[HN Gopher] Phone addiction linked to over a dozen psychological...
___________________________________________________________________
Phone addiction linked to over a dozen psychological and physical
problems
Author : Shred77
Score : 131 points
Date : 2021-01-02 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cognitiontoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (cognitiontoday.com)
| ve55 wrote:
| phone addiction seems to be just a single subset of the
| addiction/improvement feedback loops we have in most industries:
| food addiction, sugar addiction, clickbait addiction, social
| media addiction, 'app'/phone addiction, video game addiction, and
| many, many more
| xenihn wrote:
| I'm addicted to the internet, not my phone. I used to spend 10+
| hours a day on a desktop. Then that time was split between my
| desktop and a laptop, after I got my first one. Then smartphones
| came out, and it's now split between a laptop and my phone.
| Hopefully the next phase is phone/wearables. I'm sure there are
| still people spending that much time on desktops to mess with VR,
| since you're still tethered to a computer.
| agreeablebut wrote:
| I find it easier to channel my internet use into creative, and
| productive outlets on my computer than on my phone.
| thatsamonad wrote:
| I'll second this. Here's an anecdote from just this morning:
|
| I sat down at my desktop with my coffee. The first thing I
| did was fire up Unity and Visual Studio to continue some work
| on learning about networked multiplayer games. I spent about
| 2 hours reading API documentation and prototyping different
| things. I came away feeling like I had learned something and
| was making progress on a thing I care about.
|
| After that I picked up my phone. I spent an hour scrolling
| through different news sites and jumping between apps. I came
| away feeling depressed, anxious, and like I just wasted an
| hour of my life on meaningless information consumption.
|
| I'm sure some people have the same experience on a
| desktop/laptop and others can use their phone for creative
| endeavors, but for me, personally, the differences in
| experience between the two environments is quite stark.
| tompazourek wrote:
| I have this similar as you do. Only I found out that my
| sleep suffers from spending time
| working/studying/learning/creating in the evenings. So I
| try to actively limit any of this creative or thinking
| activities in the evening... Works quite well for me, I
| sleep better.
| valuearb wrote:
| I'm waiting to watch or read the first story to postulate making
| smartphones illegal like drugs. Chinese Triads smuggling phones
| across border, massive gun battles between rival "phangs"
| fighting over turf, etc.
| cmehdy wrote:
| Phones aren't addictive on their own, and I can prove it in one
| step: just disable any ability to connect to the internet for a
| whole week and tell me your phone usage during that time.
|
| If nobody had phones the interest in them would fade for anyone
| being given a phone, because let's be honest here: how much
| content are you dealing with that hasn't involved using
| internet to access somebody ELSE's stuff? News is other people
| doing things, learning is other people teaching us, chatting is
| with other people, etc.
|
| I can perhaps see a sci-fi take on internet usage being given
| out through world-government prescriptions, rationed access to
| the "escape world". Which reminds me of the setting for Ready
| Player One and its slums, just without the fanservice and with
| a much more realistic and grim vibe.
| [deleted]
| ratww wrote:
| Would be a nice retcon to those pre-90s science fiction novels
| to explain why they don't have phones in them :)
| f430 wrote:
| Unlikely unless it starts becoming violent and challenges the
| government's monopoly on violence.
|
| It's not that drugs are of concern to citizens but the people
| involved in the supply side are essentially directly
| challenging the government in a market that it refuses to
| regulate.
|
| Whoever holds control over the apparatus for distributing
| violence the most efficiently and at large scale ultimately
| dictates the laws. Anybody posing a challenge to this basic low
| common denominator will become a target of the State which
| declares itself as the sole monopoly over violence.
|
| This is why I believe countries fight all the time, it is
| simply not enough to hold monopoly over your own borders, to
| maintain its "large security apparatus" it needs new threats
| otherwise it stops growing, losing momentum and many groups
| declaring their own autonomous zones will find it easy to
| challenge the government as we saw in Syria and Arab Spring
| countries.
| hammock wrote:
| Why would anyone do that? Smartphones make a whole lot of the
| economy a whole lot of money. I imagine there'd be a much
| bigger fight that over say, drugs or even AR-style rifles.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| I could see RSI for sure.
| pjmorris wrote:
| I'm sure I'm fine; I browse on my laptop, not a phone.
|
| /s
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I am really curious if this is markedly different from concerns
| people had about children wasting their time away reading books,
| as seen in Don Quijote for example.
| Shred77 wrote:
| Studies show that excessive phone use is linked to
| procrastination, suicide, spoilt sleep, food and water neglect,
| headaches, lower productivity, unstable relationships, poor
| physical health (eye strain, body-aches, posture, hand strain),
| and poor mental health (depression, anxiety, stress)
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Anecdotally I've come to hate my phone: I leave it at home as
| much as possible.
|
| Same for all social media. This is the only site I use that could
| be categorized like that.
| launderthis wrote:
| correlation does not equal causation. Phone addiction or internet
| addiction is a symptom not a cause. People are escaping to the
| internet becuase of the world we live in is cold.
|
| There is a new US marine commerical out that shows a kid
| wandering the street kind of lost in hyper interactive world. The
| commercial plays off of this internet addiction and data mining
| product selling. Then clips to them becoming a Marine and finding
| purpose. Its a good commercial because its actually something
| that is a problem and that the Marines do have an answer,
| although with a great cost.
|
| Brave New World predicted this. We are removed from community and
| it is scary so we find one on the internet and we go all in. The
| physical problems come with the fact that its not interactive but
| if there was a VR internet those could go away.
|
| That still wouldnt fix the problem that you might feel closer to
| someone across the world than someone right next to you. And that
| a Maga hat and Antifa supporter might be neighbors but want to
| kill eachother.
|
| My phone is that internet/phone addiction is not a problem its a
| solution. An escape from forever war all around us. Or you could
| join the Marines. I guess war is inescapable. Que the cranberries
| song.
| m00x wrote:
| You say that correlation doesn't equal causation, then throw
| out theories with no research to back it up.
|
| Could you be a bit more scientific with your argument?
| temporama1 wrote:
| > My phone is that internet/phone addiction is not a problem
| its a solution
|
| Funny that you've mistyped "phone" instead of "theory".
|
| Must be a Freudian phone.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Marines do have an answer, although with a great cost._
|
| Do you mean an individual cost or societal cost?
|
| I think one of the ironies about the human condition is that we
| value things that we've sacrificed toward much more than the
| things we have not. E.g., Marines have esprit de corps in part
| _because_ of their sacrifices not despite them.
|
| The strongest connections are often made through hardship. To
| think we can have that connection without a cost doesn't seem
| congruent with how we're wired
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _Brave New World predicted this. We are removed from
| community and it is scary so we find one on the internet and we
| go all in._ "
|
| That isn't how I remember Brave New World; it was about amusing
| ourselves to death with trivia instead of dealing with
| "important" things, but the sense of community in it was pretty
| strong - people grew up with and lived with the same local
| group of people, worked together, played Centrifugal Bumble-
| Puppy together, orgied together, and took soma to keep them all
| content. The main complaint they all had was why Bernard
| couldn't just be happy and join in the community.
|
| Brave New World celebrated the twist-reveal where Bernard
| learns that exile to Iceland isn't a gulag but is really
| joining a distant group of people who don't like the society
| and want to live their own way like he does. I'm never sure if
| that should be taken at face value, or if it was a lie and the
| place was really a prison camp, but let's assume it was an
| honest and accurate reveal - that would be the opposite of your
| complaint, Bernard was lost and scared at having no community,
| was pushed toward a remote one he might fit in, and the book is
| all about how great that is that he doesn't have to waste his
| life doing just what the people around him are doing and that
| he can feel closer aligned with a group across the world than
| someone right next to him, and should take advantage of that.
|
| > " _An escape from forever war all around us_ "
|
| The forever war was 1984, and that's not about Winston joining
| the Marines to find meaning in his life, it's about using the
| two minutes' hate to reinforce tribe membership by uniting
| everyone against a hate figure/group, and the strong (IngSoc)
| beating down the weak (objectors) until everyone is stamped
| into the same shape (boot on human face / industrial machine
| moulding stamp), the reveal at the end of 1984 isn't that
| Winston joined the Marines and escaped the forever war like
| Bernard escaped the trivia, it's that Winston _came to love Big
| Brother_ and agree with everything good that Big Brother is and
| was and always would be, it 's the equivalent of Bernard taking
| the soma and blending into the society and agreeing it was
| right all along, it's one or other of your Maga hat and Antifa
| supporter becoming overwhelmingly dominant, the state enforcing
| it, and the other being subsumed by it and liking it until
| there isn't anything else.
|
| > " _internet /phone addiction is not a problem its a solution.
| I guess war is inescapable._"
|
| Hence the Yin-Yang forever circling each other. There's no
| solution to whether white or black is better, or whether matter
| or energy is better, or whether hot is better than cold, both
| books posit an end - one that is either agreeable or
| disagreeable to the reader, but an end nonetheless - real life
| doesn't have ends it has circles, loops, repeats, back and
| forths, changing fortunes, ups and downs, births and deaths.
|
| Maga hat and Antifa supporter both love _their_ America, and
| their America doesn 't include murdering thy neighbor. They
| might "want to kill each other" but each would like the other
| one realising how dumb they are and changing sides.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > their America doesn't include murdering thy neighbor. They
| might "want to kill each other"
|
| Well, you can find a lot of message boards in which they
| fantasize about doing this. And it sells a lot of weapons.
| But the energy barrier is high; people like Kyle Rittenhouse
| cross it only rarely enough that they can be dismissed as
| isolated incidents. It's not every day that someone blows up
| a telephone exchange. Just another isolated incident.
| seibelj wrote:
| Escapism is intensely popular, it's behind the boom in video
| games, watching people stream themselves playing video games,
| super hero movies, scripted tv. OnlyFans let's you have a
| quasi-partner who takes your money and gives you intimacy.
| Instant gratification, and if you don't have what you want,
| just blame society for not giving it to you.
|
| What's great is that if you are a hard worker and have a long
| time horizon, it's never been easier to extract huge
| compensation. Wealthy people want to invest to make money
| without any effort, and learning hard stuff like computer
| science, mechanical engineering, biochemistry and pharma
| development, etc. takes a tough decade of study and practice to
| get skilled enough to really kill it. But once you are an
| expert you can produce actual stuff that matters and investors
| can't find enough smart and talented people willing to actually
| do stuff, so the premium paid to those that can make
| entertainment, life saving drugs, productivity-increasing tech,
| and so on gets ever higher.
|
| Bet on making stuff for the Netflix box and drugs that keep fat
| people alive longer, and fun games that distract people from
| reality.
| amelius wrote:
| > Its a good commercial because its actually something that is
| a problem and that the Marines do have an answer
|
| Perhaps we should bring back a year of mandatory military
| service. Or some other kind of mandatory community service.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Peace Corp or something like that. I can't remember the name
| of the gorup that was started during the depression that put
| people to work doing things like building the national parks
| and other type of things. These groups provided jobs, life
| experience outside what ever town you grew up in, and could
| be a good solve for today's situation.
| gshubert17 wrote:
| CCC Civilian Conservation Corps
| [deleted]
| pueblito wrote:
| We never HAD a year of mandatory military service to bring
| back
| danhak wrote:
| > Phone addiction or internet addiction is a symptom not a
| cause.
|
| It can be a feedback loop, too. We know with certainty that
| social media companies design their apps and websites in
| addictive ways.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > Phone addiction or internet addiction is a symptom not a
| cause
|
| Correlation does not imply causation, but that doesn't mean
| that it can't be causation.
| hndudette2 wrote:
| It's not even that they're asserting that there's no
| causation in that quote, they're rather asserting that the
| causation is backwards, which is also undemonstrated.
| fsckboy wrote:
| well ok, but while we are on the subject, we have no proof of
| any causation anywhere in the universe, all we have is the
| correlation that we've never seen (for example) gravity
| repel, only attract.
| fastball wrote:
| Not really true. If two things are _strictly_ correlative,
| that means there is an additional factor causing both.
|
| If you eliminate all reasonable additional factors (by
| controlling variables), you can demonstrate causation.
| Arguing that there can be unknowable external factors
| behind everything is not very scientific.
|
| Identifying causal relationships involving humans is
| difficult due to the excessively multivariate nature of all
| our interactions, and by extension how difficult it is to
| "control" humans (as opposed to water, or a wheel). That
| does not mean it is impossible to ever demonstrate
| causation.
| User23 wrote:
| Leibniz denies the existence of causation in his
| Monadology[1]. In short, everything acts solely according
| to its own nature without any interaction with anything
| else, but in a harmonious way that creates the illusion
| of causation. That strikes me as a bit far fetched, but
| it does show that accepting the existence of causation is
| a metaphysical choice and not necessary.
|
| [1] https://plato-philosophy.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2016/07/The-...
| dash2 wrote:
| Causation means something more specific than that, and we
| have plenty of good examples. Any randomized controlled
| trial can show causation.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I agree except some things are actually addicting. Phones are
| dopamine slot machines that fit in your pocket so that you
| can't escape.
|
| I think it's both. People seek an escape and phone apps are
| extremely addicting.
| Technically wrote:
| > correlation does not equal causation.
|
| Ok, but where is your argument that this is positive for mental
| health? Why show up half-assed? Brave new world is obviously a
| dystopia.
|
| > but if there was a VR internet those could go away.
|
| What the fuck? Are you serious or just have no clue how other
| humans work?
| scythe wrote:
| >And that a Maga hat and Antifa supporter might be neighbors
| but want to kill eachother.
|
| You seem to be ignoring the possibility that these people come
| to these ideologies _because_ of the Internet, which leads to
| the hollowing-out of community coherence that you mention.
| throwaway92389 wrote:
| > a Maga hat and Antifa supporter might be neighbors but want
| to kill each other
|
| There's even a dedicated reddit for this fallacy.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| itronitron wrote:
| Tell Your Children >>
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness
| abledon wrote:
| Just Say No (to clash of clans)
| landongn wrote:
| phone addiction is not the problem, application addiction and
| products built around addictive loops are the problem.
| olefoo wrote:
| Is it the phone people are addicted to, or the media available
| through it?
|
| Especially Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Twitter. All of
| which seem designed to cultivate obsessive compulsive behavior in
| their users with social proof, intermittent rewards and a builtin
| hedonic treadmill.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| We didn't have these issues back in the early 2000s. Cause of
| price and the average person didn't use a computer as often as
| they do now. That's because there was barely anything to soon
| them then.
| tompazourek wrote:
| I myself spent a lot of time on the computer back then,
| mostly playing computer games. And I remember how everyone
| talked about how addictive and bad computer games were.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| given that most phones are designed in such a way that running
| anything other than curated apps on it is fairly difficult the
| distinction is quite blurry.
|
| The phones and the operating software they run are built to
| discourage anything that isn't media consumption or passive app
| use.
| maybenotafart wrote:
| on android, you can set your phone to grayscale (night time
| mode). This helps with the fact that the bright colors
| subconsciously lure you in
| [deleted]
| Noos wrote:
| Given this is Hacker News, I await the solution of LSD-assisted
| therapy to counter phone addiction to be proposed soon.
| liquidify wrote:
| What a terrible thing to be addicted to... it's a small box that
| spies on you and gives you almost nothing in return. I cancelled
| my cell phone service 8 years ago and it was the best thing I've
| ever done for myself.
| furstenheim wrote:
| Something that I've found useful when meeting someone in real
| life, I take an old phone that's only capable of making calls.
| That way I avoid any possible communication issues, but I don't
| get distracted at all.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| The problem is that people under the age of 40 or so don't
| communicate via phone calls in the first instance. So a phone
| is not a means to communicate with them and you don't avoid any
| possible communication issues.
|
| Your lunch meeting is telling you on Slack that they're going
| to be late. You think you have no 'possible communication
| issues' but you're mistaken.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >The problem is that people under the age of 40 or so don't
| communicate via phone calls in the first instance.
|
| Where on Earth are you getting this information? You've made
| a an unsupported claim that I was able to debunk by talking
| to the four tables around me. What's your source for "people
| under the age of 40 or so don't communicate via phone calls?"
| furstenheim wrote:
| What I do is tell the other person to reach me on a call if
| there's any change of plans. That's been enough. Also in case
| we don't see each other.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What happens to any text messages or iMessages that you receive
| while your SIM card is in your other phone? Do they still end
| up showing in your conversation history on your main device?
| furstenheim wrote:
| What I do is to tell the other person that I'll be using this
| other number and to call me if there's any change of plans.
|
| Edit: I actually have two phone numbers. So the new phone is
| still at home receiving everything
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-02 23:00 UTC)