A talk I watched about "enshittification" on YouTube. Not an exact quote, but it resonates and I wanted to make it clear it's not from my smooth brain.
EDIT: Here it is. My man wears a mask the whole time, which is distracting, but he's got things to say.
When I open my phone, I look at a couple of things like news / weather / Lemmy, and then in about 5-10 minutes I'm done taking a dump and I put the phone away until I get a message.
Most of the time I don't use a smartphone for the Internet, it's just my pocket messenger device.
Y'all don't know/remember the struggle. My "apps" used to be 2 or 3 forums -- and not particularly active forums, at that -- that I would check repeatedly, all day long, during downtime at work. Posts and comments were rare.
I don't even understand why people want to look at phone apps all day. I hate browsing the Internet on a phone screen usually, it's so inferior to having a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
I mean if you're at work or whatever and you're bored, I can see wasting time on phone apps, but any other time I don't. But of course if you don't have a computer you can't just use the computer you don't have.
It's much easier to use touch than a mouse? Swipe keyboard are almost faster. And apps are just a more minimalist version of a desktop site. All the content, none of the clutter. I despised Reddit on my laptop.
Ah yes the 'hi guys I have a problem with this program and it's doing this any solutions?' And then you would have a reply maybe in a week or with bad luck a month. I'd usually just go to a IRC chatroom and ask it there.
Even worse when you see every post incremented by one or more. Either a racist troll had stumbled their way in or an ad-bot was spam posting. Either way, took a few days for the mods to get around to cleaning it up. Passwords for every board was the only way to slow it down. They were not the good old days.
You should try gReader paired with Innorader for back end sync. It's dope AF. Also good recommendation on the mastodon app. Rocking Sync and Boost.
Fair Mail, so I never have to open Gmail on my phone.
not sure why but my mental health gets way better when i use my laptop.
im a zoomer so i started out on a phone and only got a laptop a few years ago, i thnk it might be because everytime i opened my phone i would just rot away and i just go back to those habits whenever i use my phone. when i started using a laptop my entire schedule changed and updated(for the better). and having a slow laptop is prob also good to avoid wasting too much time on video games lmao
I don't know about you, but it seems to me that phone OSes and apps are designed to steal our attention at all the times. I find it hard to do stuff while receiving notifications here and there, or even knowing that a new notification may pop up at any time. If fells like trying to do something while someone is watching and poking me all the time.
Gen Z here, I actually had the exact opposite problem. I don't really use a smartphone now, but when I did use it daily, while I could get into some article rabbitholes, it was never to a painful extent. Probably because the phone is small and not at all comfortable to interact with long-term. But when I am on the laptop - I often lose track of time spent on IRC, youtube and newsfeeds. I now try to strictly limit the time to only what's needed (unless IRC has a conversation that is really relevant for me), and download most articles onto an E-reader for a less painful experience.
It's not helpful in any way, but I do not experience boredom. You can leave me with a computer in a room for 2 years and when you come to collect me I'll just tell you to turn the light off and go away.
I only have Lemmy and Youtube. I'm actually trying to get off Youtube, those shorts are rotting my brain. I tried deleting the app but my Pixel won't let me.
YouTube shorts I could understand. But I love using it for channels that have quality 5 to 10 minute content and I don't feel like it's as much a waste of my time as shorts. Legal Eagle, Hot Ones, Tom Scott, Some More News, You Suck At Cooking, Let's Game it Out. There are some gems out there.
5 to 10 minutes is a bit too short for comfort tbh. If the content is good, the joy is slightly poisoned by the fact that there was so little of it. IMO the comfortable video length is 30 to 50 minutes, which is a far more enjoyable experience (with 1-2 hours if it's a podcast).
I still like Youtube, I watch it on my TV all the time. It's only a problem on my phone because I would turn my phone screen on, go to Youtube Shorts without even thinking, and end up wasting 30+ minutes at a time. I hate how effective short form videos are on me, It's just so easy to keep going. On my TV, I only watch normal length videos that I search for, I don't mind those.
meditate, idk? the crud I read always bubbles back up then & I can chew on it more & even get more out of it (c.f. rotating a cow in your mind) & eventually the thought of something fun to do takes over & then I don’t need the garbage feeds anymore. Free dopamine!