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Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

I haven't seen any of those apps (or built-in OS features like screen time on iOS) not become useless in a matter of days.

People that will use their phone for distraction (which I don't think there's actually anything wrong with) will take only a few days to get "notification fatigue" from those screens and automatically bypass them without even thinking about it.

I get that you can prevent bypassing the screen as you mentioned as an extra feature but people will just click the other button then.

There's not a single person (myself included) I have seen use screen time not automatically bypass the limitation instantly as it pops up.

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> I haven't seen any of those apps (or built-in OS features like screen time on iOS) not become useless in a matter of days.

This isn't consistent with the data. I'm a cofounder of Clearspace and we see that when people make it through the first two weeks, they stick around for months or years.

YMMV - because our feature set looks slightly different - half users are in a mode where you have to do pushups to unlock distracting apps which really does tend to stick for people that opt in. (like this https://x.com/_oliver_hill/status/1825605422885253445)

> This isn't consistent with the data. I'm a cofounder of Clearspace and we see that when people make it through the first two weeks, they stick around for months or years.

And how many make it through the first two weeks? I'll take a guess and say less than 1%.

I can relate to this. I conducted UX experiment during my Master's in Human Computer Interaction which was testing an impact of various interventions to screen time and user perception. I observed very similar pattern, if it clicks it stays with the people. Of course the experiment was with small group, but still.

A good comparison I think are "self help" books. People are still reading them and those books are really helpful during certain times. While same ideas and concepts are circulating across those books.

I believe such kind of apps and software deserve to exist. Whatever helps people to make their lives better.

Well, I agree.

The fatigue from the screen is real.

What I'm trying to achieve here with the app is to give a set of tools that can help deal with this fatigue. Like adding a variety to the texts you see, changing the intensity of the pop-up screen, adding cooldown, or hard mode and schedules.

The Northstar is to adjust the nudge automatically based on the level of fatigue from the screen.

I know I'm far from it now. But I'm attempting. I'm changing the nudges often and their configuration manually for myself now. And it works for me and I believe it can help other folks as well.

That's it.

> There's not a single person (myself included) I have seen use screen time not automatically bypass the limitation instantly as it pops up.

You can take the more drastic approach and lock yourself out of your phone by changing it's unlock code and use a timelock [0] to prevent yourself from bypassing it for a given time. Works also with parental-control like Apps that require you to enter a password/code to unlock. No bypassing here.

[0]: lockmeout.online

The point is that people don't stick with it. Bypassable versions works just as well as this, for a day or two until it becomes slightly annoying. Full lockout will work for a day or two as well, until it becomes annoying. The bypass here is simply that you never use it again.

I think that's extremely dangerous and I would never consider this to be honest. My phone is my only phone, and I need to be able to call emergency services, or answer an important call, at unexpected times.

If I reached the point where I was comfortable literally being unable to use my phone for a period of time, I would just not have a phone or not carry it with me.

You literally can do both without entering your unlock code. That is the whole point, locked phones are pretty useful, but not to kill time.

You can even do more like make outgoing calls using Siri/Google Assistant, Take Photos/videos etc. This is default setting at least on iOS.

Right. Because these things require some thought and analysis if you truly think that you yourself are having issues with screen time or other attention-related issues.

I may or may not have that right now but I for sure did some years ago. And if you are having issues with your attention? Boy, loading on more stuff that you are supposed to “attend to” for sure does not help. Someone who is having self-reported issues with their attention is not going to see some automated mindfulness message and go, oh wait time to slow down and take a good gander at what I want to spend my attention on right now.

On the contrary that will just tire them more. Which makes them more susceptible to losing their awareness or attention.

But people who think there is one-weird-trick to fixing these issues are incapable of understanding the +1 attention problem: that loading more stuff onto the person is not going to help.

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