Right. Necessity is the mother of all invention. Boredom can be a powerful necessity. If it weren't for the crushing boredom of the suburbs in the 80's, I would never have learned to code at the age of 11.

Loneliness can be forced on you. I personally moved and since some girls at the new school decided (in the locker room) that I was lesbian, folks stopped talking to me. I found a very small group of friends the next year at high school.

These girls were half correct in their assessment, but that was no reason for the entirety of a school to decide I wasn't worth talking to.

Seriously, loneliness is awful. I should mention that I had no issues asking folks out later in life (when I became interested in such things).

This sort of thing might have been more common pre-internet times. The internet made me less lonely because I found folks I liked to talk to.

One claim made was that poverty and loneliness are two of the most difficult scarcity traps to be in. Even more so than hunger (especially in the developed world). Because poverty and loneliness push you into behaviors that only perpetuate more poverty and loneliness. You can see this with the rise of toxic misogynistic groups on the Internet, and I personally see this with my more awkward, lonely friends and acquaintances who put off new company with desperate, weird, or standoffish behavior.

Loneliness is curable, but requires effort.

I'm happy you solved yours. I'm happy I solved mine. But I know not everyone can have the stroke of luck to change things like I have. Lots of folks have little choice, in part because of financial woes, mental illness, age, and so on.

NOt everyone is like you. Loneliness has never been a great motivator for me, and though I don't suffer from it like I did 10 years ago, the entire thing has left me with a negative view of people and their willingness to accept folks that are different - especially when they "should know better".

That last bit has been key to my own "cure", as I'm an immigrant and folks don't assume the same things.

Keeping with the analogy of hurdles. It's like, successful startup is a 20 ft wall. Deciding to workout 3x a week is a 3ft hurdle. Getting a fitbit and targeting more walking is like a 2ft hurdle (my scales not everyone's). Getting over loneliness due to not having a cell phone is a 5 ft hurdle. It'd require getting out of the house a lot more and that anxiety can be crippling. If that was a goal of mine I'd train for it just like a marathon. You don't start by running the whole thing in the first week, you start with increasingly large goals.

I totally agree that blindly saying adversity is good, is a crazy over simplification. I also think we (if you are in top 60% of tax brackets just to really bound that statement) have it exceptionally easy in the USA and that we are all capable of much more than we think we are.

Not everyone can do a startup, but many of us have lost the concept of setting a goal and pushing ourselves (myself included).

Thanks for calling me out. A quote from T. R. could be seen as snarky as well. This really is a personal thing. I should have really put a caveat that this applies to me. Just me. I think more people would benefit from the mentality, but I also don't believe in a society that pushes artificial adversity to "make people better" that'd be bad.

Anecdote: I used to have an LG dumbphone with AT&T (I'd purchased it with prepaid time at the airport). A few years ago they sent me a message to come to their store and have it replaced for free because it would stop working with their planned "network updates".

I did that and got an Alcatel dumb phone. Not sure if it's using LTE or whatever G, but it works well and I'm reasonably happy with it. I do wish it was a flip-phone like the LG, because I've butt-dialed 911 a few times with it.

(They did initially give me what must've been a used phone, since it had over 50 personal contacts from someone else on it, but that's a different story...)

Did you remove the browsers and app store as well? I got rid of everything except for phone/texting, Slack (for work), and non-bingy convenience apps like Maps/Yelp/etc. On Android, it can be done with the adb shell without rooting, even the 'uninstallable' apps like Google search and the Samsung browser. Not sure about Apple.

I tried this before without getting rid of the Play Store and found that I would just cheat and download FF Focus when I felt like binging and then deleting it again when I was done. Now if I think I need a new app, I actually have to go on my laptop, download the apk, and move it to my phone to install it. It's not foolproof but it's enough extra steps to where I don't act on it on impulse.

It's worked really well and I don't binge like I used to . I still have some compulsive phone-checking habits but it's way less time consuming than compulsive-random-article-reading/scrolling. And I also get to keep the nicer benefits like the good camera and the large screen for when I need a GPS.

I still keep an old iPhone for when I know I'll need an Uber or something, but the smartphone isn't a part of my daily life anymore.

It's possible with adb or root, but buy a $500-$800 device for removing basic apps? Failed logic IMHO.

> Not sure about Apple.

You can't.

Just this morning I saw someone take a brief pause while crossing the street to look at her phone unaware that a car was coming. She stopped in the middle! of the street. The car screeched to a halt and missed hitting her by nothing.

The thing is, most of these people are (most likely) not even looking at something important, just their social media or messaging apps.

I noticed a girl who was talking to someone on the phone. She hanged and put the phone in her pocket. Not 10 seconds later she took it out and just started scrolling while walking past me.

Obviously, it's a very bad thing when someone decides not to leave her mental cave while strolling through traffic (worse still if she's behind the wheel). I just think it's a more humanistic view than the zombie angle.

I would blame app designers, but I uninstalled all of them and ended up pissing away most of the day on HackerNews, so I think they're mostly blameless in my case.

You never know what you'll get when you reload (after some time has passed) (Random reinforcement.) Also, if you comment, you get random reinforcement in the form of (hopefully nice) replies and upvote points.

Ranking stories on the front page based on voting also is intended to draw an audience with similar interests.

All of us HN commenters are also engagement designers. If not in our day jobs, then at least in an amateur capacity in text.

Note that I'm paying more to have this experience, but it's been totally worth it. So far I've been quite happy with it. It's amazing how, in the odd times where I've needed to carry my phone with me, how I instantly reverted to my former (bad) habits.

It's a form of commitment device and it's been very effective for me.

Does more engagement equal app usefulness and adoption? I don't know. I have a lot of apps on my phone I don't touch as often but when I go and clean out apps I don't use anymore I still keep some because I still find them useful to have even if I don't engage with that much

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/08/meet-the-tech-company-that...

[2] https://www.boundless.ai/

Obviously no. I think it is fairly obvious that there are many apps that are highly engaging that are a huge waste of time for many people.

No, but it equals more ad impressions.

Interestingly, they are also no longer activating 4G devices unless they support HD Voice, so the iPhone 5s and 5c are out even though they support LTE.

[1] https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/knowledge-base-21881...

Got a wife/husband/best friend that you trust? Use iOS or Android's built in systems for restricting what you can do on your phone, from what websites you can visit to being able to install apps, and lock them in place with a pin... that your trusted partner sets. Now you have no choice.

Worked for me.

What I've done is started putting the phone in do not disturb and airplane modes when I'm not expecting a call.

I use a HiBy R3 [1] with a 512gb SD card to listen to my collection of ripped FLACs on the go. It's a great device, highly recommend!

https://store.hiby.com/products/hiby-r3