Huge agree. Apple likes to pay lip service to this with "screen time" features, but will they make a smaller phone for people who don't want their life centered around staring at the shiny screen? No, because they don't sell as much as big phones.

I had a similar experience rebooting my 9yo iPhone [0] after a more recent one went out of service. Hours of screen procrastination got replaced with IRL activities/thinking. I decided to not repair the fancy LCD and keep the little friend. It’s been two years and I don’t feel going back soon.

Reducing color intensity is a great idea to worsen the experience, I’ll give it a go. Yet first thing I do after wake up is checking Hacker News and the design is probably not at fault. Still some self improvement to do.

0 still security updated! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45270108

It's a good idea. Companies try really hard to optimize and make everything they want you to do as easy and smooth as possible (and vice versa). Personally I avoid things like Apple Pay for this reason, it's there to remove friction from purchasing stuff, which results in us doing more of it.

And the worst part is the advertisements. I'm trying to get work done, thank you.

The other half of that is that they used to make 65-in-1 electronics kits. And they were actually educational. There was an expectation that leisure activities could nevertheless improve you as a person. Now you have to go looking for that sort of experience, and it generally only happens as an adult, who has already developed skills and taste to do so.

How much do you disagree if you agree with the root of the argument?

Whatever it was that made humans enjoy books, newspapers, magazines, movies, tv shows, written correspondence, phone calls, etc, is now available times a million, 24/7, in your pocket, essentially free (if you don’t count externalities ofc). Plus the ability to handle a huge number of admin and business tasks from anywhere. Not hard to see why it’s so addictive for almost everyone.

> Also, I remember a time when bringing a handheld video game at school would be terrible for a kid's social status.

I don't remember that time. Even the "jocks" loved Mattel Football. And what else were they going to do in school, pay attention to the teacher? ;-)

I used to drink orange juice. Around 2 liter a day. I've learned since that it was almost as bad as drinking 2 liter of non caffeinated soda.

I will absolutely eat a whole bag of oranges in a sitting.

I think that's precisely the point. Junk food is _engineered_ to be irresistible.

Sugar is not bad. https://raypeat.com/articles/articles/glycemia.shtml

As you see in other comments, people are debating the relative net effects of other inventions of modernity. I think it is interesting and very HN to think about screens vs sugar. What value does your pearl clutching add to this discussion?

Thats my philosophy too. If you're full, you have no cravings at all. I have zero sugar cravings unless im really hungry, at which point real food is still the better option. Focusing on what you Should eat (nuts, berries, greens, etc) is much more rewarding than obsessing over what not to eat.

Sure, and doing chores around the house or walking the dog cures my phone cravings.

> We're not addicted to sugar, (...) Eating enough turns off my "sugar cravings".

Glad it works for you, but that's not universal. I'm pretty much addicted to sugar, regardless of what else I eat. So I have to not buy it in the first place - that way it's just not available.

You may be surprised how close many candies are to being pure sugar with food coloring.

How does having management strategies over an alleged addiction imply that it isn’t an addiction?

Look down the cart of your fellow shoppers the next time you go to the super market. Odds are some of them will have only huge bottles of sugar drink, sugar cereals and cookies.

The cakes may have been healthier.

Not sure I would call that an addiction. Sugar is one: almost everybody consumes way too much sugar and would be incapable of reducing that to a healthy amount. I am including myself, pretty sure you're part of the club.

I wouldn't say that we breath "too much".

thinking then, that requires the extra oxygen

The reason it isn't, is because it's automatic. Your brain keeps you breathing as much as it can (if you hold your breath until you pass out, your brain will start breathing again for you). Breathing isn't reward driven. It doesn't engage the dopamine system the same way, eg cocaine does. You don't become tolerant to breathing the same way you do, eg cocaine. Lastly, for something to qualify for Substance Use Disorder (SUD), they need to keep doing it, despite social and health ramifications of continued use in the face of developing a tolerance for it. Other than some edgelord shit, no one's gonna give you shit for continuing to breath.

I didn't say youtube vs TV, I said youtube vs books.

I didn't say youtube vs TV, I said youtube vs books.

Most of the current elderly also grew up in an era where they believed cities and urban areas were bad, so they moved out to the suburbs where everything is farther away and requires driving. It requires a lot more effort to do anything and they have effectively isolated themselves.

My grandparents who lived in a city could walk down the street, get groceries, and easily meet friends for a snack or chat. Even when they were alone, they were part of a community. My parents' generation all live far away from each other, struggle to get out of the house, and are scared of strangers.

Succumbing to constant distraction, even if a natural desire, would never have been a successful evolutionary strategy for an individual organism. Spending large amounts of time absorbing and repeating bullshit has proven to be a pretty successful group survival strategy throughout human history, though.

I think it's also important that HN doesn't have infinite scrolling. It's old-school: 30 items per page, click at the bottom to go to the next page.

I made a rule for myself that I would never go past page 2 of HN. So, each morning, I see 60 items, and if none of them interest me, then I just move on with my day. I think that's why I never became addicted.

I don't agree with this take. Some people are going to be more susceptible than others, just as with alcohol or other drugs. An individual choosing to stop doesn't mean much for society in aggregate.

I don't go down the political rage bait video pipeline, nevertheless next to any unrelated YouTube video I see all sorts of click/rage-bait littered in the sidebar just asking to start me down a rabbit hole.

As an example I opened a math channel/video in a private mode tab. Under it (mobile), alongside the expected math-adjacent recommendations I see things about socialist housing plans, 2025 gold rush debasement trades, the 7-stage empire collapse pattern ("the US is at stage 5"), and so on. So about 10% are unrelated political rage-bait.

Moreover, everyone is seeing different things for different reasons, even geographically. For example I recently discovered this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-d.... If you look at exhibit 8A, section 3.5 (https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1366201/dl) you'll see various targeting, e.g. particularly swing states/counties.

Right, and recommendations for old car repair videos that you watch a few of per week is reasonable.

The argument I’m making is that it’s not beyond the pale for YouTube to detect “hey it’s been over an hour of ai bullshit / political rage bait / thirst traps / whatever, the algorithm is going to intentionally steer you in a different direction for the next little bit.”

Never fails to amaze me how shortsighted the algorithms can be.

"Oh you didn't skip this video on a topic you usually don't watch? How about we make that topic 50% of your next however many videos?!"

> Recommendations are mostly tailored to your history, except with a couple hardcoded slots populated with some general-purpose "engaging" trash from your locale/geographical location, pretty much always political content.

I don't see that at all. I use YouTube most evenings (I watch YouTube instead of TV).

I do have like traditional news media sometimes on the third or fourth row and you can dismiss that quickly.

> And if you click on one, by mistake or curiosity, now you've sent a signal that you like it and will get much more of it in the next batch of recommendations.

You fix that by simply pressing "Not Interested" a few times. It can be annoying. It isn't the end of the world.

This is an important caveat. I get recommended what the parent commenter you replied to stated, mostly videos on home repair, tech, and technological skepticism because those are what I watch. I also get Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, and other alt-right pipeline dorks in my recommendations solely because of my gender and age. I never engage with political content on YouTube and I’ve cleared my watch history multiple times, these still show up.

I actually ended up disabling watch history all together and I’ve installed an extension (Unhook) that hides the sidebar recommendations, Shorts, and other useless features.

No. You just click "Not Interested" a few times and it they go away.

> I've found the opposite to be true. If I engage with a video in any way shape or form, even to say I don't want it, they consider that engagement

I don't think that is the case. If I click Not Interested. Similar video don't show.

> Now you get baited with Member Only videos too. I'm already paying you $30 a month..

To members? Or to YouTube to remove ads? If it is the former, you have shown YouTube that you are willing to pay for memberships, so they going to recommend them.

If you’re using it as a tool it’s perfectly usable with just a search bar. I want to learn how to do something in a visual manner, I go to YouTube. Type in “how to replace [part] on [my car]”. All I have on the YouTube homepage is a search bar, because I used the Unhook extension to hide everything else.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

First, older generation having lower IQ than newer is neither the Flynn effect nor its reversal. The Flynn effect compares historical test results to current ones; not old people vs young people but old people when they passed the test long ago with young people passing the test now. If elderly people are loosing IQ points it's most certainly because of age not because they have had a lower IQ all along.

And the reversal of the Flynn effect states that younger people are actually the one having the lower hand on this comparison.