[PureParadigm]

In regards to (1), sometimes using the phone is both a symptom and the cause (in a reinforcing cycle). In my case, I would use my phone in bed before falling asleep to avoid having to confront thoughts I would have while drifting off since I could stay distracted until I was seconds away from passing out. Unsurprisingly, I would have terrible quality sleep (and I suspect many of the psychological problems mentioned in the article stem from problems phone addiction causes with sleep).

Once I moved the phone to another room at night, I was forced to fall asleep without being distracted. Being alone with my thoughts was extremely uncomfortable the first few nights, but it got better. Now I'm used to falling asleep without distraction and am more in touch with how I feel. So my phone was causing me to become out of touch with my thoughts/feelings which would in turn make it even more uncomfortable to confront them, so I would turn to my phone for distraction and this reinforcing cycle continued until broken. The phone was both a symptom and cause of my sleeping problem, so removing the phone removed the cause and fixed my sleep.

[laurent92]

This. My phone usage is linked with solitude on one side, and invasive negative thoughts on the other. I used to think about suicide and revenge all the time. I used to debate endlessly in my mind with people who used to try to list my defects and put me down (I’m white male with education in a leftist city). Now I think about nothing! Memes, variety of chats, news cycle, videos about plane crashes, engineering, building things, what a progress! People who recommend me to drop the phone have no idea what a hell it was. It is like drugs, it is like living in a fantasy where I’m not being put down for a few hours...

except I’m not losing my teeth, I’m just losing time.

From the article, which gets cause and consequence reverse by the way as all articles on the topic:

> This is a huge problem because re-connecting with people in the offline world is a solution that improves the quality of life.

Yeah, no, re-connecting with people IRL is not a good experience as a white male, we have to selectively choose people who don’t think we should first apologize for existing, and it is getting quite hard nowadays.