In the same way that an alcoholic can just stop drinking and then they're no longer an alcoholic, right? That's not how addiction works.

Habitual addiction and chemical addiction are not the same things. Cutting Facebook cold turkey has few if any of the side effects cutting alcohol cold turkey has.

It has the effect of the existential dread of being alone with your thoughts.

That has nothing to do with addiction.

I disagree, i think it’s the basis of a lot of addiction.

There is psychological addiction and chemical addiction. Both suck, and you are likely better off gradually decreasing the activity/drug in both cases, but there is a real difference that in the latter case you must gradually decrease it, else you will have very severe side-effects, for example with alcohol it is called delirium tremens.

Of course it has. Just because it isn't directly based in a physiological reaction doesn't make it less real. And it is in general a mistake to make a clear distinction between what is mind and what is matter. They are the same.

True. Planned impediments can help, just like making sure alcohol never enters your front door.

I've used my phone's parental features to limit usage of social apps to one hour. It's protected by a somewhat randomly chosen PIN that I don't memorize but store in my password manager. If I want to override the time limit, I have to go and look up the PIN. Most of the time... too hard, move on to something more productive.

Do alcoholics overcome addiction with “Time well spent” metrics?

Perhaps alcohol is a bad example because you can quit it completely. That's not really the case with something like a smart phone, so perhaps the better comparison is food. You can't stop eating food completely if you struggle with addiction, but you can learn healthier habits.

You can buy a non-smart phone though.

Probably not. But what about "I felt well in my body after getting drunk" metric?

Even worse, it's more like "if you don't want to drink, just don't be around alcohol! Just stop meeting people!"

I deleted my Facebook account last year. Next week I found myself mindlessly scrolling Reddit. I blocked Reddit on my phone. Next week I was scrolling Linkedin (sic!). Humans just haven't adapted to this new era with endless information in a packets that are designed to be as addictive as possible.

I think I should just get rid of my smart phone, but that's easier said than done.

Sure--but it's not just Facebook. And how do people learn they should stop using Facebook?

How do you explain, with a such simple solution, that there are still billions of people using facebook? Are they just stupid?

Simple =/= Easy

While tricky, I agree in concept. It's hard to stop using social media, and as much as I'm proud that I don't use Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter any more, here I am, commenting on a post on HN. They're different for sure, and HN causes more thought and more learning, but there are still days that I spent too much time and end up on page 3 of Ask HN.

Part of the fix is having something else to do. If I'm waiting on a code review, I might slip into HN or Reddit. I guess a solution would be having very flexible, productive tasks to do. Duolingo seems like a good one, but I personally don't have too much of a want to learn a new language.

And stop using Instagram or WhatsApp or TikTok or LinkedIn. But can you, though?

Can you be the one single weird person in a group of 50 that says "I'd rather not have pictures of this event with my face on them posted on Insta, please"?

In a conversation with someone the other day, I said I tried to participate in my community without using Facebook and it was difficult. They laughed.

I 'solved' this by creating a new account, under a different name (yes, I know it's 'against the rules') that is purely a member of the local groups. It has no friends, no timeline posts, just for staying up to date with community events.

I have no real reason to check it, as there is not really anything posted, but I can hop on once or twice a week to see what is coming up.

Unfortunately, that's the best way I've found to know what goes on in the village vs not actually wanting to participate in Facebook

Your solution has been around since the dawn of Facebook and has had no affect on the majority of Facebook users. The proposed solution actually could. Sometimes, it turns out that the best solutions are in fact complicated.

How do I keep contact with relatives -- like cousins, aunts and uncles, etc -- who I care enough about to want to chat with / see what's up in their lives, but not enough to call on a weekly basis?

Call/text them on a _monthly_ basis?

iCloud photo sharing? Works with people that do and do not have iPhones/Macs. At least I know that non-Apple users can see photos in a shared album; I don't know if they can add photos to a shared photo album as well - I've never tried that.

Several years ago I got tired for Facebook and quit it. My parents, in-laws, and siblings have an Apple shared photo album for "general" content and we occasionally set up albums for the same group of folks when there's a big event/trip/etc.

We occasionally Facetime or use chat via Messages. Email's are in the mix as well.

I feel that it works reasonably well.

This gives me “If you are homeless, just buy a house” vibes

Sounds like you might be a fan of abstinence-based sex education programs.