[tinsmith]

While what you quoted is not incorrect, and worth pointing out, the analogy stands. In AA, you only get the chip if you abstain from drinking. The chip (a little coin) is an all-or-nothing deal.

In AA, we do get people attending who just want to control their drinking. They're usually sent by the courts (in the US, at least) due to some misdemeanor they commited while drunk, as though those of us battling ourselves are supposed to teach some 20-something how to be responsible adult because their parents failed them. Sometimes one of those court-sent people finds out they have a real problem, and end up sticking around. However, for the most part, the rest are there for a few weeks because they have to be, we sign their slips, and never see them again. We don't give out chips for that.

[laratied]

Food addiction is a better example I think. You have to learn to moderate, you can't just go cold turkey.

I am sure AA doesn't bother with moderation because abstaining is simply that much more effective.

Even if you went on a month long screen detox in the woods you are going to "relapse" at some point when you get back. The AA model is just not going to work in this situation.

[eesmith]

My disagreement is about the appropriateness of the AA analogy to the author's point.

The author asserts "If that’s the case, the only healthy screen time is no screen time. Zero."

That is almost impossible these days. We increasingly require smart phones such that NOT having/using one is difficult, even for those who don't want one. Important information and services are moving to the internet, making a non-internet life more difficult. Yet the author wants use to consider that as a viable solution!

AA promotes abstinence, and supports people who want to maintain abstinence. As I often go for months without drinking alcohol, I know that there is still a lot one can do without drinking.

What would you do if your company required you to drink alcohol to work, your kid's school required you to drink alcohol to check on your kid's status, a restaurant required you to do a shot to get a menu, and you couldn't rent a bike without first drinking even more alcohol?

And that's why I don't like the author's use of an essentially impossible solution as the comparison.

While Weight Watcher's and other diet plans don't say "abstain from all food", which of course is impossible.

WW specifically uses a points-based system so that some foods, like "leafy greens, carrots, tomatoes, green beans, asparagus, onions, broccoli and radishes" have zero points, and can be consumed without limit. (Compare that to a calorie-based diet.)

By the WW analogy, some screen time, like logging into your bank to check on the accounts, would have zero points while others, like writing comments on HN :), would have points, setting a limit to one's daily use.

Which seems to map well to what the author is proposing ("parameters to evaluate quality, not quantity, of the time spent staring at your screens").

I also don't like "Go on, spend 4 hours on an app. Just make sure you decided to—and that you feel those 4 hours are life well spent." because if the author really believes the alcoholism analogy is true, then it's saying the author either doesn't believe any of the readers actually have a screen time problem, or believes it's okay for an alcoholic to spend 4 hours drinking at the bar with friends, so long if it feels like a life well spent. And something similar for the crack cocaine user.

P.S. In researching the Weight Watcher's/food analogy I found out that the existence of "food addition" is under debate, where the 'language of addiction' is used to explain one's feelings and provide a means of communicating distress and helplessness, rather than being an addition in the same way that drugs are addictive. See https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-018-0203-9 . With my daily allotment of Internet Watchers points nearly gone, I'll not research the scholarly views of "internet addition".