My Dad was a smartphone holdout until last year. I deeply regret getting him one. He is now nose deep in it whenever I see him and much less interesting to be around since his conversations are now about what's popular online and not the original thoughts he once used to have.

This has made me more reflective of my tech absorption and how hard it is to see until you see it happen to someone else.

Yeah I used to be a huge Redditor trying to constantly keep up with the memes and funny content of the day. After quitting it made me realize how much a slave I was to the platform and how much I needed my hit of random funny crap.

I used HN as a replacement for the industry news and to remove all the other extra junk. Which seems to be working since I only visit about once a day for 15-20 minutes and don't feel a compulsive need to check it constantly for fear of missing something since there's a lack of memes and in-jokes.

I installed LeechBlock to limit me to 15 minutes of Reddit every day. At first, I was hitting it with my morning coffee. These days, I rarely use the entire 15 minute allotment (although I did today).

Seems like as of 2015 he has one!

source: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/575490964527034368