[math_denial]

>Staring at a phone doing what? Swiping to refresh on social media for hours and hours at a time?

Yes, for the technologically-not-literate people that I know, Internet = social media, and they totally spend every waking hour refresh the page to see "what's new". I used to do that on reddit.

>check email, you read news articles, you look at posts from friends on fb or instagram, you interact with people in a comments section, you take or share pictures, you have music or video essays playing to help you focus on work, you message coworkers, coordinate a meetup in a group chat, among other things.

Half of this thing are mental garbage, the other half are FOMO and outrage economy, so not doing them may result in a positive outcome.

[knaik94]

I agree with you that escapism with tech can be more than a bad habit and it can take your attention away from things that would be more productive in the long term. However I don't know if I agree that it's a compulsion the way you'd think it with traditional addiction. If a friend you haven't talked to in a while suddenly came over to hang out, would you sit there and continue doom scrolling?

I also should clarify that I don't categorize reddit as social media because it's generally not people I know. I would consider fb, insta, snapchat as social media but not YouTube, reddit, or even here.

This reminds more of somewhere in between. Like stumbleupon but with a comment section where you can discuss things.

I am only differentiating because I believe the motivation for refreshing news aggregation sites vs social media is different. There's a much higher sense of urgency and importance when it's news. What you find interesting is also different between social media and news.

I think having a catch all term of being on the phone is not productive in helping people understand when the use of technology becomes unhealthy. Calling technology use unhealthy or even an addiction based on the perception of how long you spend is meaningless.

I agree that for some people using technology less would be positive, most often because they stop using technology to escape and ignore their responsibilities.

I don't know how fair it is to say it's garbage, some people like watching terrible films, some watch reality tv, some like video games, some like learning baseball stats, some like collecting NFTs, some like following twitter drama, I personally enjoy this kind of discourse on HN. How people choose to spend their time and what they enjoy is up to them.

I don't personally believe in the idea that constant stimulation is a bad thing as long as my responsibilities are taken care of. But I also have adhd so I don't know if everyone would share that sentiment.