'Gentle parenting' my smartphone addiction | Hacker News Reader

'Gentle parenting' my smartphone addiction

newyorker.com

64 pointsfortran7744 comments

thanks

I wonder how many of us think we're above all this but still come to HN religiously. I definitely do. Every damn day.

I think about this a lot. Friends and colleagues consume their daily media from feeds via instagram, tiktok and youtube nonstop.

I pretentiously/foolishly like to think of myself as a slightly higher class of content consumer, because my media isn't algorithmically sourced; its 'high end', organically and ethically sourced from select artisanal hand-crafted subreddit queries or vote-curated headlines like HN.

Maybe it's not as big of a difference as I'd like to imagine.

Depends on how you look at it. It is different. HN or sites like reddit are focused on topics while other networks like insta are way more focused on people and their relationships. The incentives are different.

Don't take it personally, but I won't remember your username after writing this comment. I think an addiction can be just as bad, but different type of platforms probably fill different wants and needs.

Although HN has its share of prominence as well.

This is one of the only places I see real conversation still happening, though.

Is this a paid placement? It seems kinda unusual for the NY to name an app on the home page, and there doesn't seem to be anything unique about Opal vs other blocker apps.

could be. or it could just a situation of picking something and moving on with their day. especially as you say, there doesn’t seem to be anything unique vs many similar apps.

this is exactly the kind of thing i appreciate. where if i’m taking the limited amount of time i have in my day, im choosing to browse through something, i don’t need decision fatigue on something like this. just recommend me the thing that you know works (and is pretty much the same as others that also work) so i can move on with my day.

someone recommending something doesn’t mean it’s somehow the only choice out there, it’s just curation. we could all use less decision fatigue, particularly if it’s one of those things where they’re all so similar to each other.

Yes it is a paid placement and a fictional story

I have a 30 minute hourglass that I put on my phone beside me on my desk. I can still see and read notifications or change the song but I'm not allowed to pickup my phone and actually use it.

Not surprising that a magazine that has been called a $12,000 espresso machine turned into a periodical only mentions iPhone apps, but if you're an Android, there are also a lot of good apps for this.

For locking you out of apps based on time, location, or usage, Lock Me Out is really good. You can get most of what you need out of it without paying anything, which can't be said for a lot of the others. (Am I really going to pay a subscription for this? Yuck.)

I couple it with Olauncher, which also doesn't need a subscription.

I'm not affiliated with either, but just those that have worked well for me.

I use blocksite to help with avoiding the mobile browser versions of these services as well. another one where you can get most of what you need for free and while of course you can always undo something you did the extra few seconds it takes to unblock facebook is often time enough for me to determine whether I'm actually using it for a purpose or dopamine regulating.

Thank you. Are there any equivalent analogues for desktop browser doom scrolling?

Leechblock NG [1] allows you to block sites on a schedule or add time limits.

[1] https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/

This is somewhat tangential, but related: if you are savvy enough to setup some self-hosted apps, I have used FreshRSS (along with some related extensions/plugins) to great effect in an effort to remove the direct influence of algorithms and endless scrolling.

With some tweaks, I can even use it to maintain subscriptions to YouTube channels and social media feeds. It’s maybe a subtle distinction, but I feel like having a very prosaic, chronological list of posts/articles/videos promotes healthier habits for consuming them.

Create a separate, non-admin user account that is controled by any parental control apps, parental proxy filters etc. and use that one for work or during leisure time. You can then time-lock your admin- or parental control password using an online time lock service such as lockmeout.online or other solutions.

if you're on a mac or linux you can always edit /etc/hosts to redirect traffic to localhost, effectively killing the site on your local machine

for MacOs https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol

This barely works for me because it seems like stuff always gets cached either at the browser or the OS level.

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts ditto.

https://freedom.to/ Works everywhere for me.

I switched to Lock Me Out recently, much better than the others I've tried.

I just looked through it and noticed that one of the options for unlocking access is paying Lock Me Out an amount of money that you configure. So like "to help myself with my Reddit addiction, I'll pay $5 every time I open Reddit."

Now THERE's a business model. Hot damn.

That's amazing lol, great idea

> Am I really going to pay a subscription for this?

You pay a subscription to kill your subscriptions whilst your in queue for your subscriptions to get more for your addictions...

If your smart enough to ask no. If your not gullible enough to have your action taken from you, no. If you're too childish to believe a habit is an addiction yes, if you're too stupid to know the difference yes, and if you're a fool you'll simply pay for the pro plus version.

I believe Opal is coming to Android.

I recently set up a system for myself using some cheap NFC tags and Tasker that:

1. Has a "lock" tag next to my bad that scans when I place my phone down on my night stand

This disables all the apps on my phone that I consider distracting/harmful/etc.

2. Has an "unlock" tag that I scan next to the kitchen sink where I take my morning pill (could just as easily be in the bathroom for brushing my teeth etc).

This forces me to at least get out of bed before I can use time-sucking apps. It's a small thing, but baby steps is kinda what I was looking for, and it's noticeably decreased the number of days where I laze in bed for longer than I meant to in the morning. It's been ~2 months and still going well.

Just curious. Is it absolutely necessary to have the phone in your bedroom? My partner struggled for a long time with being “unable to sleep” until I pointed out that I also can’t sleep due to the dim blue light coming from the other side of the bed.

So we made a rule. Leave the phones elsewhere. Ever since we’ve been sleeping through the night.

What's absurdly ironic about these smartphone addiction apps is that * they're smartphone apps*. They require you to use your smartphone in order to use them. Far more effective, I imagine, would be anything else at all: ditching your smartphone, replacing it with a dumbphone, doing an unplugging retreat, doing a "dopamine fast," or simply taking up a new hobby that's more healthy, like writing or reading on paper.

Such a strange article, why mention Opal by name. There are so many other free alternatives and opal is over 120 dollars a year. Basically saying if you got money you can solve that addiction.

I need to pay for a New Yorker subscription to see some native advertising for an app I need to pay for that claims to combat information addiction

You can just not pay them and not read it. You’ll be fine if you don’t read it.

<!—- Insert joke about subscribing to the New Yorker and never finding time to read it —->

Christ, what an asshole!

They can also complain and make snarky comments. You don't have to read them or comment. You'll be fine if you don't.

> They can also complain and make snarky comments.

On HN the snark is specifically frowned upon. From the Guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

I know, right?. The audacity of publishers expecting to be paid for work they do.

There is fair and documented product placement, and then there is native advertisement. This is the latter, undoubtedly.

As someone that doesn't pay a dime for news, this sort of article leaves me pretty content with my investment.

They already do get paid, that’s why they sell all their readers out to advertising. They need MORE money?

The mixed funding model of customers paying directly + funding with advertisement has been a thing for decades. Chomsky commented on it in Manufacturing Consent published in 1988 and iirc it had already been a thing then for decades at that point.

In short publications that supplemented with advertising out-competed the alternatives that took a larger fee. Blame price sensitive customers' willingness to pay, not the publications.

Yeah they do. The readership is the product to be marketed towards. The clients are the advertisers. That is why they don’t go subscription free with a higher ad rate: their real clients would leave.

It was understandable back when they, like, delivered news and stuff. But they don't deliver news now, just advertising. Why pay for extra advertising?

"Apple makes money from iPhones and they are charging for Airpods and Macbooks as well. They need MORE money?"

What a weird take.

The existence of the Macbook does not really degrade the UX of an iPhone.

Either way, if there's too many ads in a paid publication, don't subscribe to it.

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