cross-posted from: lemmy.abnormalbeings.space/post/918244
Companion article here: blog.gardinerbryant.com/what-eddy-got-wrong-about…
I loved his video, but there were some pretty key actions that he could have done to reduce his phone usage, e.g., limiting/deleting his social media apps, reviewing/turning off his notifications, or setting Focus times to limit distractions during productive times of the day.
Fun experiment overall, but I wasn’t expecting any new revelations on attention spans from a comedian.
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I like Eddy. And at first I’ve liked this essay subject from other creators, but now I just find it shortsighted. The phone isn’t the problem, just like the television and radio weren’t the problem. It’s the content you put on it.
You can watch great TV shows—documentaries, masterpiece dramas, etc. Or you can watch slop.
You do incredible stuff with your phone—get directions, listen to almost any song ever recorded, learn about the night sky, watch documentaries anywhere you are, write, create your own content, sky’s the limit. Or you can install slop and brain rot apps like Twitter.
You don’t have to pull a stunt like locking your phone away. Just delete the slop. Be more mindful of what an app and the company behind it are, and either limit your use of it or simply don’t install it at all.
asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev 1 week ago
This is kind of like blamimg the founder of knives because criminals use them to murder people.
jeffhykin@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I disagree. Yes there can be good intermediate steps, but deleting slop is not nearly as healthy as locking a phone away.
Not just phone calls or texts, but things like typing an email on the phone and then seeing a text. Brains hate interruptions. Those are still going to exist.
Turning off the dopamine machine (not eating candy) is one thing. But Eddy was showing something a lot bigger than that: he didn’t have the code to the safe. He was showing the mental benefits of not needing to resist a temptation.
unconfirmedsourcesDOTgov@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
I disagree. Most people are able to self-regulate in more instances than you give credit for. In instances where someone is unable to do so, I would agree that a full prohibition probably makes sense; such as with alcoholics who are unable to stop themselves, but this is not the case for most people.
Interruptions - fear not the notification, for you hold the power to calibrate your notifications to the level that suits you. I’m particularly aggressive about disabling notifications and especially notification categories that do not add value, and you can too.
Resisting - many humans have reported experiencing even more enjoyment engaging in activities they enjoy if they delay their engagement until meeting a predetermined goal. If you know that scrolling through your favorite app for 5 min will give you a dopamine hit, you can choose to delay using the app until after you’ve completed a chore, for example, and that may offer enough incentive to complete more tasks than you might otherwise be able to perform.
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I feel like this kind of misses the point. To be clear: If someone absolutely cannot avoid installing slop apps and enabling notifications for everything, I can see their need for an ultra minimal device or other solution. But I also think that speaks to a larger, personal discussion about discipline and possibly addiction, but that’s outside the realm of this thread.
My point is we can choose which apps, notifications, features, and algorithms are allowed to get our attention. It’s easy to turn off all notifications or never even allow them in the first place—after all, apps have to ask for that permission in the first place.
But the choice is the point. If someone is traveling somewhere they probably want maps to tell them important information about the journey. Otherwise why turn on directions at all? That’s the entire point.
We even have the ability to disable all texting notifications but also choose to allow them from certain people if they’re important enough. These devices are simply tools and we have the power to choose how they operate. The device isn’t the problem, it’s our choices.