Show HN: Detecting Doomscrolling with Computer Vision

github.com

2 points·andrewrn··3 comments

Hi HN. I built this computer vision pipeline recently to detect when I am wasting my life away on my phone. I've been wanting to dip my toes into computer vision and this ended up being a really fun project that works surprisingly well.

Uses YOLOv11 for pose estimation and object detection as well as OpenCV.

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> this ended up being a really fun project that works surprisingly well.

Were you not able to detect the doomscrolling when you were doing it before building this? Just curious why a person would need to be told when they're doing a behavior that makes them feel bad.

I mean, yeah, I would feel bad after spending a lot of time doing it. But part of why its so insidious is that its mostly unconscious in the moment, so the idea here is that you could get some help with that unconscious aspect. This is kinda like asking why people get addicted to drugs... social media and a lot of internet content is designed to target domapine and your limbic system, out of reach of our higher reasoning.

I guess I'm not in the target market. I will hit the home screen and uninstall an app the very second I notice it's making me feel gross/addicted.

A lot of people in my close groups use instagram, but it's too hard to use that app in a healthy way for my kind of brain. So I miss out on some funny reels, but I don't mess around dipping my toe into things that aren't good for me.

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