8mo ago

Adults and teens pick dumbphones to curb social media addiction

www.bbc.com Adults and teens pick dumbphones to curb social media addiction

Parents and teens alike are trading in their smartphones for "dumber" models to help stay offline.

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.

Technology @lemmy.zip

BrikoX @lemmy.zip

8mo ago

Adults and teens pick dumbphones to curb social media addiction

www.bbc.com /news/articles/c7227njm45eo

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142 comments

I looked into this before, but I found the options were too stripped down.
Ultimately I need:
Maps
Music streaming
Web browser
Email
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.
  
  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.
  
  Yes. That's how addictions work.
  
  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?
  
  We are on social media right now
  
  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
- For me it's maps and WhatsApp sadly. If I could get out of those, I would go to a dumb phone fairly quickly
  
  Quite a few of the dumb phones have WhatsApp. Although the maps experience would suck.
  Personally, since they already have WhatsApp, having a good camera and 5G tether are my two wishlist items. 4G tether is probably fine for the most part but the good camera would be missed.
  That with an iPad mini, so that I can still use banking apps and maps but I'd have it in a bag so that it's not simple to access and I could leave it at home would be my ideal.
- There are screentime apps that can track and limit the useage of certain apps. You can use your bike rental app as long as you want but can set a specific time limit for others like 1 hour on youtube, 30 minutes for lemmy etc.
  I used one before and it helped me quantify the time I was wasting and gave me tools to limit my usage.
  
  I use this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.burockgames.timeclocker
- 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.
- I don't understand why you don't just uninstall what you don't need?
  
  Just don't buy more heroin. Addicition solved. Why didn't anyone think of that?
  
  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.
- Except for, you know, not installing the apps on your phone.
- Yeah same here. I’ve ditched all social media now except Lemmy and for that I have only a handful of favorite subs I like to read.
  But I use my phone for photos, music, email and wallet. Occasionally maps if in a pinch.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.

... 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

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?)
  
  It was created by the US military so what do you think lol
  
  OBS is decentralised? Not the first word I would pick.
- -

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.
- What's Facebook?
  
  I think it’s an 17th century vessel that primarily ships spices
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfR_Jj4grZE
  You.

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.

I wish I could go back. Sadly too much of my life relies on this shit.
- You absolutely can! Ive been doing something similar.
  Two devices - one that's a mini computer, and the other is a phone.
  That mini computer is a old phone without a network plan. And if it doesn't have wifi, I can't jump onto social media or anything. Which is pretty nice as I'm reading books or writing on that device with "less" distractions. And if I get a text message, i quickly check it on my phone and put it away.

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 chose beer and amphetamines (substituted) to curb my alcohol and drug addiction (same fucking thing, I know…).
- You jest, but without cannabis, I'd probably be in prison or dead in a ditch somewhere from opioid overdose.
  
  I’ve encountered that a lot. That’s really great! I hope you’re somewhere you don’t have to endanger your freedom to acquire your alternative.

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.
  
  I dusted off and refurbished my ipod classic for that duty.

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.

After ten months of waiting I finally got my cyberdeck with 4g modem and have started to migrate my communication over to it. I'll start leaving the house without a phone soon.
- What cyberdeck do you have?
  
  I got a clockwork pi! The support is a bit rough but if you're comfortable with Linux and package management, it's an absolute blast.

My smart phone makes a nice computer, but a crap phone. An older one couldn't do phone and Google Maps without a reboot between them.
Looking at feature phones just to have a phone.

Some folks want to see the world crumble, some dont

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.

142 comments