iPhone de-distraction and retro tech

[eyoungren]

I understand your point but I don't agree. The person with alcoholism knows they shouldn't have a drink because they won't be able to stop at just one, and they don't like what it does to them. Abstinence is how they manage it.

It isn't practical to completely prevent somebody with alcoholism from gaining access to it. Even if they never go into a bar, alcohol is available at restaurants and, in many localities, in convenience stores and grocery stores. The person still has to say no, I'm not going to have a drink today.

Likewise, for someone who is addicted to social media, it's perfectly valid for them to manage it by deleting their accounts and not participating. They can delete the apps from their phone, but they can still access most services through a browser. Like the alcohol in restaurants and grocery stores, it takes an act of willpower for the person to say no, I'm not going to log into ____ today.

The analogy between alcoholism and social media addiction isn't superfluous. Both affect peoples relationships, moods, self esteem, and many other factors in their daily lives.

It comes down to the person. I like being online or on a computer from the time I get up to the time I go to bed, but since 1980 I've also learned to prioritize things and manage it. I'm also not really affected by alcohol. I can barely drink the stuff and half a beer will make me fall asleep. I lost track of the last time I had anything to drink - over 10 years ago I think. I don't really get any sort of urge. The harder stuff just burns and I already have acid reflux so I don't need that.

But you put soda in front of me and that's a problem. And as I get older my body's tolerance for the stuff gets less and less while my desire for it has not diminished. So, I don't bring soda into the house and I don't order it when out.

If that and alcoholism is the sort of attraction someone has towards social media then eliminating the issue is reasonable I think. But not for me. Because, while I do engage in social media (MacRumors, Reddit), it doesn't control me. And any device that's going to limit me in that way, is not going to be purchased by me.

 

[SpotOnT]

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, but if simply not participating is the best solution for someone, then that’s their choice.

I completely agree. In fact, that is exactly what I said in my third paragraph. Perhaps you missed it?

The conversation you have entered is not about judging how people should manage their life. I think we can all agree that people should do whatever works best for them.

i can fully respect someone who doesn’t use a smartphone because they find it too distracting, someone who won’t go to a bar because they struggle with drinking, etc.

I have no problem with anyone making such a choice for themself.

 

[JamesMay82]

I agree and love the idea but I don’t think it will happen.

I keep my social media apps on the 2nd Home Screen and that has kept me off it a bit more.

I find Facebook boring now and my guilty pleasure is just instagram.

I’d love for digital purchases or ripped CDs and iPods to make a come back and I can see it is having a bit of an underground revival but I don’t think it will go much further.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I agree and love the idea but I don’t think it will happen.

I keep my social media apps on the 2nd Home Screen and that has kept me off it a bit more.

I find Facebook boring now and my guilty pleasure is just instagram.

I’d love for digital purchases or ripped CDs and iPods to make a come back and I can see it is having a bit of an underground revival but I don’t think it will go much further.

I have Facebook, for various reasons, but just don't have it on the phone. If it's needed, I open up my laptop.

 

[ayephoner]

It’s still a phone in a slate format for no reason.

What do you mean by, "for no reason"?

Do you think that viewing maps, photos, or even text is better on some other form factor? The rest of your post is about your watch. Do you just think using a watch is better because it's less entrancing?

 

[ipedro]

What do you mean by, "for no reason"?

Do you think that viewing maps, photos, or even text is better on some other form factor? The rest of your post is about your watch. Do you just think using a watch is better because it's less entrancing?

If the goal is less screen time, then the Watch is a better distraction free device. If you want to stare at a screen looking at photos and reading on a device you carry with you, then just get a regular phone. I use my iPad intentionally when I want to sit back and use a screen. I don't carry it everywhere I go.

Special callout to maps: why do you need a large screen to navigate maps? The Apple Watch is the best Maps device I've ever used. The small screen + Digital Crown combo is surprisingly effective and the taps on your wrist navigating you while walking, biking or driving means you barely ever need to look at the screen. A quick wrist raise if you want to know where you are relative to your destination is enough.

 

[ayephoner]

If the goal is less screen time, then the Watch is a better distraction free device. If you want to stare at a screen looking at photos and reading on a device you carry with you, then just get a regular phone. I use my iPad intentionally when I want to sit back and use a screen. I don't carry it everywhere I go.

Special callout to maps: why do you need a large screen to navigate maps? The Apple Watch is the best Maps device I've ever used. The small screen + Digital Crown combo is surprisingly effective and the taps on your wrist navigating you while walking, biking or driving means you barely ever need to look at the screen. A quick wrist raise if you want to know where you are relative to your destination is enough.

Well, as others have said, you can't take photos with the watch (not an apple watch anyways), but a bit part of getting a good photo is being able to view the image as you take it. It's not necessarily about 'staring at a screen'.

I mean, do you remember paper maps? There's a reason they aren't printed on postage stamps. I actually bought a carplay screen because viewing GPS directions on my phone screen wasn't good enough.

I clearly have a different outlook on devices than you and most of hte people in this thread though. I don't mean to criticize your take. You do you.

 

[eyoungren]

Special callout to maps: why do you need a large screen to navigate maps? The Apple Watch is the best Maps device I've ever used. The small screen + Digital Crown combo is surprisingly effective and the taps on your wrist navigating you while walking, biking or driving means you barely ever need to look at the screen. A quick wrist raise if you want to know where you are relative to your destination is enough.

I'm just going to focus on this, since 'less screen time' is just ludicrous to me. I've spent most of my time since I was a teen trying to maximize my screen time.

Anyway, I wear glasses and periodically have my iPad Mini in my Ford Flex. The Flex is an SUV and the mount places the screen of the Mini in the same area as the dash. So, the default view level of Google Maps on my Mini is not anywhere near large enough for me to make out street names and addresses. Even if I zoom in to a comfortable level, I still can't see that. It's a good thing that in large part I use Google Maps just so it's there - like a GPS system would be in a car so equipped. Because, most of the time, I know where I'm going it's not entirely relevant that I see this info.

But, if I did NOT know where I was going, I might have a problem. I CANNOT imagine how difficult it would be to see this same info on an Apple Watch mounted on my dash. The zoom level would have to be so large that I'd only see the indicator for myself and maybe one other thing.

I'm not one of those drivers who is constantly looking down to their phone or other device following the map. I've seen them. My sister does it (and she wonders why she has so many accidents). That's dangerous.

I can hear the other thoughts, and none of my cars have CarPlay. If they did, I wouldn't have an iPad Mini mounted in the car. Any other mount is going to have me looking down - away from the road. I could wear the watch. It is a watch after all. But that also has me looking away from the road. And I better digest that info in a glance quickly because staring at a watch on my wrist is going to be dangerous while driving.

The iPad Mini is perfectly mounted so that it's in my line of sight while driving. I can glance and know where I am. Cannot imagine how hard that would be with a watch mounted in the same place.

 

[maxoakland]

I’ve been changing my music habits. No more background music. Now I make some time to listen to music and not do anything else

 

[mk313]

Special callout to maps: why do you need a large screen to navigate maps? The Apple Watch is the best Maps device I've ever used. The small screen + Digital Crown combo is surprisingly effective and the taps on your wrist navigating you while walking, biking or driving means you barely ever need to look at the screen. A quick wrist raise if you want to know where you are relative to your destination is enough.

The thing about maps on the watch is that I'm fairly sure it does not include live traffic updates (unless it's attached to your phone). I've tried to verify this several times & none of the watch notes say that it includes live traffic. Oftentimes my phone willupdate me if there is a faster route, so I can update directions. That never has happened for me using only the watch.

 

[ThailandToo]

People need to exercise personal control and proper boundaries. It isn’t hard. You don’t need to be plugged in and doom scrolling 24/7. Enjoy life without handcuffing yourself to tech.

I controlled this by eliminating the Apple Watch and permanently leaving my iPhone on mute or DND. It literally will not ring unless it’s one of less than a handful of people contacting me. And no app has any notifications on other than the little red notification dot. So unless I pick up my iPhone, I am not getting it. I also removed FaceTime and Messages from my Mac’s as they just distracted me.

Now, I don’t respond to a boss but I do have clients, and it’s never been a problem since I implemented the system maybe eight years ago. People know I will get back to them in a timely manner if it’s important. And quite often I just ignore stuff.

Around the same time, I cut Facebook which was just trash and allowed too much drama from others. The only site I even post to is MR. I check it several times per day as well as some other tech sites, but this is the only place I post.

I think we can all have the devices and tech that we want and still control ourselves to only use them to what we want them for not to be at everyone’s beckon call - especially some stupid app notification that wasn’t even a person messaging me.

 

[eyoungren]

If anything has been handcuffed, it's been tech being handcuffed to me - not the other way around. As @ThailandToo is showing, I do things my own way as well - although not in the manner they do.

I control my tech. Not the other way around. If it's not doing what I want, it will either be bent (or broken) to my will or it will be tossed/never purchased. I am the one in charge - not my tech.

 

[ThailandToo]

If anything has been handcuffed, it's been tech being handcuffed to me - not the other way around. As @ThailandToo is showing, I do things my own way as well - although not in the manner they do.

I control my tech. Not the other way around. If it's not doing what I want, it will either be bent (or broken) to my will or it will be tossed/never purchased. I am the one in charge - not my tech.

How didn’t I say I control my tech???

 

[eyoungren]

How didn’t I say I control my tech???

I was agreeing with you. And then making statements of my own.

 

[ellnicklin]

Well, we could go down such a ridiculous nanny-controlled route, I suppose.

Or, and hear me out on this, we could TAKE RESPONSIBILITY (I know, it’s an alien concept to far too many these days) - if you don’t want social media apps, use the simply hack (‘cos everything is a hack these days apparently) of not installing them.

Job done.

You are an adult - act like it, for heaven’s sake.
Take responsibility for your actions.


I had a friend recently whinging about how distracting it is with notifications pinging on their phone all the time.

“Well have you ever thought of turning them off? It’s your phone, you are in charge not it. If you find them distracting, use the settings helpfully and thoughtfully provided for that very purpose…”

They were momentarily stunned by the concept but eventually did it.
And you know what?
They’ve stopped being distracted by notifications!

Amazing what taking a bit of personal responsibility can achieve…

I understand what you're saying and it's not exactly like a substance abuse issue where "take some accountability" is not always a straightforward solution (unless you're well... callous) but I do think your reply underplays the level at which

- social media companies design interfaces and content streams (and are incredibly successful at it) to maximise distraction and attention on screen on a neuro-chemical level
- they engineer social connections to require their apps communication channels, or at the very least make them the ones with the limited friction, at which point the "co-morbidity" of the distraction pipeline can kick in when you merely opened an app to communicate with a loved one
- (coming from a biritish perspective) with such a dismal economic outlook and the destruction of the third space, so many cultural experiences and their curation are now firmly in the online domain, and social media in particular has cannibalised so much of it

Forgive me if it sounds like 'whinging' but there is a growing proportion of my generation and I'm sure others, that would jump at the chance to have said 'Nanny state' (if choosing a slightly different iPhone SKU amounts to such totalitarianism) so that that element of resistance is no longer one of their concerns.

Then perhaps without such distraction we can look to rebuild these experiences and communication channels in a more human centred and perhaps analogue way.

 

[conmee]

Tech after the wheel has been ruining lives for millennia. 😉 @eyoungren I went back a few pages and noticed we were in the same "training program" back in the day. I think one of the first WTF moments in my life came when I was up so late the TV station I was watching "signed off" which usually happened around 3AM right after Elvira's Movie Macabre or Tales From The Darkside or re-runs of Ripley's Believe It Or Not with the legendary Jack Palance.

 

[eyoungren]

Tech after the wheel has been ruining lives for millennia. 😉 @eyoungren I went back a few pages and noticed we were in the same "training program" back in the day. I think one of the first WTF moments in my life came when I was up so late the TV station I was watching "signed off" which usually happened around 3AM right after Elvira's Movie Macabre or Tales From The Darkside or re-runs of Ripley's Believe It Or Not with the legendary Jack Palance.

Yeah, it was always kind of jarring. Just a short announcement about the 'end of the broadcast day' and then the color bars and tone. Always kind of jarring, especially when you realized you were truly alone at that point.

 

[conmee]

…especially when you realized you were truly alone at that point.

Wow. That hit. I remember that exact feeling. Maybe being married isn’t so bad after all. (I kid, I kid).