Bo Burnham put it succinctly, although he was talking about children on apps: "When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids."
The smartphone is a perverted implementation of the goal that people use to fantasize about back in the early days of the computer revolution: a personal terminal to the world of audio, text, and video information stored in databases across all of humanity. It's of course worth talking about how they compel us to certain behaviors via push notifications, dark patterns, nasty design, etc. but also--obviously we'd be addicted to personal terminals that let us access all the publicly available digitized information in the history of the world.
It isn't even a perverted implementation, we just overestimated ourselves.
All our sci-fi futurism of the 70s/80s showed enlightened humans elevating themselves with technology. In real Star Trek the holo deck would be used for porn, the computer would be used to play shitty podcasts while they procrastinated work and the replicator would be churning out donuts and fried foods.
It's philosophically a weird time, because we are more socially progressive than ever before, but we have a nonstop flow of evidence that people cannot self-govern. It feels paradoxical to demand freedom and protection from your own impulses at the same time.
I don't know that anyone's really asking for protection from their own impulses. Freedom requires protection from other people's impulses. That's where this is all going. A few truly free people, everyone else in a cage.
Rather than framing it as "protection from my own impulses," I think it's more fair to frame it as "protection from teams of professional researchers and engineers and marketers whose entire life's work is fine tuning how to most effectively profit from my impulses"
I think the access to so much information itself isnt bad. Cuz access to all of wikipedia wouldnt do this. People would get bored because its still work to digest that information
I think this access gave opportunities to bad actors whose incentives are misalligned with society's. Social media companies. They use this opportunity to serve us easily digestible garbage thats going to get us hooked.
Its a not some grand and malicious conspiracy or anything. Greed is just a part of capitalism. Before, people loved getting others hooked on drugs because it made them so much money.
People who like capitalism know this is a bug in the system that needs to be patched with regulations. We stopped putting cocaine in coca cola. We just need to stop putting brainrot garbage in our kids information feeds. We need to penalize companies for these greed driven addiction algorithms. Itll be hard, but its what needs to be done and we can do it if we have enough societal willpower
Idk I've gotten high and just wasted whole nights going down Wikipedia rabbit holes. I think eventually turned to stronger time wasters though. The Wikipedia thing is real though.
We didn’t have internet when I was an early teen and I would read physical encyclopedias before bed.
If academic study is on one end of a spectrum, lots of Wikipedia is maybe in the middle, pretty accessible and simple enough to keep clicking through links for someone interested, but still at least requiring active participation.
Something like TikTok (which admittedly I’ve never used) along with AI conversations which I have, can basically take place without the brain ever even engaging other than the reward pathways.
If academic books or literature are fruits and vegetables, Wikipedia is maybe a restaurant meal and social media (+ AI chat) dominos pizza or Pringle’s or some other thing that’s been processed into oblivion and just diffuses though your stomach lining directly onto your blood as you mindless binge on it.
I agree but it's too entwined with "freedom of speech" and section 230. Many here make too much money addicting children and don't want to turn off the fire hose of money.
That just makes it So the big boys who are making all this money can continue to operate while small platforms can no longer afford to comply with the new regulatory environment.
It's not even just children in safe situations like bedtime. I regularly see adults crossing the street typing on their phones while having headphones on.
But solutions?
Here's my take, will gladly take input (Android):
Two profiles: profile 1 has no notifications, reading apps (ebooks) and shouldn't have a browser (mine does and shouldn't); profile 2 has all apps, inclusively all of profile 1 apps. Idea: have an "offline" phone. Good for battery. Whenever I need IoT or something else, I shrug and change profile.
Use desktop apps/desktop browser: should work. Doesn't much. When I'm on laptop I tend to do terminal stuff, social apps feel like wasting time, do it fast and multitasking mode. Multitasking is not really what I want to train my attention span. Sometimes I turn on notifications but put system notifications in DnD so I can check what's notificated every half an hour or so.
Use Waydroid to have social apps: should work, never worked.
Special profiles on social apps: my current social apps have only institutional accounts being followed. Some decorum is kept, and with it, sanity. Exceptions: Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Linkedin, where I follow regular people. But I really should implement something similar for my LinkedIn account.
Alternate sites/apps/mode of usage: use WhatsApp/Telegram to interact, say hi to some people online on Facebook Messenger, install Discourse; on group chats avoid links or include a short summary written by an human of why people should open your link and a quick "what's on the link" description.
These are my takes to extract some humanness from my machine mobile phone.
Notice under “Managing dependency”, the focus is exclusively on technological solutions.
There is no technological solution to this. We have the equivalent of unlimited crack in everyone’s pocket 24/7 with no possible oversight over its use and no way to reel it back in. The genie has been out of the bottle for a while now.
Just like gluttony, there is no solution, only management strategies and they’re all very human.
Sensible education about these things starting at K1. Social and outreach programs for addicts. Etc
As someone who actively avoids political rage bait, was trained in rhetoric, was raised by public persuasion oriented public speakers.
The idea that the most resonant rage bait that exists at any given moment is instantly, algorithmically, propagated to our public officials and the politically engaged is insane.
All this while culture has now been trained to blindly celebrate bias, has been inculcated with a learned helplessness toward bias, have become poisoned against the idea that anyone has the goal of accuracy or objectivity and really does just wants accurate models of the world.
"Short of powering off or walking away, what can we do to manage this dependency? We can access device settings and activate only those features we truly require, adjusting them now and again as our habits and lifestyles change."
I think this is how some people feel about the dating apps. They promise love, affection, and future, but only manipulate our emotions.
I always feel conflicted when I see this problem phrased as "smartphones". I understand why but at the same time I wonder how much, if any, it detracts from solving the actual problems.
The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even social media, could be amazing technologies. We use them poorly, but that's a different issue in of itself. It is their utility that is a big part of why they won't go away. But that also makes them ripe for abuse. Anything with value will be such a target. So even though I know "smartphones" is a shorthand for "surveillance capitalism and 'engagement based' social media", I do worry that it abstracts the problems too much, making it just seem like by getting rid of our smart phones we could fix everything.
We've been using this tactic for years and tbh, I don't think it has had any meaningful success. Maybe it is time to try a different approach? I think the average person can handle a little nuance. And by breaking it down a little more we might be better at addressing the real issues. No one wants to give up the GPS in their pocket, but in 2025 do we really need that data to leave our device (except when explicitly sharing with someone like friends and family)? We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[0] To anyone who works on feed ranking systems and engagement:
I'm genuinely curious, are you seeking to better measure engagement and look at ways to optimize different kinds of engagement? From the outside it seems like only the lazy measurements are being used, and let's be honest, arguing on the internet generates more comments and misinformation as well. Any bad comment that gets lots of responses falls down the ranking (top viewing), only to end up being replaced with similar comments which causes the process to repeat. Brandolini's law, right?
But what are the issues? Is sentiment analysis just not good enough? Is a lack of desire? Momentum?
I would seriously like to understand. Feel free to respond with an anonymous account. And please don't downvote responses, even if you disagree. Maybe we all can have an understanding that we can use votes to express our interest in the conversation (upvoting honest but disagreeable responses, downvoting quips and "mic drops") rather than our to express our agreement with a particular comment? We get to decide what votes mean, right?
[1] Follow-up
Can we at least tone down notifications? It is absolutely insane how complicated it is getting. I need to leave my bank notifications on to ensure I get notified of a fraudulent charge but that same notification system is being used to advertise to me savings bonds and referral bonuses. Same thing happens to emails. Let's be honest here, too many false alarms makes people ignore true alarms. Alarm fatigue is a real thing. If you don't believe me, watch what people do with a faulty smoke detector in an apartment. They just remove it!
Bo Burnham put it succinctly, although he was talking about children on apps: "When they go to sleep at night, they have to choose between all of the information ever published in the history of the world, or the back of their eyelids."
The smartphone is a perverted implementation of the goal that people use to fantasize about back in the early days of the computer revolution: a personal terminal to the world of audio, text, and video information stored in databases across all of humanity. It's of course worth talking about how they compel us to certain behaviors via push notifications, dark patterns, nasty design, etc. but also--obviously we'd be addicted to personal terminals that let us access all the publicly available digitized information in the history of the world.
It isn't even a perverted implementation, we just overestimated ourselves.
All our sci-fi futurism of the 70s/80s showed enlightened humans elevating themselves with technology. In real Star Trek the holo deck would be used for porn, the computer would be used to play shitty podcasts while they procrastinated work and the replicator would be churning out donuts and fried foods.
It's philosophically a weird time, because we are more socially progressive than ever before, but we have a nonstop flow of evidence that people cannot self-govern. It feels paradoxical to demand freedom and protection from your own impulses at the same time.
In 1980s Star Trek it was used for porn. (TNG: The Perfect Mate, Hollow Pursuits)
I don't know that anyone's really asking for protection from their own impulses. Freedom requires protection from other people's impulses. That's where this is all going. A few truly free people, everyone else in a cage.
Rather than framing it as "protection from my own impulses," I think it's more fair to frame it as "protection from teams of professional researchers and engineers and marketers whose entire life's work is fine tuning how to most effectively profit from my impulses"
We want tools that aren't designed to trigger our impulses.
>In real Star Trek the holo deck would be used for porn
This is lampshaded in Lower Decks
With a smartphone you do not only give the internet to a kid, you are also giving the kid to the internet.
I think the access to so much information itself isnt bad. Cuz access to all of wikipedia wouldnt do this. People would get bored because its still work to digest that information
I think this access gave opportunities to bad actors whose incentives are misalligned with society's. Social media companies. They use this opportunity to serve us easily digestible garbage thats going to get us hooked.
Its a not some grand and malicious conspiracy or anything. Greed is just a part of capitalism. Before, people loved getting others hooked on drugs because it made them so much money.
People who like capitalism know this is a bug in the system that needs to be patched with regulations. We stopped putting cocaine in coca cola. We just need to stop putting brainrot garbage in our kids information feeds. We need to penalize companies for these greed driven addiction algorithms. Itll be hard, but its what needs to be done and we can do it if we have enough societal willpower
> misalligned with society's
It's hard to think of a society where this is the right measure. A better measure would be the user's best interest.
Arguably social media is significantly worse when it's aligned with the society's incentives AND those incentives are bad.
For example, consider hypothetical always-on addictive social media in the following societies:
- Ancient Egypt
- Any fundamentalist religious community
- The Congo Free State
- Antebellum South in the United States
- East Germany
- Sparta
- The Assyrian Empire
Alignment with society isn’t a virtue when society is sick. And a society is almost always sick, or at least there's noticeable room for improvement.
Idk I've gotten high and just wasted whole nights going down Wikipedia rabbit holes. I think eventually turned to stronger time wasters though. The Wikipedia thing is real though.
We didn’t have internet when I was an early teen and I would read physical encyclopedias before bed.
If academic study is on one end of a spectrum, lots of Wikipedia is maybe in the middle, pretty accessible and simple enough to keep clicking through links for someone interested, but still at least requiring active participation.
Something like TikTok (which admittedly I’ve never used) along with AI conversations which I have, can basically take place without the brain ever even engaging other than the reward pathways.
If academic books or literature are fruits and vegetables, Wikipedia is maybe a restaurant meal and social media (+ AI chat) dominos pizza or Pringle’s or some other thing that’s been processed into oblivion and just diffuses though your stomach lining directly onto your blood as you mindless binge on it.
That's infinitely preferable to scrolling your short form video platform of choice. At least you get some fun facts to use in conversation out of it.
I agree but it's too entwined with "freedom of speech" and section 230. Many here make too much money addicting children and don't want to turn off the fire hose of money.
That just makes it So the big boys who are making all this money can continue to operate while small platforms can no longer afford to comply with the new regulatory environment.
I don't buy it. The internet existed before the carve out and was in fact less centralized and less shitty
It's not even just children in safe situations like bedtime. I regularly see adults crossing the street typing on their phones while having headphones on.
Do you have to be worried being killed by a driver all the time?
But solutions? Here's my take, will gladly take input (Android):
Two profiles: profile 1 has no notifications, reading apps (ebooks) and shouldn't have a browser (mine does and shouldn't); profile 2 has all apps, inclusively all of profile 1 apps. Idea: have an "offline" phone. Good for battery. Whenever I need IoT or something else, I shrug and change profile.
Use desktop apps/desktop browser: should work. Doesn't much. When I'm on laptop I tend to do terminal stuff, social apps feel like wasting time, do it fast and multitasking mode. Multitasking is not really what I want to train my attention span. Sometimes I turn on notifications but put system notifications in DnD so I can check what's notificated every half an hour or so.
Use Waydroid to have social apps: should work, never worked.
Special profiles on social apps: my current social apps have only institutional accounts being followed. Some decorum is kept, and with it, sanity. Exceptions: Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon, Linkedin, where I follow regular people. But I really should implement something similar for my LinkedIn account.
Alternate sites/apps/mode of usage: use WhatsApp/Telegram to interact, say hi to some people online on Facebook Messenger, install Discourse; on group chats avoid links or include a short summary written by an human of why people should open your link and a quick "what's on the link" description.
These are my takes to extract some humanness from my machine mobile phone.
Notice under “Managing dependency”, the focus is exclusively on technological solutions.
There is no technological solution to this. We have the equivalent of unlimited crack in everyone’s pocket 24/7 with no possible oversight over its use and no way to reel it back in. The genie has been out of the bottle for a while now.
Just like gluttony, there is no solution, only management strategies and they’re all very human.
Sensible education about these things starting at K1. Social and outreach programs for addicts. Etc
As someone who actively avoids political rage bait, was trained in rhetoric, was raised by public persuasion oriented public speakers.
The idea that the most resonant rage bait that exists at any given moment is instantly, algorithmically, propagated to our public officials and the politically engaged is insane.
All this while culture has now been trained to blindly celebrate bias, has been inculcated with a learned helplessness toward bias, have become poisoned against the idea that anyone has the goal of accuracy or objectivity and really does just wants accurate models of the world.
We are lighting ourselves on fire.
> We are lighting ourselves on fire.
And the majority celebrate because they feel warm.
> Short of powering off or walking away ...
We could all stop any time we want, but we don't. :(
"Short of powering off or walking away, what can we do to manage this dependency? We can access device settings and activate only those features we truly require, adjusting them now and again as our habits and lifestyles change."
I think this is how some people feel about the dating apps. They promise love, affection, and future, but only manipulate our emotions.
I always feel conflicted when I see this problem phrased as "smartphones". I understand why but at the same time I wonder how much, if any, it detracts from solving the actual problems.
The article discusses the usual surveillance capitalism and social media stuff[0] that we're probably all pretty familiar with here. But where I feel uneasy is the blaming on the device or technology itself. Smartphones, and even social media, could be amazing technologies. We use them poorly, but that's a different issue in of itself. It is their utility that is a big part of why they won't go away. But that also makes them ripe for abuse. Anything with value will be such a target. So even though I know "smartphones" is a shorthand for "surveillance capitalism and 'engagement based' social media", I do worry that it abstracts the problems too much, making it just seem like by getting rid of our smart phones we could fix everything.
We've been using this tactic for years and tbh, I don't think it has had any meaningful success. Maybe it is time to try a different approach? I think the average person can handle a little nuance. And by breaking it down a little more we might be better at addressing the real issues. No one wants to give up the GPS in their pocket, but in 2025 do we really need that data to leave our device (except when explicitly sharing with someone like friends and family)? We don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
[0] To anyone who works on feed ranking systems and engagement:
I'm genuinely curious, are you seeking to better measure engagement and look at ways to optimize different kinds of engagement? From the outside it seems like only the lazy measurements are being used, and let's be honest, arguing on the internet generates more comments and misinformation as well. Any bad comment that gets lots of responses falls down the ranking (top viewing), only to end up being replaced with similar comments which causes the process to repeat. Brandolini's law, right?
But what are the issues? Is sentiment analysis just not good enough? Is a lack of desire? Momentum?
I would seriously like to understand. Feel free to respond with an anonymous account. And please don't downvote responses, even if you disagree. Maybe we all can have an understanding that we can use votes to express our interest in the conversation (upvoting honest but disagreeable responses, downvoting quips and "mic drops") rather than our to express our agreement with a particular comment? We get to decide what votes mean, right?
[1] Follow-up
Can we at least tone down notifications? It is absolutely insane how complicated it is getting. I need to leave my bank notifications on to ensure I get notified of a fraudulent charge but that same notification system is being used to advertise to me savings bonds and referral bonuses. Same thing happens to emails. Let's be honest here, too many false alarms makes people ignore true alarms. Alarm fatigue is a real thing. If you don't believe me, watch what people do with a faulty smoke detector in an apartment. They just remove it!
what doesn't, at some point?
They do it very very frequently.
Oh absolutely, The intent and magnitude of a lot of dark patterns do make them quite bad.