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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

I blame smartphones. Really I do. My overall ability to focus and consume longform content has gone up dramatically since ditching my phone several months ago.

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You don’t need to ditch the phone. Just disable all notifications and maybe uninstall some content consumption feeds like FB or twitter.

A phone is what you make of it.

Then I spend too much time on HN

Maybe set time limits then. Also have an alternative thing to do on your phone if you can't do anything else (like Duolingo or respond to important emails).

Do you spend time on HN or waste time on HN. If it is spend then it is not a problem.

I’m inching closer and closer to just deleting every app on my phone and tablet except what allows me to take calls, answer emails, and read books. I read so much when I was a kid, with a great deal of focus, but now I feel like I need constant shifting multisensory stimulation. I can hardly get through ten minutes of a movie without pausing to look at my phone. I can’t listen to a podcast without playing a game or something at the same time.

I absolutely feel that I’ve gotten dumber in the last fifteen years.

Do you know of a phone that lets you do that? In particular, how do you uninstall the web browser?

Technically you can remove Safari from an iPhone the same way you uninstall any app, though I’ve never tried it (yet). Apple added the ability to remove built-in apps a few versions ago.

I suspect it leaves the guts in place, as Safari is used by the OS, but it should remove the ability to use it as an app.

No idea about android.

Android is shipped with a number of apps that cannot be removed (or even disabled). Some are Google's, and some are added by the phone manufacturer (e.g. Samsung) and some are added by the carrier (e.g. AT&T) if you buy the phone from the carrier.

If you cannot with your own, you could try with custom ROMs, or through rooting (check the security implications though).

One thing, "to each its own", but I would like to /have/ a web browser on my mobile OS devices: no browser I know does text reflow since very many years, which implies, "there is no browser". Maybe you should really assess the quality of your practices: awareness (of the absurdities) will have you manage your actions differently and accordingly.

Greyscale and no social media did reduce my smartphone consumption a lot. And consulting Instagram / Reddit only on a computer is not a death in itself (plus I use Intention [1] to keep my time on those websites in a normal range.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/intention-stop-min...

The smartphone has actually improved my life a lot. I still have the habit of reading 2-3 books a month but as far as my personal experiences with a smartphone. I could be biased cuz I don't use any social media(facebook/insta/snapchat/tiktok) and I have removed all algorithmic feeds from the information I consume. Smartphone is just a big sheet of glass. What you do with it is your choice and it is a very big choice.

It’s a bad hypothesis to argue that someone born in 1985 scored lower in IQ in 2003, than someone born in 1975 scored in 1993, due to a category of devices, for which the first widely adopted was released in 2007.

that was my first instinct as well... that its probably something to do with attention span. a lot of these IQ tests requires considerable focus, for 60-75 minutes. there are studies that show a drop in attention span from the 70's to now. I think we are now at 8 min for the average person.

its that or there is some common particle that is slowly making us dumb (like lead couple decades ago) and we haven't discovered it yet.

It can't be just smartphones, the downward trend started in the 1970's. My guess is television. The "idiot lamp" made idiots, QED.

Also seems to coincide with the "War on Poverty". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_poverty

That is a USA policy, these studies are of Europeans:

> Norwegian researchers analyzed the IQ scores of Norwegian men born between 1962 and 1991 and found that scores increased by almost 3 percentage points each decade for those born between 1962 to 1975 – but then saw a steady decline among those born after 1975.

> Similar studies in Denmark, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia have demonstrated a similar downward trend in IQ scores, said Ole Rogeberg, a senior research fellow at the Ragnar Frisch Center for Economic Research in Norway and co-author of the new study.

As many are implicitly noting, there seems to have been an increase of passive consumption of addictive material. Still ongoing (read posts nearby who speak about smartphones as if it were nicotine...)

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