- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- technews@radiation.party
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- technews@radiation.party
- longreads@sh.itjust.works
If you’re looking to do something about this, please read [https://lemmy.ml/post/1441038](this great post) about dopamine detoxing! It can be very hard at first, but once you’re through the first few weeks it becomes much easier. I’ve been writing down my feelings as I take a few weeks off from my smartphone which has helped immensely.
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I recommend the article author’s book Stolen Focus. An interesting read. Not so much a self-help book providing solutions to the problem (such as Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism or Deep Work books) but an analysis of the problem and in some ways vindication for us, the masses, who are being constantly manipulated by tech companies that spend billions on psychological methods to keep us hooked and brainwashed.
One of the most impactful parts of the book, for me anyway, points out that while we assume smart speakers and phone assistants are listening into our private conversations to provide the data necessary for Google and their likes to miraculously provide ads for things we may have talked about offline with a family member or spouse (a scary prospect in itself) the reality is even more scarier. They don’t need to listen (although if they can I bet they will), they already know us better than we know ourselves to the point that they know what we are likely to think about before we even know it ourselves and so provide the right ad at just the right time giving the creepy sensation that they were somehow listening to us.
The book has made me much more privacy conscious. Tech is unavoidable but don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Spread your tech needs and subsequently your data across multiple different companies that have better track records for privacy. Make it harder for any one company to connect the dots and be able to know you better than you know yourself!
While I agree, that we have stumbled into a collective ADHS induced by modern social media (consumption), I dislike the fatalistic way of saying “our attention was stolen”. It wasn’t stolen, we handed it over. Everyone was in charge of doing so and thus, we, as a society, are also in charge of gaining our attention back. Nothing stops us from not using all these apps and reconnecting at an actual person to person level. So let’s give it our best, read books, enjoy walks and learn to focus again.
Did you read the book?
The main takeaway of it is that slowly and pervasively we have been manipulated into handing over our focus. The techniques have been sophisticated and subtle.
If I were to convince you that it was worthwhile to hand over your life savings to me and then it was pointed out to you that you had been manipulated in to doing so, would you not take the view that the money had been stolen from you?
Similarly, for some, telling them to go cold-turkey on tech and social is not massively dissimilar to telling a smoker to just quit smoking, or a alcoholic to just stop drinking. Our brains have been conditioned to want the dopamine fix that our vices give us and it is a strong motivator. Just stopping is not that simple.
But to respond to one comment “we, as as society, are also in charge of gaining our attention back”, that is actually what the book leads to. In the realization that singularly the deck is stacked against us to fight this as much as we may try. It is hard to succeed and easy to fail. But as an organized group or body with the power and/or ability to collectively resist the methods of big tech, to legislate against the situation we are in now where the public are the commodity and the advertisers are the real client to social media companies, to make us the real clients who are catered too, then we stand a better chance.
I haven’t read the book and I also didn’t mean to take away from the conclusion that our attention span is gone and the way we interact with social media is at fault. However, I strongly oppose phrasing such things in a way that make us look like victims who aren’t in control of our lives. Take for example alcohol: It’s a drug that everyone knows is bad for the body, yet many people drink it. We are enticed by ads and peer pressure to join the “alcohol drinkers” and yet, if someone becomes an alcoholic or at least overly inclined to alcohol consumption, nobody says “their sobriety was stolen from them” but “they became a drinker/alcoholic”.
So yeah, I wholeheartedly agree that we need to tackle this issue both on an individual level and as a society, I just also think that we need to accept, that we always had it in our hands.
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