone, so being alone is something bad biologically and arouses something in us that makes us feel bad ... call it "loneliness" or whatever you want, but that thing kills you if you stay alone

I think that this level of analysis is really essential. It's not enough to say that something is addictive, we need to ask why.

Going one step further, I think that when social media came on the scene society in general was already fairly isolated and looking for some type of connection. Social media offered a quick fix, but frankly exacerbated the issue. It is a really vicious cycle. It feels even harder to connect to the real world around us nowadays.

I appreciate it, it really is something worth investigating because it is a problem that affects the entire planet basically (looking at the amount of active users that social media have).

The most fundamental questions I could find are:

Loneliness occurs only in logical intelligent beings or also in animals?

Loneliness is something created by our mind or is it something physical like the lack of a resource such as water, food, air? (maybe some of our organs release some harmful chemical when we are alone for a long time, I don't know, something similar to adrenaline)

How long is the maximum time that a person spent alone and what symptoms did he present? (This could guide us if loneliness causes physical damage)

If loneliness does not cause physical damage, then do we do the damage ourselves? Why? Perhaps our sexual reproduction cycle is related to this? But then, Why do the elderly also suffer from loneliness if they have already passed their reproductive stage? And what about children?...

But the fundamental question: Can someone survive alone? If the answer is yes, I immediately leave my city and go to live in the forest, it is not a joke.

Humans are uniquely social creatures. There are other animals that tend to congregate in packs or hives or whatever due to evolutionary pressures, but I don't think they experience loneliness in the ways humans do.

Just look at what happens in solitary confinement. It literally drives inmates mad (and yes there is a bit of a confounding variable of this taking place in a prison, but the general principle still applies).

We have the phrase "No man is an island" for a reason. Although I'm sure you can always find exceptions, humans generally do not well without other humans. We have evolved to be in groups. The need for others is not quite as fundamental as the need for food and general physical safety, but it is not more than a step away. This is who we are as humans.

The modern world doesn't seem well equipped to address this need. We've lost most of our 3rd places, the youth in most developed countries face crushing economic circumstances, and our world feels more disconnected than ever.

Microsoft Launcher for Android comes with a screen-time usage widget that takes the place of a normal app icon... After a few days I was amazed that what felt like "small looks" and "short breaks" on my phone throughout the day added up to 1-2+ hours of screen time.

On the plus side I figured this could be steered into spaced-repetition flashcards for learning new stuff, but it's tough not to take a whiff of that social media crack isn't it.

I figure there's going to be a big market for things like tech-free resorts and curing device addictions once Gen-Z makes it to their 30s. They have unfortunately come out of the womb with a cell-phone in hand and will likely have a much tougher time being freed from the separation anxiety.

> Maybe this is where TikTok has succeeded: short, snappy, quickly accessed videos

I think this is precisely backwards. Teens like video apps because they have time to sit around watching videos. Adults gravitate towards text and images because they require less of a time commitment.

I’ve been getting back into electronic music production and there’s a growing group of people who previously used ableton, logic, etc that are moving to pure hardware production (it’s called Dawless) to reduce screen time. Many are software engineers or work a day job at a tech company.

Interesting trends to keep an eye on.

I still do technology, but it's offline technology. 3D printers and circuits. Less starring at a computer, more working with my hands.

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