image shamelessly stolen from r/dumbphones and mostly unrelated
I feel like we could almost use a comm for this specifically but c/technology will do
Anyone else here have luck with cutting back on smartphone/technology use in general, or feel like they need to try a change in that department? Or even just social media? Chime in below I'd love to chat about it.
I'm avoiding work rn and thinking about smartphone use. I had an android phone for many years and I think it was a really negative force in my life. Sure there's lots of times it's useful as a one-off but overall I don't think it was actually good to have on me all the time. I think the overarching issue with a lot of modern tech is that it reduces or tries to eliminate intentionality on the part of the user, and make the user experience completely frictionless. But some of that "friction" is important, intentionality is important, without it we are just mindless consumers at the beck and call of marketers and big tech companies. Music apps don't need to decide what you listen to and in what order, being able to get a mix based on a song or artist is one thing, but the tiktok-ified endless autoplay of songs with no user input is... not good. especially when you grow up with that you lose so much.
Or social media I think we all know is a toxic time suck and honestly just a mindless addiction for many, even this place can take on that role, I know it does sometimes for me, it's easier to scroll than face whatever stressful thought or situation is at hand... and fine, maybe that urge to distraction isn't going away, but on reflection I find scrolling to be the least-soothing way of scratching that itch... So it would be better if it wasn't quite so frictionless, to help break the feedback loop.
Push notifications (for things other than messaging) are another insidious way that such behavioral patterns are fostered. For the computer nerds, I think of it as like an interrupt for my attention, it breaks the flow of what I'm doing and demands I look at it, and frankly 80% of push notifications just don't deserve that level of priority. But because exerting any control or intentionality over those notifications is made to be extra effort in the name of UX streamlining, most people just have these annoying interrupts conditioning their brain at the whims of whoever controls the apps.
In such a tech dependent world, user control over software is way more critical than it's ever been, and for all their annoyingness and often mediocre or bad takes on other topics, free software people have been hammering on that for years and building alternatives. All that to say: I've been using a linux phone (pinephone pro) as my only phone for the better part of 6 months now and it's been a breath of fresh air. I'm reading again for the first time in years, I'm building a music collection that I actually own, I'm starting to cut the tether to big tech spyware platforms, but I'm not disconnected from the world.
The point is: it's not a dumbphone, it just has some extra friction in places, and that has enabled me to be a lot more intentional about my use. It's slower, and the battery life is worse, and lots of other tradeoffs, but in practical terms mostly what that has led to is me being more intentional about my consumption. I can always just go on a computer and browse to my heart's content, or put videos on the TV all night, but the device that's with me all the time is optimized for the things I care about, not for spying on me and robbing me of my attention and sanity.
(and fwiw linux phones aren't really non-nerd ready yet unless your requirements are pretty basic, but I could see the next gen of them being much closer to linux-on-the-PC levels of easy. It's getting better every month)
But the lower tech alternative is what you are seeing more and more on places like r/dumbphones (and I have adopted pieces of this as well): purpose built devices. Instead of one device that does everything (including a bunch of stuff you don't even want it to and don't get any agency over as an end user), people are rediscovering the utility of having different tools for different tasks:
- A small notebook replaces a huge power-hungry phone screen+stylus for taking notes
- A digital camera replaces the AI-mangled modern smartphone camera for high fidelity photos.
- A little game system replaces the microtransaction and predatory-mechanic laden cornucopia that is mobile games.
- A book or ereader replaces the eyestrain-inducing, sleep-ruining experience of reading long-form text on a bright little phone screen.
- A watch keeps the time, even when your phone would have long since run out of battery, and serves as a superior alarm clock for many circumstances, etc.
- A wallet holds cash (okay and cards... and I guess most people haven't abandoned these yet) that can be used to pay for goods and services, without the limitations of battery, internet connection, spying, etc. of mobile payment schemes. venmo/paypal/whatever are good to have in your back pocket, but IMO are really only like, revolutionary, if you're comparing them to credit cards and bank transfers, especially in the US where there's no other good system for easily transferring money digitally.
- wired headphones/earbuds can be much more durable alternatives to made-for-disposal hermetically sealed bluetooth pods, they are cheaper, they can sound better, they are available in a plethora of options and repairable when they break. Not that bluetooth is verboten, many bt devices are better, but the airpods and those modeled after it are pretty trash.
- if you are picky about such things, a dedicated audio player can play music, audiobooks, podcasts, for longer, in better quality, with less interruptions, than a smartphone. I'm less certain about this one personally, as even dumphones can usually have headphones and play music for you (some even support FM which is cool and saves battery over streaming), but it all depends on your preferences!
- And the titular dumbphones hold the potential to be much longer-lasting, more reliable makers of calls and texts, by virtue of being simpler. having a phone's primary purpose return to being communication makes it better at that role...
Now none of this is to say you should carry all this stuff and more all the time. But it's something you can be intentional about and tailor to your needs!
Maybe you're a theory-head without a rigid schedule: skip the games, camera, watch, headphones, etc and just carry an ereader, a notebook and a dumbphone
Or you're more of a direct action andy, you can leave the dumbphone (the only one that can be used to track you still) at home, or skip it entirely, or get a device with killswitches! Much harder to do if you limit yourself to the Apple/Android dichotomy
So yeah, point is you can pick what things you actually care about and bring those, when appropriate, and use them when you want to rather than doing, like, everything everywhere all at once with your smartphone. Yes you can tweak your smartphone to avoid many of these issues, and maybe that's good enough for you, (I encourage it, just give it serious thought, be intentional about what you really want to allow), but some are just unavoidable, and much like you are not immune to propaganda, none of us are immune to the baked in effects of marketers, big tech addiction-mongers. The simplest way to step away from the all-encompassing absorption machines in our pockets is to not have one, and to consider their replacements carefully, even if other paths are workable.
I'm pretty sure 
originally got me thinking about "friction" in this context, and this has all been marinating and steering my choices ever since, culminating with this linux phone that I can customize to my heart's content and does not have any of the built in addictive/harmful/spying apps that all my android phones always did. Oh and I can repair it rather than it becoming useless, physically and software-wise, in just a few short years.
I'm still a tech dweeb, I just want it to enhance people's lives and liberate them not make them worse and more dependent.
This is all mostly vibes based.
having a phone's primary purpose return to being communication makes it better at that role
Not really. Smartphones have been getting occasional phone improvements for a long time. They haven't gotten worse at being phones.
This is all mostly vibes based.
Indeed no. The engineering of apps to ensnare time, attention and views and the vast scope of spyware are well documented
I thnki rcs encrypted messaging for androids is the most recent obvious one. Default encryption of messages etc.
i'll believe there's probably no backdoors when the source code is open to be audited, though even with a backdoor itd arguably still be better than mms/sms lol
sending all my messages via google servers isnt the most appealing concept
Yeah. If I could push a button and add Google HQ to the ring of fire's list of impressive volcanoes I would, but what can you do?
Some of it is leaning towards vibes but it's all based in reality
Smartphones have been getting occasional phone improvements for a long time
like what, VoLTE? the biggest way they are worse is easily battery life
I don't have that frictionless experience. I'm wrestling with my phone all the goddamn time to make it do what I want with the software available (which uniformly sucks)
Like there doesn't even seem to be a single ms-paint level image editing software for android anywhere so I have like five different goddamn thing to manage my pictures and if Google doesn't stop badgering me to back up my shit so they can do whatever wretched thing they do with everyone's data i'ma just delete google photos.
Huh. GOOG won't let me delete photos. Brb gonna go figure out what the equivalent of lobotomizing windows in the registry is for android.
yeah a basc photo editor doesn't generate user data or microtransactions or any of that so it's not given that treatment
like 8 years ago photoshop for android was quite good and pirate-able bu they dumbed it down and made it a subscription product later i believ
Shit I wonder if anyone has an old .apk. My phone is pretty old, it might run. I did find something on F-Droid that at least lets you edit layers.
Frankly, the only unsolicited data I want my phone to send is kill-instructions to a giant laser satellite targeting whoever just tried to collect personal data off my phone. : |
I did! After whinging about this last night I went and browsed F-droid and found an honest to god image editor with layers and everything! It's called Pocket Paint.
I think friction/deliberate device use is a nice way to think about it. Helps you figure out how to use stuff, what you don't need.
Still has a lot of embedded assumptions. I mean nobody would take seriously all these truisms about social media in the context of wildlife photography Twitter. It's sort of an ameliorative exercise for you take consuming people to give youself an excuse to stop. That's a good thing.
I don't really have an addiction to online outrage or video games for over two years. For me since this summer the #1 thing has been going back to paper. It's not even a luddite thing, it gives you an extra monitor & does not use up the power bank. 🧠
I generally just screenshot my paper notes now.
I think friction/deliberate device use is a nice way to think about it. Helps you figure out how to use stuff, what you don't need.
Yes! Some places you want added friction some you don't, you want to structure things in such a way that you are like, making it easier to achieve what you want to achieve, fostering the habits you want to have and breaking the feedback loops that encourage those you don't.
I see your point about wildlife twitter, or any other number of innocuous social media spheres, to some extent that's true, but it's just the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of the cycle of enshittification, if you will: the quality content that keeps us all coming back. Problem is, the structural elements of the platform don't change just because you're in a kinder social space. I'm sure there's mind-meltingly stupid slapfights still on wildlife photography twitter sometimes, even if it is way less than say, politics twitter. I don't use much social media besides this very site, and I wouldn't say it's even necessarily an addiction, its just one of many coping mechanisms for my underlying poor mental health, but yeah, I know not everyone follows the same negative usage patterns and won't have the same priorities I do.
But I do think those patterns are often fostered intentionally, and that growing up with this stuff is not good for kids. I got my first smartphone as an adolescent and while it was far from the only factor it definitely helped tank my educational prospects and melt my brain in other ways. I was an incredibly avid reader until that point in my life, but after getting a phone it trailed off hard, and while lots of slop gets published, nothing can convince me that reading YA fiction or scifi or biographies of nikola tesla is in any universe on the same level as reading 4chan on my phone all day during class lol (yes I was that kid. I never got into pol stuff thank god but I still had that edgy 4chan phase). It isn't great for your brain, you aren't learning much besides how to be racist at the phd level, and it's just so much more engaging than a book, and easier to conceal in a school that yells at you for reading books unrelated to the class you're in.
I also have some affinity for paper, for certain things. journaling (or my version of it, it's pretty sporadic and non-narrative) is like a nice balance between recording my unbroken stream-of-consciousness and slowing me down and forcing me to think things through as I phrase them, because I think faster than I write. I also just like that you don't have to do anything with it after, it's just there on the page, you don't have to edit it or format it or save it or categorize it, and it doesn't encourage you to, your words are just there on the page and you don't have to devote any more thought to it. I can do e-readers, but I've found lugging around a paper book acts as a nice physical reminder to read for me, so I do prefer that for easily acquired books.
I've also gained a major appreciation for radio. If I don't want to curate my own listening, I'd rather hear a human on the air than a streaming algorithm's mix. There's just so much more depth, added context, and a little human connection that goes a long way. I am lucky to have two decent commercial free stations that play music I like though, if it was all commercial FM I wouldn't feel the same way. they both can be streamed as well online too, best of both worlds.
I could also extend this line of thinking to transportation but urbanism is a whole other can of worms/novel length post
oh and just to really take it off the rails, I think this even applies to toasters (hear me out). There was a pinnacle of toaster design, making excellent toast, reliably, automatically, in a servicable package that can last basically forever. Soviet levels of reliability in shiny american packaging. But when the pure intention to make good toast was muddied up with cutting costs, sharing parts across model lines, planned obsolescence, and other such concerns, the result was worse technology that didn't do the job as well and didn't make people's lives better. Now I get that there was never a time where that intention was actually pure, capitalism was never good, etc etc. but it has undeniably all gotten worse since then not better.
My social media use is way down on my phone
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banned from twitter
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reddit outright refuses me access over firefox, either due to firefox or my vpn or god knows what else
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deleted insta bc fuck insta, itt just shows the same crap over and over.
That's all i had left at this point.
Yeah, I haven't been posting as much because without twitter Idk what the latest beefs are.
The difference between this site and traditional social media is you can't infinitly scroll, content does run out so you have to stop.
Tiktok on the other hand is engineered so you never run out and can sit on it for a day and see new videos.
Sure, but social media != dark ui patterns (even if that's a characteristic shared by all the monopolists in the space). It's media (link aggregation) we interact with (para-)socially, via comments, votes and persistent user accounts.
I was going back to twitter privated for a bit to DM people but it turned into just yelling at people on alts really fast so I dipped.
It's so bad. Funny to try to actively sabotage the site tho.
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I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
also thank you for reading my screed and replying lol. I had too much coffee and this just kinda came out.
I did this for a while but the inconvenience outweighed the benefits. Stuff like being able to find a good restaurant on the fly in a strange place, GPS in your pocket, being able to snap a quick pic of stuff, tracking workout history with charts, nutrition logging etc and of course just like… killing time in line or whatever
An alternative that I really liked is we had a house rule in place for a while that we couldn’t use phones at all on Sundays. I should bring that back…
So true Sunday is easily the worst posting day across the whole internet.
yeah having no internet access at all is a bit inconvenient for me as well which is one reason i have a linux phone with a browser and gps, not an actual flip phone. but i do like carrying a real camera, and i actually like not filling every spare moment with a quick scroll. if its a long wait i can listen to music or read
it probably also helps that i have no interest in charting or tracking things like my exercise or nutrition.
but whatever works for you is cool too. just trying to get people thinking about it all
More of an indictment of me than the idea tbh. Doing this takes discipline. I have weighed going back multiple times but haven’t brought myself to do it
discipline is overrated, at least for like day to day lifestyle stuff like this. For me at least, it's just setting myself up in such a way that the path of least resistance is doing the thing... Like my android phone broke, and I am not replacing it, not even as a fallback or just in case, because that would make it so much easier to just fall back on that and stick with it.
I didn't get where I'm at by discipline (and I don't necessarily see "where I'm at" as an end state for me or a goal for others, though I do like it), I just spent some free time toying with the idea, and getting this linux phone thing up and running, seeing what it would be like, but then I never did switch of my own accord, idk if I ever would have even, I just let my other phone wear out and break and treated it as a natural experiment! I'd much rather use willpower once or twice to create conditions where I don't even need to use willpower every day, y'know?
and maybe there's a better compromise to be found for you than a fully offline phone. many others in this thread seem to have found their own middle roads
i really wanted to make the switch to a dumb phone. just one problem. couldn't give up my podcast app. so I found the next best thing - an android phone with a magnetic ink display
the only company that makes one is Hisense and its not made with american phone networks in mind so im stuck on a 2G connection. thats ok with me its like the friction thing you mentioned. the magnetic ink puts a lot of friction on normal android use too. my old phone i used to have a bad habit of opening youtube when i was board. the ink can do video and it is kinda neat to see but its rough enough that its not pleasant. even just regular browsing i end up thinking "yeah i could search this on my phone but i think ill just wait till i get to my desktop where i can type properly and not have to wait for the ink and connection". its basically just a second kindle that can text and call and play mp3s -- i have been really happy with it.
hell yeah that sounds like a pretty solid setup
if you ever want to change it up, you could also try a dumbphone with a podcast app; supposedly kai os has one or two available, as well as the lightphone and maybe the punkt mp02, or using a separate music player device for it. but it sounds like the eink thing is more your speed, so respect
are brass knuckles legal in your area? they've been criminalized in many places
nope, they're illegal here, though plastic variants might be a dark grey area so to speak. the photo is stolen from r/dumbphones lol, i dont have an analog watch or an mp3 player or a flip phone either
I switched to a graphene phone a few years ago and having a phone that doesn't send push notifications or have YouTube or any google services installed immediately changed my relationship to my phone. I don't really use socmed anymore except HB and discord for a book club. Its a little bit of a struggle since so many apps are dependent on google play services, and becoming more so, but I couldn't go back to a standard android
honestly lol
the pinephone is cool but a good slideout could be even better and definitely more reliable
I have been using a dumbphone for almost four years. Thankfully I have not needed a smartphone for work or needed to do appwork in that time. It has been a big help. Ultimately, I would like to not have home internet either but that doesn't feel feasible so I still spend a good amount of time online via my laptop. A friend of mine just has a desktop at home which is another nice point of 'friction'.
Last month I just didn’t use social media or play games by myself for a month. I also limited podcasts, audiobooks, and music. It was great, I read a lot, and also did art stuff. The idea’s from a book called digital minimalism which isn’t very good, but it’s short. The goal is to use that time to readjust your relationship to tech. My plan is/was to only use this phone for messaging and music, but this place is starting to creep back in. I now mainly do social media on my school computer, which means I can still procrastinate again, so whatever. It does help to take it off the device that’s always in your pocket. Personally, one or two push notifications might be nice, instead of constantly refreshing here, as I did.
When I followed the advice in this post I carried a book and a Rubik’s cube everywhere and didn’t even use them that much.
yeah there's definitely a balance. push notifications are fine for things where you want them, its just the way that so many apps have them by default now even when they have no business doing so that bothers me. giving companies a direct line to my brain that they can use any time for any reason is how it felt, to me. honestly push notifs should have to be opt-in for most apps that aren't literal messaging apps which obviously need it.
and yeah i mean if you carry something for entertainment it has to be something that works for you, in the context you want to do it in. for example a lot of people aren't big readers, or can't focus on reading except in specific environments, or whatever. and honestly, i'm of the opinion that not every spare moment has to be filled with a distraction or an activity, so not carrying that stuff works too, unless you often unexpectedly have a bunch of waiting around to do.
I carry books as much because its a constant reminder that they exist and I can stop and read them, as because I actually need something to do. Also, idk about anyone else but I have sometimes been guilty of mentally turning my reading into "work" that I feel like I have to do and that definitely doesn't make me want to do it more lol. now it's more of a balance, I'm still mostly reading stuff that I think is important and get some satisfaction or sense of accomplishment from finishing books, but it's never something I'm just slogging through because I have to, and if it starts becoming that way I remind myself I can just read something else lol
All mainstream social media just sends out tons of awful useless notifications. I like reading, but it’s hard to read books while people are talking around me or I’m supposed to listen. Online stuff is easier in that situation. I can fiddle with a Rubik’s cube while doing anything that doesn’t require my hands much.
i'm of the opinion that not every spare moment has to be filled with a distraction or an activity
True, but it’s hard.
I’ve only given up on a couple of books and it was temporary. I tend to force myself through the slog of books, except for school sometimes, lol. It sucks when books aren’t engaging.
I've been wanting to go for a dumb phone for quite a while, but I need a smartphone for work and don't want the hassle of having 2 phones. I try to remove addicting apps and advertisements whenever possible to compensate.
yeahhhh, that's definitely a tough one
really depends on the situation. if you don,t need to carry the work phone 24/7 there could still be some benefit to a dumb or dumb-er phone so that you can leave the smartphone behind when you go out and about on days off but honestly I'm with you. two phones life was always kinda just bad and annoying for me (for a year or two I carried two smartphones one for work one for personal)
personally I found I didn't really need one for work as much as I thought. I thought they'd insist I get one for work messages and stuff but I just told them my old phone broke and I already had a replacement to use so don't buy another one and they went with it. It helps that since I went with a linux phone not a dumbphon I can still do work stuff on it in a pinch if I have to, I just don't get push notification and its pretty clunky
If my pixel ever craps out in a way I can't fix i might end up with one of those jelly phones, the super tiny android ones. Small enough that gaming and browsing would suck but still doable in a pinch
