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For All That Is Good About Humankind, Ban Smartphones
(jacobin.com)
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this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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If the author can't stop using whatever website he's upset about without requiring everyone else to have their smartphones banned, that sounds like a him problem.
It's not a problem that can meaningfully be dealt with on an individual level.
I recommend Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus. It goes deep into influencing factors of why we are having such a hard time of putting our devices down. The first he lists: giant tech companies are employing the smartest people on earth (i.e., smarter than you or me) to maximize engagement. The cards are heavily stacked against any single one of us trying to break free from these skinner boxes. The threat of social isolation you mock the blog's author for is of course another ace up Meta's sleeve. The book among other things tries to relieve the feeling of individual failure at this insurmountable task of constantly fending off the targeted attacks on our attention- I paraphrase: "You didn't fail, it was a losing battle to begin with."
If you yourself don't have this problem, I'm glad for you and I hope it lasts. Many, many people do, and there are ever more tragic news headlines to show for it. We as a society (or is that societies?) need to regulate the tech-oligarchs, and fast. I have some hope left at least for the EU coming around on it.
For every issue there is someone absolving individuals of responsibility. Either people have brains and can be responsible or they are brainless and can’t have responsibility. If it’s the latter then I think we should structure society in such a way that people can’t have free will because they clearly cannot be responsible for their choices.
Edit: every time I’m spending more time than I should on social media I just turn on an app like JOMO and in a week the problem is solved. Techbros do it, they call it screen fasting or some shit like that.
Of course, everybody is trying to develop tricks like yours to resist, but I don't think we should just accept as fact that we need to have those tricks to escape the attention grabbing behemoths with the endless money they throw at this optimisation problem.
It's not like algorithms designed to maximise engagement regardless of societal cost are a law of nature we can never escape. It's just unregulated power, which society has worked very hard to limit and align with "the common good" in the past. Free reign for technocrats that display beauty ads to teenage girls after they deleted their selfies, as a single heinous example, is proof that our control mechanism (democracy in the broader sense, I suppose) isn't working anymore, but that also doesn't mean we should roll over and accept it.
I'm with you that personal responsibility is of course important. The message of Johann Hari's book I tried to convey was (paraphrasing again) "Don't be too hard on yourself when you eventually slip up. It's a steep uphill battle."
It’s not a trick. Just like eating sugar, or drinking alcohol etc. you need to have the self awareness to say “hey I’m indulging too much in this and this is not good for me, let me take a break”.
I think my first post on lemmy was about the necessity of limiting algorithms on social media. So I’m in favor of that. But even before social media people were getting addicted to online interaction, like I have met people that have told me they were addicted to chatrooms in the 90s and early 2000s. So even if you do limit the power of the algorithm you’ll still have people glued to their screens scrolling for hours.