Adults and teens pick dumbphones to curb social media addiction
Adults and teens pick dumbphones to curb social media addiction
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.
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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.
I looked into this before, but I found the options were too stripped down.
Ultimately I need:
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.