Uninstall social media.

At this point I’m pretty convinced that social media is a net negative for humanity with little redeeming quality.

There was a time when it did connect people, like you could meet people or find old friends, but that was long ago deprioritized or even stripped away. Now it’s just a pure chum feed that serves up either brain rot trash or political fear and rage bait.

TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture. It was a medium of mixed value. Social media doesn’t even have that going for it unless some day people celebrate the great Pepe memes. Everything it creates is disposable low effort trash. Nothing worth keeping. You could delete it all and everyone would forget a week later.

Hacker news is the only form of social media I use!

This is closer to a small forum.

I guess I use some slacks and discords and a few lists but that’s about it.

Just HN for me as well. Used to visit slashdot before it turned to crap. Got off FB over a decade ago, no other SM accounts.

Just be aware that people spend more time on HN than they really want to, HN even has a no procrastination setting where you block the access after some time spent here. So, aside dark patterns which HN does not have, it seems that the amount and frequency of information that cause some kind of dopamine disregulation.

HN is not any better. This site is full of attention grabbing mechanisms and clickbait

> TV was always full of crap but it also gave rise to great shows, to art and lasting culture.

True. It also bonded people together. I have fond memories of watching certain shows and sport matches with my family.

Is it the phone or is it the internet you're lamenting? Sounds like the latter. I think TFA misattributes this as well.

The internet is the venom delivered by the parasite as it feeds on my attention.

But it's not an autonomous entity. It's entirely passive if you turn it off, or uninstall all the apps that bother you. Stop feeding it your attention. Or are you claiming it's taken over your agency as well? If so -- and I mean this as respectfully as possible -- I'd hope you decide to talk with a healthcare professional about this problem.

I used to think the same when people spoke of social media being addictive, but not any more. Drugs aren't autonomous either, however they clearly do remove some people's autonomy. I can well imagine now that a person could be addicted, particularly if he's grown up with it and has used it in the past to avoid facing his problems.

“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.” ― Augustine of Hippo

(Not saying anybody around here is wicked just remembering a striking quote)

To add to your point, there's science behind it. What makes a drug addictive is the fact that, after you start using it, certain behavioral patterns move from conscious brain centers to habit driven centers. That's what makes addiction so hard to break, couple that with further biological dependence formation.

I would not be at all surprised if the same phenomenon can happen with internet addiction, if maybe in a more benign form as far as bodily consequences go.

So no, drugs are not "autonomous" but to act like it's an easy matter to simply refuse to do them once you've started is an attitude that's shockingly ignorant of much of the modern understanding of addiction.

I didn’t claim it was easy. I even advice getting professional help if the situation is so bad that the person’s own willpower is not enough.

Drugs have additional chemical and physiological impacts that make them a very different beast, but obviously addiction can still be brutal even if it’s “just” an experience — look no further than gambling. For which most countries have strict laws and regulations, particularly when it comes to children.

But let’s also not infantilise adults: People need to take responsibility for their own behavioural patterns.

Hey mate. I don't want to be patronising, but it seems like you're suffering a bit and might benefit from some professional help. I get it, phones can become a stand in attachment figure for people who are experiencing personal difficulties. There are ways to overcome this but it requires professional expertise. I hope you can get some relief from this. These technologies are omnipresent in modern life and for many of us it isn't a simple matter of choosing to disengage. All the best.

I'm not being entirely serious. I was actually just having some rhetorical fun with the analogy, but it's sweet that the HN crowd is so quick to move into the mode of concern.

No worries man. I'm a bit autistic so I take things too literally sometimes. Can't help it.

>Parasites. Period. This thing fills my head with a bunch of images from distant warped realities, summoned up out of thin air, it clogs my brain with a flood of other voices,

It does all that by it self? Of course not. This thing is not autonomous. Every app that _fill your head_ was your choice to install, signup and OPEN every time. It's like saying drugs are parasites. Of course they aren't. Your choices made you addicted to the thing. What happened to agency? Everyone is now a slave of social media apps?

Tell that to all the bloatware pre installed on my phone. And my windows computer.

As for bloatware-free phones: Fairphone. I've been using one for more than 4 years now, replaced the screen after dropping it, and I bought an extra battery to keep my gps alive on long ski trips.

My phone doesn't do this because I don't install social media apps because I don't have the social media accounts to be bothered with.

I never feel a compulsion to check google maps for instance.

This parasite is easily exterminated.

Pacifiers. For a while I watched dash cam video from police car chases. I'm over it now, but one interesting thing frequently happens: officers yank the drivers out, get them on the ground and cuff them. In most cases, the drivers are yelling about their phone. "My phone!" "My phone!" Cars is wrecked, they've got knees pressing them into the dirt, frequently injured, facing all manner of charges, and the one thing they care about it some phone.

After sitting in the patrol car for a quite while, some officer opens the door to speak with them. Immediately: "Can I get my phone??"

Sometimes they'll still have a phone after being cuffed and detained. They will nearly dislocate joints to thumb their phones continuously while cuffed. They will not stop until someone takes it.

I don't know...

Might be that they are trying to contact somebody? Phones are also communication devices.

You know that is you, not the phone, that is desperately looking for a distraction and a different reality.

I don't understand why it's ever so trendy to do this performative i-have-minimal-agency-in-my-existence bit when it comes to smartphones; swap that last word with "TV" and the same people professing it would smirk - presumably because that's an old timey, rather than a très trendy, thing to be part of.