Adults and teens concerned about their screen time are turning in their smartphones for “dumber” models.
Buried in the settings of many smartphones is the option to look up how much on average you are staring at your phone per day.
It can bring an uncomfortable realisation, that what was supposed to be a useful piece of technology has become an obsession.
…
According to a study by Harvard University, using social networking sites lights up the same part of the brain that is also triggered when taking an addictive substance. This has raised concerns about phone habits among youth.
In the UK, research by Ofcom estimates that around a quarter of children aged five to seven years old now have their own smartphone.
Links have been shown in some studies between use of social media and a negative effect on mental health - especially in children.
Apparently it’s not possible to own a smart device and just not install Facebook 🤷♂️🤷♂️🤷♂️
I know you’re joking but mine won’t let me uninstall it, and get this, “disable” won’t work either! Samsung S9 (quite old now) btw if anyone reading this wants to avoid.
It sounds like your issue is more of a user thing and not a technical thing. Can you not root the device and install Graphene or a clean Android OS without the Samsung crap? I feel this is 100% solvable. But then I don’t buy Samsung garbage, so maybe out of the loop.
Also, Facebook needs an account. So another option is to just not have one. I haven’t had Fb since leaving college back in 2015. Doesn’t affect my life in the least.
Rooting has always been beyond most users, even if it’s technically trivial. It’s definitely solvable, unfortunately most solutions in this direction tend to draw attention of corporate legal teams.
even if it’s technically trivial
I wouldn’t call it trivial. I’ve seen my mom use a phone and you’d be amazed how much stuff isn’t trivial to anyone over 50.
So funny story about the S9 it’s only some of them are actually rootable because you can only unlock the bootloader on some of them I happen to have one currently typing this on it and let me tell you it is kind of right pain in the ass to deal with these phones and Custom os’s. Android 13 on this is a mess trying to install. Forget updates that’s are basically like reinstalling my current crdroid I have to do a whole bunch of jiggery Pokery in magisk creating a new patched loader beforinstalling some things can onlybefastboote installed like the is in crdroids case.
Never liked Samsung. No idea how they sold so many handsets with their cringy anti Apple ads. Bottom line barrel company imo that only makes decent panels and good SSDs.
They are a Korean chaebol and have been involved in a ton of legal drama. The most notable one was avoiding the cost of safety masks and suits but forcing recent graduates to work in unsafe conditions giving them leukaemia or worse. They denied it and it took about 3 years for them to finally be found at fault.
I wouldn’t use their stuff just on moral grounds. Always heard their droids were filled with bloatware and lacked support. Sucks you fell into their trap. Godspeed
I’ve had a galaxy phone on and off since the s2. Actually mine was the epic 4g “s2” for sprint. Loved it others than the wimax it was a perfect device… S3 was the same. Went through 6 of those over time had all the colors. Loved my panda phone s3 made outta all my spare parts. The note 4 /s5 was thee pinicale point in my opinion of the phones them selves others then the USB 3.0 version 1 rember way back when it was just a dolled up USB 2.0 port with a added bit for the 3.0 pinning. You could still use your 2.0 micro cables with them to charge or transfer files just obviously at 2.0 speeds and levels.
Can you not root the device and install Graphene or a clean Android OS without the Samsung crap
The real issue is that you shouldn’t have to go through all that in the first place.
I’m not the one that bought a Samsung phone. I don’t get people. Don’t buy their shit. Did someone hold a gun to your head? Do a bit of research if that shit is important to you. I bet half of you don’t even know what you’re arguing about amongst yourselves.
Also, you dont need to buy a nice ferrari. Just get a cheap Toyota Tercel from facebook and then start replacing body, drivetrain, engine and interior with ferrari parts. I feel this is 100% solvable. But then I don’t buy cars, so maybe out of the loop.
This is the Andy Dick of metaphors
With an S9, you can probably just remove it via ADB. I know after a certain update they make it hard to remove stock apps via ADB, but some are still possible.
Rooting is a technical thing, not a user thing. You should not need to perform a complex and risky task like Rooting, to make a phone usable. It should come that way with those options to uninstall facebook by default.
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Also saves a bunch of money. You can keep a dumb phone hooked up for less than $20/mo, while smart phone plans can be 3-5x that price.
What’s Facebook?
I think it’s an 17th century vessel that primarily ships spices
What’s Facebook?
Brain poison.
I looked into this before, but I found the options were too stripped down.
Ultimately I need:
- Maps
- Music streaming
- Web browser
- Wallet functionality
Then there are miscellaneous apps that I need as well, some that don’t have browser functionality (local bike rental app) or something like a workout tracker.
Thing is, if you start adding functionality for the above then it’s just a regular smart phone and there’s nothing stopping you using the apps you’re trying to avoid :/
Are people really so addicted to social media that they can’t use their own willpower to simply not have those apps installed?
Yes!
It’s a problem that a lot of people have, some are willing to acknowledge it and try to take steps to work around it.
Some people were born into the social media generation and have been fed a product designed to be addictive their entire lives.
I don’t really understand poor self control, but I concede it exists and many people have it.
I can’t really imagine what it’s like to decide to do a thing and then just… don’t. Not like “I decided to run a mile and discovered I physically couldn’t”, but “I decided to uninstall the app and then I just didn’t”
Who’s in charge? What’s happening in there?
Whoa dude, these are questions nobody’s ever asked before!
Try reading a book or something, damn… This shit has been talked about and studied to death, you don’t need to hypothesize.
Or just see if you can hold your breath until you die. You can’t? WHO’S IN CONTROL? Spooky.
It’s not poor self control. It’s addiction. Some people reinstall Instagram for the same reason some people light another cigarette.
Preeeeaaaccchhhh!!!
I don’t really understand addiction. I’m not denying it exists, but I haven’t experienced it firsthand so I struggle to imagine what it’s like.
I feel like I’m in charge of my decisions and I can’t imagine otherwise. Is it like you black out and suddenly you’re outside with a smoke?
I like to compare addiction with hunger. You are feeling bad when you have it and only eating will get you feel comfortable again. Also it is hard to fast. It’s difficult to not eat something.
You are most likely not making the decision " I am eating now so my body has something to process" more in the line of “I’m hungry. I don’t want to feel hungry, therefore I’m going to eat”
(edit) And you are absolutely able to get yourself sick that way, depending what you eat and how.
Imagine having the worst flu you’ve ever had. It feels like you’re dying. And there is literally only one thing that will help and taking it will instantly cure you.
You’re going to do what you can to get that thing. It’s a difficult urge to fight, especially when it feels like life or death (and in the case of alcohol and benzos, it can be).
Your body dictates that you do things all of the time… You can only hold in your piss and shit for so long before it starts to harm you. You need to eat food. You need oxygen, and cannot hold your breath until you die. Your body has tons of “reflexes” that cause you to do things outside of your control all of the time.
I responded to your other comment, but I like this question too. I haven’t been addicted to a substance, but I can firmly say for other things that the answer is “No”. I’m not blacked out, I’m completely present when I’m making this choice, but sometimes there’s a constant justification of “ok I’ll do it this last time and tomorrow is when I’ll resist it.” And you keep doing that. And that voice gets weaker over time to where you just start accepting that this is what you do now. And that often comes with self-loathing and frustration.
The psychology term is “locus of control”. It’s used to describe how much control a person has over their life, with an internal locus of control more associated with taking personal responsibility. Like “I see a mountain, I’m going to climb it” versus an external locus such as “I can never get ahead at work because my boss is mean to me, it doesn’t matter what I do”.
Since the article says smartphone addiction triggers a chemical response similar to drug addiction, it’s helpful to look at addiction resources for some answers to your question. As fyi, the reason you’re getting downvoted use because it could be perceived that you lack empathy for others who can’t control themselves but based on your question and other comments, it seems like you’re actually just curious about the topic.
When you asked “who’s in charge”, it was insightful because a number of articles about addiction ask that same question. Eg:
https://recovery.org/pro/articles/whos-in-charge-you-or-your-addiction/
Thanks. I’ve heard of locus of control before (as opposed to locust of control, which sounds rather metal).
My mother was always late for work. She’d say it was because of the traffic lights, or the coffee took too long to make, or whatever. I’d be like “just start getting ready for work 15 minutes earlier” and she’d act like I was a crazy asshole. She has a very external locus of control. Things happen to her for no reason, and nothing she’s done has any connection. Drives me crazy.
I do struggle with empathy but I’m working on it.
That’s kinda… odd
Not relating to poor self control at all sounds like being dishonest with yourself or some sorta personality disorder.
Poor self control at times is like a fundamental part of being human. I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t had poor self control at times, even these “self control” guru people talk about it as something that’s always there but you need to overcome it.
Maybe we’re not talking about quite the same thing, or I communicated badly?
There was a forum I liked and used every day, but then for reasons that aren’t important I decided to not use it anymore. For weeks I still thought about the site and would accidentally start typing the URL sometimes. But I’d committed to leaving, so I left.
It sucked but it wasn’t hard in the same way that running a mile or doing calculus is hard.
Or like when a family member was a huge asshole I really wanted to just let them have it. But I didn’t, because that would’ve made things worse. But I guess I understand how you might decide to just let loose there.
So I guess I do understand it better than my previous post.
Maybe the problem for me is not really getting it when it’s about, like, doing the dishes. Or going to work on time. Things that seem so easy to me they don’t even register as a self control check.
Well, that’s the difference. At different points in my life I’ve had varying levels of self-control. You have a higher bar than I do right now for what requires a self-control check.
My username is what it is for a reason. I don’t think being on a site like this improves my health or mentality in any way, yet here I am. I still go on Reddit on a desktop when I’m working almost out of habit, even though I’m kicking myself mentally the whole time I’m scrolling. I wake up, say “30 more minutes” to myself knowing full well that will make me start work later, less prepared, hungry, and unshowered and I’ll have to work later into the night (when I work from home). I watch YouTube until 1 am or later most nights because I don’t want to sleep even though I’m tired and I know it will make my day miserable tomorrow. Dishes are piling up because I say I’ll get to it later.
People have different thresholds for this and at other times in my life I could just shut off many of these urges. Right now, because of my mental health, that ability for self control is near zero. Just think of that push-back you get when you say to yourself you’re going to go for a run and imagine that push-back to be stronger and applied to literally anything that requires effort or mental presence.
Yes. That’s how addictions work.
We are on social media right now
It’s not strictly social media. It’s boredom. We’re basically using these things to groom ourselves to have attention problems.
And in the end it’s not that they can’t, but they actually have absolutely no reason to want to. There’s no immediate or probably even no intermediate consequence to sitting down on TikTok for 2 hours. You get your serotonin boost and nothing bad happened.
Of course you could have spent the time constructively, learn a new skill, cleaned the bathroom, but those are the exact opposite of getting that serotonin boost.
Are people really so addicted to social media that they can’t use their own willpower to simply not have those apps installed?
So-called “”“social media”“” is something that was a good idea in the beginning, but when you live in a capitalist society that has businesses that chant “profit above all else” every day, sucking money out of peoples’ wallets becomes more important than being responsible to society as a whole. So social media sites like Facebook go out of their way to make using it as addictive as possible. Then they scrape your posts and what you’re looking at to profile you and use that data to sell ad space to other companies, and you get “”'targeted"“” ads shoved in your face. Something like Facebook literally can’t stop making themselves as addictive as possible to the end users because that’s how Zuckerberg makes his billions. Meanwhile none of them really care what this does to our society and civilization.
Mm… You don’t have a single thing in your life where you struggle with self control?
Really?
It’s a completely foreign concept to you?
Instead of asking us, perhaps define addiction for us first, and how it corresponds to willpower.
I would miss the camera the most
I do have a nice camera but it’s a lot to carry around
Except for, you know, not installing the apps on your phone.
Just uninstall the apps you’re trying to avoid
Well yeah but then it’s back to the addictive aspect. That’s like telling a heroin addict to carry around all the supplies for heroin in his pocket but just don’t do heroin. People trying to recover from heroin probably shouldn’t keep heroin in their pockets.
It’s actually the opposite of that. It’s like telling a guy to not carry supplies around in his pocket. Sure, he can always buy more if he wants, but at least that’s an extra step.
If you want to reinstall the apps you can but at least they’re not readily available
Without knowing anything about you or your habits, I’m going to offer a counterpoint -
I’d suggest you don’t need music streaming, email, or a fitness tracker built into your phone. “Back in the day” we’d have a small collection of tapes / CDs in the car for trips, most (all?) email providers offer decent web apps, and while I agree it’s useful to track steps and food intake and such - anymore I’m not sure I trust the makers of these fitness apps to not sell my health data.
Personally, I’m trying to move towards a “dumb phone”, but like you I use my phone for a lot more than just social media & I’m finding it very tough. I think a phone with just a decent web browser could do the trick.
But I want music streaming. I am not going to buy a cd player just so I can listen to music on the train.
Also even if I had a car there is no way I’m buying CDs (or tapes if you can even buy or listen to them anywhere) for everything I want to listen to. That would be prohibitively expensive.
But personally I don’t use social media that much. I pretty much only use Lemmy and Reddit and very occasionally Instagram.
but I want music streaming
Hey, that’s fine & I get it - so much easier to shuffle a playlist than figure out which album you won’t mind hearing front-to-back again. I’m eyeballing old iPod Classics for that - I’ve seen folks mod them with sizable drives and better batteries. Dunno that I want to put in the effort, myself, but I love the idea of “upcycling” old tech.
Getting back to my original reply: my main point was you don’t need these conveniences, much less having them built into your phone. Yep, music streaming is wonderfully handy & I use it every day, but practically speaking there are other methods.
Getting back to my original reply: my main point was you don’t need these conveniences, much less having them built into your phone. Yep, music streaming is wonderfully handy & I use it every day, but practically speaking there are other methods.
True, but I don’t need a phone either.
Or well I actually do because of the digital ID we use where I live but apart from that I never really need to talk to anyone.
I have a work phone (iPhone SE) and I do need that one, but I won’t install social media on that one anyways even though we are allowed to use it as a personal phone and even transfer our personal mobile number to the company. The only restriction on the work mobile is that no TikTok is allowed. A lot of the employees do use the work phone that way, but I refuse.
It’s 2024, a lot of people haven’t stored music locally for a decade or even longer. You are likely asking them to completely build a music library from scratch. This is no small task and it requires constant attention to keep up to date if you’re into new music.
I got a couple hundred gigs I collected over the years, and haven’t touched it or added to it since streaming was viable.
was exactly in the same boat until about a year ago when I got sick of Spotify’s shit and the way they treat artists, so I slowly rebuilt my library and run it through my Plex server. I ultimately want to get over to Jellyfin, but it was more important to me to have something that my family can access without much fuss since they are not as technically inclined as I am. If there’s too much friction they’re just going to default to Spotify and such lol
I paid for google music from release till they killed it. Now I just use YouTube since its free and has the neiche stuff. No point in paying if an adblocker can make it tolerable.
Still dependent on google/YT and adblockers, so I’d start working on a backup plan!
The only other option is to torrent everything but thats a bit of a pain. If YouTube can stop me from blocking ads, they would have actually done it by now.
I don’t understand why you don’t just uninstall what you don’t need?
This is what I don’t get. Just don’t use social media on your phone. I don’t have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. on my phone. But the camera, maps, music and audiobooks, email, calendar, digital wallet, etc. are invaluable to me. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Just don’t buy more heroin. Addicition solved. Why didn’t anyone think of that?
Not counting my last job, which issued everyone iPhones (because of a proprietary app necessary to do the job), I’ve never owned a smartphone – and likely never will. For me goes way beyond any ‘addiction’ issues, into technical issues about the nature of the OS the manufacturers install on them, and how the telecom companies manage them. Also the ongoing cost to operate, which again is an issue with the telecom companies. If these devices had been more ‘open’ to start with I might have one, but they’re not, and without getting into the list of reasons why, it’s all just a deal-breaker and a headache I can do without.
Also as others are saying: I have two $40 clamshell phones, and while they run Android, they have no internet connectivity at all, just basic phone service and texting – and service costs me all of $40 a month for both.
… using social networking sites lights up the same part of the brain that is also triggered when taking an addictive substance.
I can absolutely believe this. When I was having trouble quitting nicotine one of the ways I’d distract myself was to just sit and scroll bullshit on my phone. I can say without a doubt that it was hitting some of the same spots as the addiction I was trying to quit, for sure
I’m addicted to Lemmy, send help!
I’m not sure 19 days is enough to get hooked.
It was mostly meant to be a joke lol
Carl is that you? Oh wait, I thought you said Lenny, sorry.
I only use Lemmy with turned off scores and it still is somewhat above just a habit. It really makes wonders for being not addicted though when you don’t see if someone gives you points/likes or not. That was always what fucked with my brain the most and for me it is a single thing that changes addiction to just a habit.
Some folks want to see the world crumble, some dont
Social media? My phone is in my hand all day so I can play Word Cookies.
And you can have my Word Cookies app when you pry it from my cold, dead… um… cloud backup?
The 35k comments in 11 months says otherwise.
You mean the comments I make while sitting at a computer? The comments I make because I am seriously ill and not working and have very low energy and thus are not able to do much else?
Sorry my wanting to have the small amount of human contact I have outside my own family on a daily basis is so offensive to you.
Didn’t say it was offensive. Just pointing out that you are, in fact, using a lot of social media.
no one thinks you said it was offensive, but you sure were flippant/“gotcha“ about it.
OP absolutely thought so. Their exact words were “Sorry my wanting to have the small amount of human contact I have outside my own family on a daily basis is so offensive to you.”.
That’s not even what I was implying. I don’t care how much someone uses social media. I saw a comment on a social media platform about not using social media and couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Then I clicked their profile and saw that they’re averaging more than 100 comments a day for almost a year.
Was it flippant? Absolutely. Was it a gotcha moment? Maybe, but only in the sense that I was planning on pointing out the hypocrisy in implying they don’t use social media on a social media platform, and instead found the exact kind of social media addict that the article describes
You should probably rethink how you communicate if you have to write all of this just to try and prove you were not being rude/kind of a jerk.
If anything I need to rethink how I communicate that I’m not offended by people using social media, but I am offended by hypocrisy. I thought for sure that’s what I typed out. I don’t care that it came off as rude.
You’re a cunt
Cool
I never said I wasn’t. So it sounds to me more like you wanted to point it out for another reason.
You caught me. I’m biased against people who play Word Cookies.
People sure seem hell-bent on giving me shit on a regular basis for posting a lot, so I’m sorry if I assumed that was your intent.
I think you may have flown off the handle a little bit but I definitely got a “gotcha“ vibe out of their comment so I don’t blame you for being irritated
Man, you really blew the fuck up over a tiny comment. Is this why you have zero social contact? Because youre an asshole?
If you’re interested in pairing down the functionality of your current phone, the app Freedom can be used to block specific apps for a set amount of time. Self-control is a limited resource, and it takes the need to use willpower out of your hands.
Got a dumb phone a few weeks back. Definitely helped on that front.
It’s just really hard to find a decent MP3 player to go along with it these days.
Phones still pre-infected with anti-libre software, software we don’t control.
When’s the last time Tor, OBS, NewPipe or F-Droid abused us, exploited us? Never, they don’t fail to include a libre software license text file, like AGPL.
absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s not that those softwares are noble, they’re just decentralized. I will say it’s impressive that Tor doesn’t have some people pulling the strings trying to take over (but it’s probably the NSA right?)
OBS is decentralised? Not the first word I would pick.
is it not open source? That helps to decentralize power though powerful figures can still appear in those spaces too, like (benevolent) Torvalds on the Linux kernel
That’s not really what people mean by decentralized in this space but I get what you mean
It’s libre software.
?
It’s distributed under the GNU General Public License v2 (or any later version) - see the accompanying COPYING file for more details.
Yes
