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Comment by steve_adams_86 | Hacker News Reader

I love this. I believe it’s the only correct answer after reading and thinking hard about many.

The ability for young children to recognize hypocrisy is incredible, and the aptitude among teenagers to leverage hypocrisy to enable their own bad behaviour and use yours against you isn’t something worth contending with. You can only win by force, and your kids will resent the hell out of you for it. And for what? To look at your phone more?

Do any of us find ways to use our phones in worthwhile ways more than 15m in a day, truthfully? I sure as hell don’t. But I can sink a lot more time than that if I don’t think about what I’m doing.

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That's just it. I put my smart phone in the cupboard with my wallet and keys when I come home and don't touch it unless I have to. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of something with my kids and I tell them what I'm going to do, even though they are just 2 and 4, before doing it. Then I put it back as soon as I'm done. Just tonightz for example I needed it to doubke check a recipe. So I told them I was going to look at a recipe, checked it out, and then put it back in the cupboard.

Having a designated place for your phone helps. Another thing I found to make phone use at home less appealing when I first wanted to get away from it was to have a personal rule that I always had to be stabding up in the corner. I don't allow myself to sit down with it, which actuality helps a lot.

Keeping it out of the bedroom is another good one— get an old school clock radio and leave the phone charging on the kitchen counter.

I hadn’t heard of the designated location idea before. I like that, thanks. I might do the same and see if I can get my family to use the same spot.

Wait, what? Absolutely!

I speak with my friends on my phone. Sometimes I may speak and laugh for two hours with an old friend I, for family/life reasons, haven't seen for years but with whom I have this ability to instantly resume our customary banter.

I read books on my phone. I do prefer a physical book but after I started a job where I travelled a lot I actually started buying the electronic versions, and once I got a phone with an OLED display it is quite okay to read on it in the dark. I read at least an hour a day.

I think the "problem" is that any phone usage looks the same. If you are sitting with your calculus book you look "usefully busy", but not if you're studying on your phone. If I read a thick novel I look serious and smart, but with the book on the phone I look like I'm scrolling on Facebook or whatever people use nowadays. If I watch a lecture on computer science I appear the same as if watching anything else. Is "phone" itself bad, or is it just that it looks the same as if one is being "lazy"?

You’ve changed my mind. I was talking in extremes, but you’re right, some people use their phones very socially and that’s often a good thing. There’s a grey area where it’s “social”, but not very directly or healthily in my opinion, but if you’re in the white area where you’re having direct connections with people you care about, that’s great. It just happens to be that I only do that for 5-10m in a day, but if I did more, I’d totally think that’s fine (or good, even).

I think the issue is that a lot of us don’t use them to stay connected in a healthy manner, but I shouldn’t assume that includes everyone.

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