I get all kinds of awful advice from the internet. Just now, on my work email account, I got a message from the Star Tribune telling me how to Make your smartphone dumb, and other tips to break social media addiction. Maybe the first thing I need to do is tell the Star Tribune to stop sending me this crap.
You could switch to a flip phone. You could quit social media. But there are also ways to make your smartphone dumber, with apps and hacks and old-fashioned mindfulness.
First, you have to understand why social media is sucking you in. Studies show that engaging with social media can produce oxytocin and trigger tiny releases of dopamine, said Kit Breshears, an instructor with the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. Apps feature a pulldown refresh mechanism that functions a lot like a slot machine.
No, I can’t do that. My phone has gradually become an essential tool for working with teaching and administrative materials — I can’t shut it off, since I have to deal with push notifications in order to log in to official university web pages, and because my students contact me through the phone (yes, I gave out my personal phone number to my students) to tell me if they need help at the genetics lab, any time of day. I can’t make my smartphone dumber, without compromising my work!
I’m also prejudiced that this advice is coming from the Center for Spirituality and Healing
. Here’s an idea: shut down that palace of quackery.
But also, I have a problem with placing the blame for the problem on the user, and making it our responsibility to police the corporations that are sending out the addictive poison. I would love to be able to get a little dose of oxytocin and dopamine at will. What’s wrong with that? Taking a break and looking at cat photos (or in my case, spider photos) might be beneficial to our emotional well-being. The problem isn’t that we can self-administer mild pleasure with a click of a button, it’s that that mechanism has been hijacked by capitalism. You want a little relaxation, and it’s always accompanied by companies using it to sell you something, or make you feel bad for what you are doing, so that you have to buy the cure they are selling. This one article mentions a $59 device to block signals in your home, and an app you can download to reduce your phone to a “minimalist phone”. Fine. But the problem isn’t that I have a device that can access the internet at any time, it’s that the internet has been shittified to such a remarkable degree that it’s painful to use it.
You know, I was just noticing something recently: my habit is to charge up my phone when I get home from work, and then put it by my bedside overnight, in case there’s an emergency. I’ve felt like I’ve got infinite battery, because it almost never drops below 90% charge, unless I’m away on a long trip. Apparently, I’m not addicted to endless doom-scrolling. It’s possible to be a hopeless nerd who loves his fancy gadgets and not be the kind of fool who follows the advice of a quack from CSH.
Mainly, though, stop blaming your phone for your own problems with technology and capitalism.
Technology is what we make of it and how we choose to use it.
The metaphorical double-edged sword with almost all tech from fire onwards.
Its not the social media or the phones or the drugs or whatever – its how we choose to use them.
I read this the other day, and found it quite thought-provoking: What If We Made Advertising Illegal?
My phones likes to cry wolf. It seems like every hour I get alerts and messages about nothing. I almost never check. One of these days there might be an alert that I actually need and I’ll ignore it.
One time I did need an alert, when there was local flooding, I apricated the alert. I took the precautions I needed too. What I didn’t apricate was the hourly repeat of the warnings. I had to turn my phone off.
Fortunately, I came with an organic computer inside my skull, and I was able to program it to filter out most of the useless crap that comes my way. No FB or Xitter for me, and remarkable few ads on any other media, because I run adblockers and other tools. Unfortunately, I did make one big mistake that haunts me. Years ago, when I first got a mobile phone, I ported my landline over so work clients could still find me. So all the crap that floods old landline phones still comes through to my cell. Consequently, if a call comes in from a number not in my contacts, I assume it’s a robot or telemarketer. 99.99% of the time I am correct.
I needed alerts on my phone that were loud enough to hear over tools, but would not be offensive if they went off in a client’s house. So for text notifications, I hear a blurt of the Imperial probe droid’s coded speech. For phone calls, it’s the Martians from the Muppet Show trying to talk to a telephone. “B-b-b-ring! Yep yep yep yep!”
I’m getting annoyed by all the marketing push notifications that apps enable by default. I guess I didn’t realize how pernicious it was before because I had my old phone for so long and disabled them one by one as I got new apps. But I just got a new phone, and I’ve probably had to disable them on 20 apps in the last week. What a bunch of assholes.
A new word- I apricated the alert. I took the precautions I needed too. What I didn’t apricate was the hourly repeat of the warnings.
@3 larpar . I think you mean appreciate?
You can call me any names you want, but, I have a flip phone that I only use for . . .
Making Phone Calls!
PZ is an unwilling prisoner of the requirements to tether himself to his phone. But, voluntarily exposing yourself to all the ‘crap apps’ and other tech schmutz is insane.
@chesapeake #7
Oops, appreciate the correction.
I think the problem with social media is centered around children. Social media is like alcohol or other drugs. Many adults, but honestly not most, can handle occasional recreational use. But no one thinks it’s ok for children to have free access to alcohol. Being drunk as a child interferes with important developmental skills. They need to learn to deal with anxiety, social interactions, boredom, all without the aid of drugs. However, free access to the internet in your pocket is a deeper, more troubling inebriant for young minds. I blame Meta et al for sure, since they have known all along what they are doing. But the reality is no one is going to stop them soon. So complaining about capitalism isn’t going to solve much. Maybe with time they will be shut down like the tobacco companies, but that took years. So in the mean time I honestly implore people to mind their phone use around children, like you would alcohol or cannabis use. And I think it’s foolish at best and neglectful at worst to allow your child (say, less than 16) to spend any time on any algorithm curated platform.
A bit like fast food; convenient, easy, satisfying in the moment.
But addictive, and not good for you in excess.
I’m not sure if the OP was a desperate plea for intervention, or a joke, or…? It sounds like you favor acquiesence. It sounds terrible. Am I myself lonesomely pining for slide rules?
It was possible to do your job without smartphones. Students learned just fine decades ago, I know I did. Tetraethyl lead wasn’t really necessary to run cars. The boost it gave us seemed awesome and we added it to gasoline for decades. Now we don’t use this anymore to power transportation.
It would be nice to unionize somehow against smartphones being 24/7. It isn’t just the enshittification of the internet stealing your life, it is people not being able to plan and cooperate to be together at certain times and this makes you constantly be on-phone that is also stealing your life. I believe you devalue your own labor, if you are being serious here.
It’s not the inevitable existence and necessity of smartphones in your life. It is your response to them. I find my smartphone and tablet far more convenient than firing up a desktop. I have ebooks, word processing, blog commenting, weather updates (radar!!!), etc. Doomscrolling Bluesky is my downfall.
With my phone I can Bluetooth audiobooks and informative podcasts while driving or over my headphones (not crappy earbuds) at home. I have music apps with far more than my archaic CD collection could provide.
Why isn’t anyone dissing smart TV access? That’s where I get hooked into Youtube marathons…and sometimes stream TV shows and movies.
I really don’t get the hate for smartphones. I would never go back to a flip. I recall how tedious texting on a flip was! I rarely talk to others on a phone. Texting works much better IMO. I admit to loving an apt GIF or “meme” between friends or other correspondents.
There are some awesome apps. Before I recently quit usenet I used an iOS app for that over nntps.
I don’t use Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok. I do use Tropical Tidbits and Google News as a web apps. Also apps like Overcast and Pocketcasts. Discord, Meetup, blogs saved to Firefox, Weather Underground, Youtube, Libby, Hoopla, F1 (hi StevoR), IMDB, …
@11
Please do tell how reading books by Paul Offit, Jurgen Habermas, Avi Shlaim, or Owen Flanagan on my smartphone is “a bit like fast food”.
Heh, Hemidactylus.
This is the claim: “But also, I have a problem with placing the blame for the problem on the user, and making it our responsibility to police the corporations that are sending out the addictive poison.”
Thus my comparison; same as fast food, nobody puts a gun to people’s heads to force them to consume it.
Same as, say, blaming McDonalds for fat people who pig out on their offerings.
Now, if you reckon your reading books by Paul Offit, Jurgen Habermas, Avi Shlaim, or Owen Flanagan on your smartphone constitutes an addiction, well, I suppose it’s like being addicted to nothing more than tacos.
I’ve never heard of any of them, but I’m sure I could get through their corpus rather quickly.
(Hey, I just reread most of Leslie Charteris’ Templar books. I do like Hoppy Uniatz. Also just read the Bolitho series)
My problem with my
smartspyphone* is that I was forced to get one in order to get an “authentication” app to access work-related services – I was quite happy with my “dumb” phone, because all I want to use a phone for is talking to or texting people. I admit I now take occasional photos, and sometimes get directions when driivng, but I somehow managed to find my way around and do without photos that I’ll probably never look at anyway before I had one. But at this point, if the phone was lost, stolen, broken, just died – it would be disastrous, because everyone and their uncle’s dog wants to send me “verification” numbers before they’ll let me do anything. Admittedly, that would now happen even with a “dumb” phone, but it’s since the ubiquity of spyphones that it has become a thing.*For anything to which the adjective “smart” is prefixed, you’ll get a better idea of its actual function by substituting “spy”.
I mean, you can’t even make a bank transfer without 2-FA on your smartphone these days. And I’m definetely a doomscroller, no doubt about it, but what does it mean actually? It means you’re informed about what’s going on in the world, and most of it right now just so happens to be bad stuff.
As to the spy thing, a lot of it comes down to the choices you make, like if you use any Google service or Chrome browser, if you enable location services, use the Youtube app instead of Brave to cut out all the ads, etc.etc. I have a Linux phone here which works well and has no Google anything, but some apps and games won’t work with it, and the loss of functionality is just too big for it to be suitable for everyday use.
I have a hard time giving a crap if my phone is “spying” on me. What are they gonna do with my data? Find out I don’t drive much and like to spend time in the forest. My social media use is similar. A bit of doom scrolling & Pharyngula over coffee in the morning then rest of the day pretty much just texts and podcasts over headphones. Oh, I do use it a lot to look up info. Tutorials, recipes, game walkthrough hints, etc. Having “the internet” in my pocket is very handy. Ads? Easy enough to scroll past. I’m a whole lot of “meh” about “BUT MY DATA!” I just don’t get it and haven’t really seen a clear explanation of why I should.
John Morales @#16
Paul Offit is a pediatrician and infectious disease expert who spent 25 years developing the first safe rotovirus vaccine (rotovirus is a significant cause of diarrhea in young children). He’s a significant figure in American pro-vaccine circles and also in anti-alternative medicine work, because of which he has received credible death threats.
I don’t know what they do with mine. That’s what bothers me.
In the news: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/11/uk-woman-says-she-was-arrested-after-confiscating-her-daughters-ipads
I hate to say it, but I find myself agreeing slightly more with the All-You-Can-Woo Healing Center here. You’re using all these devices because you ultimately chose to do so. Getting rid of all forms of instant contact feels impossible but it isn’t. Blaming capitalism for your reliance on an electronic leash is weaksauce.
@10 nomadiq
Rigorous studies show otherwise: it isn’t a problem and children are not harmed by it in any statistically significant way. “Think about the children!” is a spotlight-hogging political tactic and a cash-grab for book tours. It didn’t make any sense before and it doesn’t make any sense now.
@18 rorschach
You can and should use offline computers as a second factor in those situations. If your bank forces you to use a phone, find another bank — phone numbers tied to authentication are insecure and are vulnerable to spoofing attacks.
@19 YOB Olde Blacksmith
Great. You live a privileged existence. Maybe spare a thought for people who aren’t so lucky.
Sell it for lots of money. Hold onto it for later. Maybe use it to annoy you, or retroactively decide it’s evidence that can be used against you by a police state.
You don’t care about it until you find yourself in circumstances when you do care, and at that point it’s usually too late to defend yourself. In the meantime you should push for a strong data privacy law that applies to everyone.
And I’m still waiting.
As usual, whenever this comes up, I see lots of hand wringing and what ifs. Sorry, but I need an actual argument and maybe some evidence would be nice.
I remain “meh” pending actual information.
@24 YOB Olde Blacksmith
I can’t prove that this will happen to you, specifically. I can’t convince you to take other people’s lived experiences seriously. You have to pull yourself out of your sheltered bubble and examine what’s going on from the point of view of someone who has something to hide. It can be for all sorts of reasons (e.g. immigration status, or uterus status), but they have something to hide, and the spyware on their phone wants to know what it is and where they are at all times.
@ ^ beholder : That’s rich coming from you beholder. Someone who lived in an anti-Kamala bubble that imposed the TrumpMusk regime on the rest of the planet.
You have quite literally caused incalcuable human suffering, misery, death and destruction by undermining and opposing the ONLY alternative Americans had to Trump and metaphorically speaking your hands are dripping in blood.
Did YOU think of the impact on the lived experience to others that your acts and words would have before saying and typing and voting as you chose to?
@ StevoR
This obsession of yours is becoming psychotic. The person you are bullying did not vote Trump (as presented). 70+ million people did. The person you are bullying is not responsible for the actions of 70 million strangers. If you must be so hateful direct your hate to people who deserve it.
“Dripping in blood”. What is wrong with you holier than thou nutcase?
@ ^ Silentbob : I’m not bullying but I am holding accountable thsoe who undermined and failed to vote for Kamala Harris thereby de facto voting for and helping Trump. The worst and most powerful bully in the USA with the possible exception of Elon Musk.
Its also a bit rich coming from someone who still refuses – as far as I’ve seen to answer basic questions like whether you wilsimply leave John Morales alone.
What part of the whole binary choice thing where you had two and ONLY two actual choices – EITHER Trump OR Kamala don’t you understand BTW Silentbob?
Yes, the USA’s “democracy” has (had now I guess? Past tense. Thanks beholder, Vicar & co.) a truly shitty,. pathetic, flawed sad excuse for a political system. It needs reform – but last year, it was as I’ve stated above in bold.
Those who undermined and failed to unify behind and support and help rather than hurt the ONLY ALTERNATIVE to Trump helped Trump win and helped impose him on the whole of this pale blue dot we all share and depend upon for life itself.
Your ableist bullying ( “nutcase”) aimed at someone who is not neurotypical (surprise?) is also duly noted Silentbob.
Also noted is your failure to respond to and answer the many questions put to you here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/03/29/universities-need-to-fight-back/#comment-2259884
Including Rob Grigjanisés question #59 downthread there too.
I’m trying to invoke nostalgia for a time when this thread was about smartphones. Ah the good old days.