[nmg]

I'm surprised by the negative comments here so far that sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.

The article's argument is not only thoughtfully made and unusually well-written, in my opinion it's correct. There's nothing sexy about essentially staring at something in your hand for an hour or more every day. Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization. Which is decidedly not sexy.

taps add comment

[Aurornis]

Years ago, one of my friends who was really into fitness offered a free service to help people with meal planning and setting up their diets.

A lot of people would come to him and say they wanted to lose weight, but when he started discussing their diet and shopping lists they would get defensive. They didn’t like the implication that something they did or a choice they made was a factor in their weight gain.

Instead, they wanted to blame everything but themselves. It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store. It was the food industry’s fault for making it unhealthy. It wasn’t their fault they didn’t buy vegetables at the store, it was their parents’ fault for not teaching them how to cook as a kid. It was common to hear people claim that they were doing calorie restriction but it didn’t work because of microplastics, toxic chemicals in the soil, pesticides, or other environmental factors.

This mentality even swept through the “rationalist” community online recently. A blogger wrote a long series with over a dozen long posts trying to find any other explanation for weight gain. In the very first article he had a graph showing that caloric consumption was up and activity was down over the years where obesity was on the rise, but he concluded that couldn’t be it. It must be chemicals in the water! The blog series was very popular in rationalist communities and IIRC even Scott Alexander of Slate Star Codex gave the author a financial grant.

The story with phones is the same: People don’t want to hear that it’s their fault for using phones so much. They want to blame the algorithm or their job for “making” them spend hours on the phone.

Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.

[arkh]

> It wasn’t their fault they picked the packaged, ultra-processed thing at the store.

It is their fault. But the recent development with anti-hunger molecules and their effect point to something many well wishing people don't want to hear: not everyone is the same regarding satiety.

It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself. It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza instead of feeling ready to puke it back out your body is asking for MORE. And not just this one day because you did not get a good breakfast in the morning. But every day. All day. "You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.

In a totally orthogonal subject, I used to have an untreated prolactinoma giving me 0 libido which may have started around my teenage years: I never understood why many people could not stop themselves from "thinking with their penis". Just "have some willpower, it's easy". Well let's just say 1 month after starting some treatment my view changed a lot. And it's not too hard to extend this kind of experience to other subjects regarding why people make bad decisions.

I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple month.

[malfist]

I really appreciate your empathy here. Nobody has the same biological factors nor the same hormones, so expecting everyone to have the same drive to consume a vice is just wrong. But at the same time, there is nuance here. Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.

But I don't know where that balance is, between empathy and tough love, but it's definitely a spectrum. Me personally, I'd prefer to fall on the side of too much empathy.

On your orthogonal subject, I had post-SSRI libido side effects (still highly recommend SSRIs, I'd rather have a low libido and alive than the alternative), without symptoms of ED, which is really hard to treat in men. I had good luck finding a doctor willing to write me a script for PT-141, and it was fantastic for me.

[Aurornis]

> Calorie restriction is hard work, sometimes there's not an easy way to do something and knuckling down is the only way to achieve it.

Caloric restriction as the parent comment describes it is a strawman argument that people use to discredit diet advice.

Real dieting advice isn’t “eat 833 calories of pizza and then stop instead of eating the whole pizza”. Real diet advice involves picking better food choices first.

Pizza is a highly palatable, calorie dense food. If someone is feeling hungry after devouring an entire pizza, they need to stop eating pizza. They need more fiber, more filling foods, and foods that are less calorie dense. Even just picking foods that are slower to eat will make changes because our hunger and fullness signals aren’t instant. It takes some time for your body to process what you eat.

Counting calories does work if it’s done correctly, but modern dieting advice hasn’t been that reductive for decades.

[nearbuy]

You're not factually wrong, but framing this as a fight between calorie restriction vs healthy eating and siding with healthy eating isn't right either. Both methods work for some people. Both methods have low long term success rates because people struggle to stick with them.

Yes, intentionally restricting calories is hard for most overweight people. But eating healthy is also hard for most overweight people! And there's no guarantee it'll cause weight loss without calorie restriction. You can eat healthy foods and still have a large appetite and eat too much.

It's two different tools that each require different kinds of willpower. Sometimes one tool works better for some people. You can use both at once.

If there was an easy solution that worked well without willpower, we wouldn't have our current obesity rates. Hopefully the new weight loss drugs will help with this in the future.

[Projectiboga]

Another issue is the body goes on lockdown around 5 days in eating below weight maintenance. The trick may be to only diet 4 days a week in a row targeting a weight below current like 10 or 20 lbs lower and eat for current weaight the other 3 days. And it might be able to flip that once at desired weight.

[Funes-]

Craving more and more sugar (carbs) constantly is not the same as being hungry. That's why you can never have enough of it even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week. Hunger is a very straightforward physiological signal, not a psychological craving that stems from addiction. Anyone who's ever been addicted to anything would recognize that as food addiction, not "insatiable hunger". Once you start disciplining yourself with regards to diet, that's one of the very first things you automatically learn to discern. This realization usually comes to you very evidently, in a spontaneous manner.

[jrs235]

>a psychological craving that stems from addiction.

Additionally, for many who are overweight, I imagine eating is a coping mechanism to stress. Some folks turn to food, others shopping, others substances (drugs/alcohol), others sex, others exercise, etc. We all have "different" ways we deal with stress. Finding a healthier way can drastically improve one's life. UInfortunately for those that turn to food for stress "relief" likely get a double whammy if feeling/knowing/being overweight adds to their stress.

[thaumasiotes]

> even if your body has had more than enough food to sustain itself for a whole week.

For reference, that amount of food is zero. You're already set for the week.

Animals don't operate like cars where they're constantly on the verge of death.

[Funes-]

To sustain itself... at the same rate it usually does (body fat, muscle...). My comment was extremely easy to grasp. Instead, you twisted what I wrote, clinging to a stupidly literal interpretation of it, and came up with a ridiculous reply, riddled with straw man fallacies. Good job (making a fool out of yourself while trying to one up a stranger on the Internet).

[thaumasiotes]

Think a little further, and you might see that the amount you've recently eaten has very little relevance to how much you need to eat in the near future.

[pjc50]

> I wish we had a drug to give some of the "just put the fork down" people to let them experience being really hungry for like a couple months

Reverse ozempic!

This is a known side effect of anabolic steroids and various other drugs, btw.

[malfist]

I think "reverse ozempic" is called weed

[yamazakiwi]

I know you're joking but there is a study from the American Journal of Medicine concluding marijuana use was associated with lower levels of fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, and smaller waist circumference.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23684393/

[solumunus]

That’s interesting. I’ve gone hypo on weed quite a few times.

[vlan0]

While societal structures and corporate practices shape behavior, you're right, individuals still retain agency. But progress lies in fostering environments that support healthy choices while encouraging self-reflection and responsibility. Dismissing either side of the equation undermines effective problem-solving. ie, food deserts are real

[snozolli]

"You just lack willpower". Yeah sure, like you demonstrate having any.

My adult, reasonably fit weight was about 175 - 180. I got up to 215 back in 2018. I'm now back down to 185 and getting leaner. You know what I noticed? My hunger pangs were far stronger when I was fatter.

When people ask about losing weight, I say "make friends with hunger". I'm hungry for a significant portion of the day these days. For a few years there, I wasn't hungry because I was always proactively eating, and when hunger did hit, it was intense.

[mindslight]

So, this "hungry for a significant portion of the day", in the context of software development. Are you just supposed to throw in the towel on getting anything done, or write blublang with an endless stream of boilerplate, or what? Like I certainly get the experience of doing straightforward physical tasks and putting off eating, but it seems like a non-starter when you actually need to like, concentrate thoughtfully.

[snozolli]

If anything, my concentration and energy level are more consistent while hungry.

I wake up hungry, but I'm not in a rush to get to breakfast. I start feeling hunger again within a couple of hours after a meal, but I'm still at least a couple of hours from the next one. I often fall asleep slightly hungry.

Intermittent fasting might be a good idea if this sounds alien. At least you'll only feel misery for part of the day.

I read an article years ago about how the French eat at set times and don't snack between meals, and they don't accommodate snacking behavior in children. That's not to say the French are necessarily some ideal, but certainly Americans are always snacking, on top of everything that's been said about processed foods and ease of access to food. I recall always hearing about "starvation mode" and how you were somehow going to gain weight if you ever dared to let yourself become hungry, and I foolishly believed it.

[sevensor]

I’ve made friends with hunger, and it’s a weird head space. You begin to look forward to a good hunger the way you look forward to a good meal. Not any healthier than overeating in my estimation, and it puts you outside a lot of food oriented social interactions. Worth trying, if only to learn that mild hunger won’t kill you, but not a great lifestyle.

[mindslight]

My concentration is consistently terrible while hungry, to the point that I might as well just consider the time gone instead of even trying to write code or really even think about much of anything. That's my experience.

So while I don't doubt your experience (and it's great that you've figured this out for yourself), it doesn't really generalize into advice about how anyone can simply change their perspective to avoid gaining weight.

[stewarts]

Prednisone can be a real doozy for some people along those lines. Anywhere from mild hunger all the way to rabid, unchecked hunger.

[casey2]

>not everyone is the same regarding satiety

There is no proof for this claim, nor can there be. "anti-hunger molecules" Are irrelevant. What is relevant is portion size, an individual is used to eating a portion size of x. There body is used to churning through all the physiological processes needed to digest (or not) y calories. If that individual ate x/4 over the course of a month their body would adapt to y/4 calories.

You make the exact same argument but don't seem realize it. The drug you seek is called dieting. Alternatively you can believe the unscientific fantasy that buddist monks who starve themselves to death just have tons of anti-hunger molecules or were born with a genetic disorder that gave them max satiety points.And you can just ignore bodybuilders who claim to think about food all 24/7 (why would they be buddists if they started out aesthetic anyways? self selection? stop coping we all more or less have the same brain, all life has a massive disposition towards feeling hunger, these desires only grow in size and complexity as life gets more complex)

[immibis]

We shouldn't need to prove that not everyone is the same regarding X, for any value of X...

[Aurornis]

> It is easy to tell people "just eat less" when you are never really hungry yourself.

This is another strawman argument. Good meal planning and dieting advice starts with your grocery list and the contents of your refrigerator. It’s not “just eat less”, it’s “stop buying those foods you know are terrible and replace them with something else”

> It requires empathy to try and imagine a world where after eating a whole pizza

Again, this is setting up a strawman argument. There are more foods available to us than an entire pizza. You have to make a series of decisions that leads to buying a whole pizza. If you think that pizza is full of engineered, addictive chemicals and you also know that you’re going to be hungry after eating it, why is it what you choose to eat?

This is the problem I was trying to describe: It’s really convenient to blame addictive food chemicals and other external factors for everything, but in the process people are wiping away any sense of choice and accountability for their actions.

For what it’s worth, I am hungry virtually all of the time. It was a running joke with everyone since I was a kid. I learned early on that I need to modulate my diet at the source, otherwise my weight goes up before I know it. Changing my shopping list and planning where to eat before I’m hungry makes all the difference.

[GoToRO]

Beeing fat is the same like your experience. Beeing fat means you are ill but very few people treat it as an illness. What illness? Your gut stopped working. Because it doesn't absorb any vitamins and minerals you get these crazy cravings. Your brain is making you eat more to compensate. Of course, not more crap, but that it's your choice.

[hammock]

How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?

[arkh]

> How did you get diagnosed eventually? What all tests did you go thru first?

When entering the office of an endocrinologist for something unrelated they asked if I was there for some thing (which I guess was "prolactinoma") which was not the case; they still told me to get my prolactin levels checked because I had "the body for that". Their guess was right. I was really lucky as usually it is diagnosed in men when they start losing peripheral vision or producing milk.

[swat535]

I don't have prolactinoma but I got tested for it. I had low libido as a man with ED problems, I went to a Urologist and he prescribed a whole bunch of tests which includes checking your Prolactin levels as well as SHBG, FSH, LH,Testosterone, E2 etc.

I suppose an Endocrinologist would run the same tests.. in my case I had Secondary Hypogonadism and was put on HCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) which resolved my Testostrone issues and libido and improved my sperm count as a nice bonus.

But I digress, the point is that if you suspect any issues, go see a doctor!

[steve_adams_86]

In my 20s and early 30s I was extremely fit, and I loved exercising. I was compassionate, but didn't really get why overweight people refused to exercise. I thought, man, they just need to give it a chance.

One day I got pneumonia, and it was a pretty severe case. It damaged my lungs and even my nerves in my neck, making it hard to lift my arms for weeks. I couldn't run 1km let alone 30km (which previously would have been a nice Sunday for me), and I couldn't even comfortably stretch or warm up.

No big deal I thought, I'll bounce back.

The funny thing is, when exercise actually feels awful, it's way harder. I didn't bounce back. On top of that, I developed depression. Not like... I was a little sad that I couldn't exercise. More like I was using exercise to help keep something pretty awful at bay, and with no defences against that and my health declining, it got reeeally bad.

I then went on to gain a LOT of weight. I went from a muscular, lean 180lb at 5'10" to a less lean and more fat 225lb. I tried to manage it, tried to exercise, eat less, all of it.

Something had changed, though. A threshold was crossed. My momentum was suddenly frozen by sickness, and then barely thawed at all over the following months. Everything I was previously escaping was then easily able to overtake me. The urge to eat more? Easy to give in to, now. The urge to sleep longer? Yes please. That voice in my head telling me today's not a great day to exercise? No longer a whisper but a relentless droning until I gave up the idea. Then it's replaced with compounding shame.

It gradually dawned on me that my previous fitness, while great and all, was not afforded to me by my own virtues as opposed to the lack of virtues among my overweight friends. It was far more circumstantial than I realized. Once I got that ball rolling (which I'd accomplished through fixation and ignoring all kinds of other important stuff in my life, for what it's worth) it was relatively easy to keep it going. Once it had stopped, I was just like them. Often even worse.

I no longer expect people to put the fork down, or just get up and go for a run. Is it necessary? Yes, 100%. There's no other solution. Is it easy? Evidently not at all, no.

I've come to realize it's largely about support networks, too. We are often ashamed, self-isoalting, and left to our own devices. We have no one giving us tough love on a regular basis, motivating us, helping us to get that ball rolling, supporting us through our shame. We are often so isolated in that suffering.

So that's my novel about being a smug fit person who got a little fat and realized he was a self-involved jerk. Now I understand the problem a bit better. It's hard. Very easy to criticize, very hard to support and solve.

If you have an overweight loved one, part of their solution might be in you. People are not islands.

[pizzadog]

This comment is super relatable. Thanks for sharing your story. I had a similar issue with pneumonia changing me from a gymrat grinding out PRs to someone forcing myself under the bar 3 times a week at best. It makes sense obviously in retrospect but your lung capacity is something everyone absolutely takes for granted. Those first few sessions back in the gym trying to deadlift and then running to the bathroom feeling the urge to puke because I was so winded were terrifying. It definitely humbles you and even if you have the empathy beforehand it really underlines how important it is to remember that people are living completely different lives.

As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance? I've been swallowing the bitter pill that is an enforced cardio regime but man it is really, really not fun to brush up against that bad feeling in your lungs. Speaking of empathy, it's starting to make me understand why people get so obsessed with following snake oil health trends - I've been experimenting with pretty much everything under the sun out of desperation for this one.

[steve_adams_86]

> As an aside, did you find anything that was effective for bringing you back to that old level of performance?

Not really. I'm 38 now and I haven't made it back to previous levels of fitness, and I suspect I might not in some ways. Recovery was way faster than I expected once I gave it a chance, though. And it is despite not being as disciplined as I should be. It made me realize building fitness while you're young is huge; it lets you build it back a lot easier the second time around. Even so, I eventually kind of hit a wall where getting back has been a lot slower. I rapidly recovered maybe half-way, then it was back on a slower track. My deadlift feels frozen.

I have some thoughts about this, though. I'm starting to think attaining that level was never the point. While I was grinding out PRs, the primary side effect of that journey was a dramatically improved quality of life which I wasn't fully aware of until I lost it... And I could have had that same quality of life (minus the odd injury, too) without pushing nearly so hard or getting so far. Realizing that, I let myself worry less about numbers or how I compare to others and focus more on how something will tangibly benefit me. Lifting more will offer very limited tangible benefits according to my experience (lifting couches easily is nice and all, but rarely useful, and they can only get so easy to carry...)

Really it's about losing the ego for me. There were days I should have been climbing stairs at the park like my elderly neighbour, but I felt sorry for myself, embarrassed at my ability, and did nothing instead. Fit in the exercise and movements you can manage, not the ones you believe you should be able to do. Not pushing your limits in a specific way doesn't equate to never progressing or taking care of yourself. In fact, so much of this is psychological, I'd posit that humility will ultimately lead to improving your fitness simply because your ego won't hold you back so often. It's practically inevitable that we'll experience setbacks; what matters is how we respond to them, not how much we can lift the day after.

The worst thing to do is nothing at all. I must have lost 20lb of muscle and gained ~60lb of fat. Muscle is coming back, but the fat is stubborn.

Where I am recently vs where I left off (1RM):

Deadlift 402.5 --> 360 (was exciting to put 8 plates on again!)

Squat 320 --> 265

Bench 245 --> 210

Run (best distance) 43km --> 12.3km (could improve, but don't really focus on it anymore)

Run (best pace for 10k) 4:17/km --> 5:42/km

Maybe something like 75% of the way back? Worse if you factor in sane baselines rather than assuming starting from 0. When I started trying again, these numbers were abysmal. My running pace was close to 7:00/km and it hurt like hell. My deadlift was under 200 on a 5x5 program, vs ~310 today.

Also... Maybe it was nerve damage, but any overhead exercise is trash and not recovering. I used to clean well over my bodyweight and it was an exercise I really loved. These days I struggle to throw 130lb over my head, and I went from pull ups doing ~20 reps with 45lb strapped to me to struggling to pull off 10 reps with no weight.

[pjc50]

> Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.

This is definitely a factor, and people can build "communities of excuses" like r/antiwork.

But .. there's definitely a social factor as well. I think people understand that, say, buying heroin or falling for a Nigerian Prince scam are irrational mistakes. However in those cases we also put blame on the pushers and the fraudsters. People tried "just say no to drugs" and "personal responsibility" and of course these things still happen.

Social media is not as addictive as heroin, but people are starting to have a discussion around X and tiktok and the harms thereof.

[plsbenice34]

>Social media is not as addictive as heroin

citation needed

[arthurofbabylon]

When looking at a system, it is appropriate to identify the causes (plural) and the intervention points (plural).

I believe it is at once possible to both blame or seek to change an extrinsic factor and do what one can with their own initiative. I do not think it is appropriate to dismiss extrinsic factors in order to emphasize personal initiative.

[Aurornis]

Multiple factors contribute, but they don’t lessen the impact of people’s choices.

We can list extrinsic factors that influence things for hours, but nothing changes the fact that using your phone for hours per day is a choice that people make.

The external factors are brought up as a way to distract from that choice or shift blame, but you can’t make progress until you realize that it’s your choice to pick up the phone and use that app for hours every day.

[jimkleiber]

I think so many choices are driven by emotions and so many of us are unaware of how we feel and therefore often blinded to the decision-making process.

Yes it's a choice to pick up the phone, and yet if someone is feeling an emotion and wants to escape that emotion, the phone offers a variety of other emotions they can access. I'd say quite addictive, unless people let themselves feel the feeling.

[arthurofbabylon]

When it’s only me, I personally prefer just solving the problem by adjusting my behavior or adjusting my position within the system. It’s relatively easy, feedback is quick, improvements come readily. Great.

But when it is an entire system (eg, not just me) I like to look at the gravity. In what direction will a ball roll? By default, what occurs here?

Take my home for example. I’m skillful at being calm and joyous, but I have guests come over, so I need to make sure that my home fosters a calm and joyous mindset by default. I need to make the gravity of the space produce joy and calm without intervention. After all, might I one day lack agency or otherwise be vulnerable to preexisting environmental forces?

We each have a duty to be healthy. Personal intervention — check! I agree. But that is not enough, we cannot stop there, and stopping there is irresponsible, unkind to others in the short term, and dangerous in the long term.

[im3w1l]

If you want to solve the problem I look too much at my phone then choosing differently is an appropriate solution. If you want to solve the problem people in general look too much at their phone then telling them to "just do better" is an inappropriate solution.

[amanaplanacanal]

If you assume that free will exists. I'm personally not convinced either way.

[Aurornis]

Imagining that nothing is your fault is a nice way to avoid any uncomfortable feelings of accountability.

Unfortunately, your family, friends, and bosses aren’t going to be convinced when you try to explain that nothing is actually your fault.

[cvwright]

You have free will to do what you want to do.

You do not have the ability to stop being you, the person who wants the things that you want. Even if you want to change yourself - and maybe succeed! - that desire for change is still part of being you. If you didn’t want it, you would have been someone else.

[svieira]

If free will doesn't exist then why are we talking about changing the environment? It's not like we can _choose_ to do so, after all.

[casey2]

I want to upvote this a million times. Even for hard drugs and lifetime alcoholics withdrawal symptoms don't last longer than a month in the vast majority of cases. Probably about a month for decreased portion sizes too.

Some people believe society should be free of one or another human experience be it pain, pleasure, addiction, mind altering, disease, pests etc for the most part it's a childish mentality. All human experience is created by the brain and as a being with a high level of consciousness you are free to ignore them at your own risk. Diseases and pests you can't ignore and their management is extremely difficult comparatively.

[potato3732842]

>Resistance to any concept of self accountability is stronger than ever on the internet. Social media delivers convenient excuses, which can be seen throughout this thread.

I think that while the broad culture has moved in that direction it's still very filter bubble dependent. Spaces centered around men's hobbies with higher than zero barriers to entry are usually pretty hard the other way.

[doright]

It could be that finding oneself at fault for life choices but being without enough motivating energy to make better choices is an even worse personal outcome than blaming others, and deciding to externalize blame is a defense mechanism against crippling stress/shame that such people have developed consciously or not. It may be far from helpful but it prevents people from feeling trapped if they give themselves something to crusade against.

I think people that are quick to blame external factors would be more visible towards others than people who do choose to blame themselves, but even in the case where the latter feel trapped with learned helplessness and unable to act. There isn't much to say to the latter except "it's hard, but you should do the work." Which I would believe they've heard thousands of times already, so it only makes them feel worse. Such dialogue by its nature doesn't make for "engaging content," so to speak. Whereas a lot of (bullshit or not) arguments arise with the former that serve as a more effective distraction.

[plsbenice34]

Your comment leads me to be a bit confused regarding what you're saying about free will. You seem to want to place blame on the individual but it is philosophically and scientifically unsound. It is absolutely undeniable that people's diets are the result of the culture they live in. Many of our behaviours are the result of the advertising industry, data science and algorithms being applied like an attack on us. These problems I am referring to have been explored by Sapolsky and Yuval Harari.

Do people need to exert a determined sense of self-control to overcome this, reeducate themselves, and take responsibility for their own health? Absolutely. But placing blame on them seems irrational, unnecessary, counterproductive. I wouldn't want to get diet tips from someone that had that antagonistic attitude toward me

[Aurornis]

> It is absolutely undeniable that people's diets are the result of the culture they live in. Many of our behaviours are the result of the advertising industry, data science and algorithms being applied like an attack on us.

Being influenced doesn’t absolve someone of accountability for their actions. You will be influenced by many things throughout your life, but your decisions as an adult are your responsibility. In the modern era of the internet and unprecedented availability of fresh foods, you don’t have to let your diet be defined by society and ads. Seeing a McDonald’s ad isn’t an “attack” that forces you to choose to eat McDonald’s.

Thinking that we can’t be blamed for our decisions, in my experience, is counterproductive to overcoming bad habits. People who think that Mark Zuckerberg is forcing them to scroll Instagram for 3 hours per day should rationally choose to uninstall the app or set time limits.

Yet I see the opposite happening more often: They believe that because “the algorithm” is addictive, they shouldn’t feel bad about using social media to excess. It’s not my fault, it’s the algorithm! Blaming something external creates the illusion that we shouldn’t be accountable for our choices, which only makes it easier to make more of those bad choices.

[bombcar]

Would I like it if everything was easy and nothing was hard?

Absolutely!

Is sitting around waiting for that to happen going to work?

Absolutely not!

There's two questions being conflated; should someone have to carefully watch their diet, or spending, or browsing? It's easy to argue that they shouldn't, and give examples of things that would make it so they don't (remove combo meals above a certain caloric amount, make credit hard to access, etc).

None of that changes that we live in the here and now, and we can inflict minor change on society, but major changes on ourselves.

[plsbenice34]

Taking responsibility isn't the same as accepting blame and guilt. Maybe i didnt cause an oil spill but ill do my best to try to clean it up.

>Thinking that we can’t be blamed for our decisions, in my experience, is counterproductive to overcoming bad habits.

I think the opposite. We are entirely 100% the result of outside influences: our parents, our culture, genetics, society. The only way you can argue otherwise is to appeal to some religious concept of a soul or something. Looking deeply into this, we can learn who we are and why we are the way that we are. Only then can we see how best to move forward and in which direction. Once you see that the some algorithm is an unhealthy influence, you can try to avoid it. The exact same lessons are present in Buddhism with its insights into self and interdependence; it's probably the largest influence that lead me to see things this way.

>They believe that because “the algorithm” is addictive, they shouldn’t feel bad about using social media to excess.

I don't think it is rational or healthy to "feel bad" and harbor guilt because you were manipulated and mistreated. It can lead to depression. We are in an unhealthy society and it is productive to see this truth so we can then try to extricate ourselves from its traps.

[amanaplanacanal]

Agreed. I think by now we know that telling people to "have more willpower" doesn't work. But some really want to make everything a moral failing, probably as a way to make themselves feel superior.

[suddenlybananas]

Incredibly poor understanding of how addiction works and how society functions. If ever your solution to a societal problem is "if everyone just..." you can be safely ignored as it will never happen that everyone "just ...".

[jddj]

The interesting thing is that the death of individual responsibility didn't make people (in aggregate) any happier.

It could have, or you could imagine a world where it could have, but the kids and teens are (apparently) reporting that they're more miserable than ever.

I think the goal was to remove shame, which seems like noble enough a goal. But it hasn't helped. Can we come up with a way to say, as a society, "whatever it is may not be your fault, but you're still the only one who can do anything about it and you might be better off if you view it through that lens"?

[mattgreenrocks]

I worry a significant portion of the populace does not have anything better to fill their time with, so phones/Internet fill the void. You have to put something better than that in place, but that can be hard when everything is hyper-optimized for dopamine. If we step back, it’s obvious we’ve created TV 2.0. A lot of people prior to the Internet had TV fill this same role.

These people need to decide they want something better for themselves to have a chance of changes sticking.

[goatherders]

I've been making a series of changes in last 18 months that fit the "deciding they want something better for themselves." I've lost 40# in 18 months. I stopped drinking alcohol cold on Oct 2nd after being a daily moderate/heavy drinker for ~25 years. I deleted X, FB, IG and LI on my phone 4 days ago (still schedule posts on LI via desktop).

All of these decisions were really hard right up until I did them. In reflection I don't miss the food (yes Ozembic, best decision I've made for myself as an adult). I don't miss booze - which is incredible. I haven't yet missed social media.

To replace SM I keep the kindle app on the home screen of my phone. I read a couple pages of a book then go back to something else. To replace drinking a bottle of wine while watching a movie I go for more walks outside than I used to (10k steps instead of 6k a day kind of thing).

Long way to go, but I'm hopeful. I realized I was doing things that were bad for me (food, drink, phone time) and it was impacting me in increasingly negative ways.

[fragmede]

Hell yeah. It's amazing how GLP-1's help in other areas of life, not just food cravings.

[HumblyTossed]

> I worry a significant portion of the populace does not have anything better to fill their time with...

Or... people are exhausted from the daily grind and want some sort of escape. The lives of most people are not improving; they're having to work harder and harder for less and less.

[leidenfrost]

IMHO it's because in the phone world only a handful of people look good naturally. Another handful learns to compensate by using really complex lighting setups (akin to a real photographic studio).

And the rest of us are left behind. We can even look "approachable enough" for some people by showing your way to approach the world, how we talk, how we move. But all of that is way harder to capture on a static photo.

I personally look terrible in front cameras, and I have a hard time creating any kind of profile in a dating app.

[formerphotoj]

One might go so far as to say in the real world (IRL), only a handful of people look good "naturally."

Try looking at everyone around you in public-EVERYONE. The beautiful people in the media sense are an incredibly small minority. I would argue even in places like L.A., sure lots of glam, but take the population as a whole and wow, such a small percentage. I'm speaking as a former pro photog, FWIW. I look at everyone.

[aredox]

Has there been studies about what criteria/effect make some people "photogenic" compared to "in person"? I am not talking about post-prodeffects or maquillage, but the fact that some physical traits seem better after lens distortion than viewed witht the naked eye in person.

[baobun]

This is very little about looks. Those handful of good-looking people aren't necessarily feeling sexier, happier, or more fulfilled.

[polynomial]

They do have an appreciably different dopamine regulation. So they're feeling something.

(Not defending or apologizing for anyone's lifestyle here.)

[baobun]

?

[polynomial]

meaning they themselves may feel "happier" when they are on their digital dopamine treadmill

there is some subtext here about saying others are "not happier"

[baobun]

The person I was replying to was lamenting about "naturally good-looking people", you're talking about chronically online people.

Different conversations.

[pjc50]

> I'm surprised by the negative comments

This is, shall we say, not the kind of audience that is going to give this article a fair reading.

[potato3732842]

Well of course it won't get a charitable reading here. Roughly speaking HN built this monster.

On a macro level I agree that phones and connectivity have some pretty huge downsides and bad effects on society but once you drill down more than that there are serious flaws with the article and the author seems to be longing for a past that if it existed at all was never sustainable and wouldn't exist long. It falls into the same category as romanticizing commercial whaling or feeding a family of four with a know-nothing job riveting spring hangers onto Chevrolets.

[jdietrich]

It is extraordinarily generous to describe an article as thoughtful when it begins with the words "Scrolling on our phones is killing us. This is a statement of fact that needs no citation". To my mind, bald assertion is the opposite of thoughtfulness. If an article is well-written because it creates a plausible justification for a belief held without evidence, then I think I'd prefer a badly written one.

[TeMPOraL]

Well, I have an instinctive negative reaction to your comment. Specifically, to this line:

> Smartphones provide a level of private immersion in silent, "socially-flavored" dopamine consumption that's antithetical to robust, vibrant socialization.

Regardless of whether the article is right (it might be) and smartphones in general, some of us find ourselves feeling trapped in this reality of "robust, vibrant socialization", and crave any form of "private immersion". Myself, I'm not glued to phones or the usual social media sites (HN on the other hand), but the very thought that the goal is to give up what little "private immersion" time I have, and embrace "robust, vibrant socialization" instead, just makes me want to finally bite the bullet and install TikTok.

(Yes, this says much more about me than about your comment. But there's some source of this feeling. I don't know what it is, but I suspect I'm not the only one feeling like this - so it perhaps could be a factor in the "smartphone equation".)

[GJim]

> I'm surprised by the negative comments here so far that sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.

I'm not.

This forum is dominated by people who write software for, and are addicted to, fondle slabs.

[dmje]

Fondle Slabs gets my vote!!

[_rpxpx]

love "fondle slabs". I've been going with "slave phones"

[mos_basik]

My partner and I have been calling them "fun boxes", as in, "Hey, I just started to poop but I forgot to bring my fun box, can you grab it for me?".

I started it maybe a couple of years ago. Was aiming to give myself a verbal reminder of their skinner box nature every time I mentioned them while keeping a fig leaf veneer of comfortability so I didn't have to explain if someone else overheard. Maybe didn't go hard enough with it; about a year ago it came up that my partner had been taking the name at face value and didn't ascribe anything sinister to it.

[johtso]

"Babylon rectangles"

[disqard]

"Adult pacifier"

[SirMaster]

How is that the phone's fault? You don't have to stare at it anywhere near that long, and all those apps are completely optional things to install and use.

This just feels like making excuses and not having any self-control or self-discipline.

[xnx]

> There's nothing sexy about essentially staring at something in your hand for an hour or more every day.

Like a book?

[yifanl]

Have books of any form ever been categorized as sexy?

[grajaganDev]

>sound more indignant or "called out" than anything else.

Yes - some people are very defensive regarding their phones.

This underscores the point of the article.

[tokai]

Its just a bad blog post full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, and trivial takes. Your shallow dismissal of the critiques just underscores the hollowness of the articles content.

[grajaganDev]

Your comment underscores the point of my comment.

[yamazakiwi]

A lot of what is stated is out of touch with reality and more fits a narrative of someone's choosing. Like a news article that tells you Nintendo DS are bad because they facilitate communication between strangers and children in PictoChat.

There is a lot of information and accuracies left out of this article to create a viewpoint when mostly the writer is nostalgia baiting.

[kevinsync]

I think a lot of the negative comments here just miss the spirit and point of the article, which for me is that, as the phone is now an omnipresent literal extension of your body, we collectively have chosen to relocate many human experiences from inside of our chests to the very ends of our arms. We don't look up and out anymore, we look down. Our senses and sensibilities are being processed and filtered by an external peripheral rather than by our natural hardware. We are effectively already transhumanists and biohackers, albeit crude ones that lack invasive implants, tuning and modulating our neural pathways in ways that have been heretofore unseen, frequently as simple-minded consumers of the modulation rather than conscious curators of our own metamorphosis.

Author is opining for the way things used to be, is expounding upon the real, significant consequences of this transformation, and just wondering in general what the hell happened and why we let it get to be like this lol

It's also worth noting that the author is a woman, so if you're a dude and feel attacked by the article somehow (or god forbid instinctively dismiss the whole thing because it's not from a male perspective), just take a deep breath and try to recognize that other people have valid, salient thoughts and opinions too. She's just suggesting we all 'touch grass' in a much more substantial way than a bite-sized meme phrase.

[yamazakiwi]

Nah they're just trying to police other people's behavior with nostalgia-bait. The fact that you think there is a group of people who are actually mad at reading this and are trying to minimize any criticism as gender bias is...something.

[kevinsync]

Honestly man I wrote that last part as more of a thought-out-loud rather than a straight-up accusation. I just felt like a lot of comments who (to me, just my opinion) really didn't understand the writing were probably guys, possibly young, definitely in a bubble (we're on Hacker News, like it or not it's a distinct male bubble with a specific world view), and I think it's worth establishing a bit of context so that somebody might find themselves able to interrogate their reactions to it, in the event that they had a reaction at all. Maybe I was reaching, whatever -- but even your comment ascribing intent to the author's post as "trying to police other people's behavior" illustrates that you read it as instruction rather than introspection.

It's just somebody's musings on a topic, nothing more. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[yamazakiwi]

That's fair, reading it did not come off as introspection to me. I could probably have taken it less seriously. Opinion generally ties into attitude so I'm going to assume that persons musings will reflect in how they act.

[xela79]

it's as "sexy" as reading a book for an hour or more every day. oh wait... I didn't know that using a phone or reading a book was meant to be sexy for others when a person uses a phone or reads a book. woopsie

[xyst]

The article to me feels like it pussyfoots around the real issue and perpetuates the “blame {some new tech} on downfall of society” fallacy.

Yes, personally I agree that doom scrolling is not ideal but this is a symptom of a much larger issue — no time available for a majority of people to invest in real relationships. Real issue here is a significant number of people left behind in this economy and this largely due to shitty economic policy based on neoliberalism

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't think it's true that a significant number of people have less time available today than in the article's "late 90s and early 2000s" time frame. I'd concede that many people feel like they do (sometimes including me!), and I think it's pretty clearly because of how much time we're spending on our phones.