Has anyone else noticed smartphones have got significantly more addictive recently

flashgnash@lemm.ee to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 149 points –

I've noticed YouTube specifically has become more addictive, I never used to be one to sit and scroll for long durations before but I often catch myself spending way too long on shorts now

Even people or older generations seem to be getting sucked in nowadays

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I block shorts on youtube, I don't care for short form content. Give me those hour long analysis type videos. Without shorts youtube still does a rather poor job at recommending new stuff.

That being said, shorts are being more addictive by nature since the barrier of entry to watch 'one more' is so low. If you engage with them on any app, you will waste more time on your phone.

Yes TikTok is a disease and I have it.

Your phone does too with all of their custom spyware...

🙄 I'll bite. What custom spyware?

https://www.boredpanda.com/tik-tok-reverse-engineered-data-information-collecting/

Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)

Common. Steam does this. It's behind a permission these days and nothing is custom or special about this in any way.

Other apps you have installed (I've even seen some I've deleted show up in their analytics payload - maybe using as cached value?)

Patched out and was common at the time via Androids API. Again zero secret sauce, most apps pulled this.

Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)

Bullshit provide some verification in the least bit. It's a random anonymous redditor mouthing off.

Whether or not you're rooted/jailbroken

Again in the API patched out several years ago

Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds - this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC

More unverified bullshit.

Pro tip: when your source is a random redditor who definitely worked for tiktok maybe consider for a second that someone is just making up bullshit and reaching to push their objective.

You'd think for being the most spyware app on the planet you could provide a source from a professional and not a redditor.

They set up a local proxy server on your device for "transcoding media", but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication

Lemmy is not fantastic with condescending pricks like you posting comments.

You could have delivered your point without being an asshole about it.

The tiktok videos I get recommended are way too long and dense/informative for me to be able to watch too many at one time.

When I first started using it I made a point of skipping anything I considered dumb or any videos I couldn't fast forward through. Now, it's mostly all stuff about history and philosophy and I have to purposely search for new things. Still works way better than YouTube at recommending actually interesting content.

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How do you disable shorts?

Firefox has an addon called "Hide shorts for youtube". I don't use any other browser on any device.

Youtube reVanced has that option.

Not on iOS I guess

Well, there's your first problem

I can’t be arsed with wasting time to try to degoogle an android phone and keep my banking applications working.

Apple is good enough for me :)

I don’t touch google products or services, and fully agree.

Plus, iOS is fucking stellar. Every phone I’ve had from them is blazing fast after YEARS of NEVER REFORMATTING

(Posting from my XS Max that I’ve never reformatted lawl)

Yeah, I too noticed android phones usually go to shit after a few years. Even formatting doesn’t fix them entirely, and I never play games on mobile

Saaame. I loved my android phones before I switched over, but it’s soooo nice to have a phone that works smoothly for so long without fucking about with custom ROMs.

But maaaan this site fucking hates Apple hahaha

I too ignore shorts but I disagree with YouTube’s recommendations. It has gotten significantly better from even 2 years ago. I used to only watch my subscriptions, what I specifically sought out, or links from others. What YouTube recommended me was honestly confusing considering the amount of data they have on me and my interests. Now it’ll actually recommend general content I would watch. But also small YouTubers from the types of content I consistently watch. It’s pretty great.

That's still pretty hit or miss for me. I've watched a video about cats exactly once a few weeks ago when my cat did something strange, and my recommendations are still littered with click-bait videos about certain cat behaviors. I watch tons of the aforementioned hour long analysis videos and I still need to resort to playlists compiling them instead of getting recommendations. To me, it seems the algorithm really wants to push certain types of content and will flood me with them if I so much as hover a video too long. But it really dislikes other types of content and almost hides them on purpose, despite me liking them. My best guess would be that longer videos have less ads per minute of content and are therefore not recommended as much, but I couldn't tell, I started blocking ads on Youtube when they added a second ad banner back in the day - long before video ads were a thing.

I have premium so maybe that’s a reason. Also, if I watch a video I know YouTube will latch unto them I remove it from my watch history and heavily use not interested option.

Is it just me or did the recommendation algorithm become much worse a few years ago? I think there was a big update at some point and it's sucked ever since. If feels like it remembers about the last 10 videos I watched. You were interested in topic XYZ a few months ago and there is lots of new content about it? Sure you don't want to know anything about it!

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I'm finding it to be the opposite. All content on YouTube and social media, including lemmy, seems to just be endless reposts of the same limited list of topics and memes.

Its become boring to the point where I'm just going back to specific interest forums websites for content.

People talk about how good algorithms are now, but they can't figure out anything I actually want to watch nowadays

Totally agree, barely go on YouTube anymore because garbage videos are being pushed in my face, and hate browsing channels because of Shorts, and all the same sponsor segments everyone has, just boring.

YouTube Shorts doesn’t even work properly for me. At least half the videos, that are suggested to me, I’ve already seen multiple times before. Boring, as you said. I’ve found myself staying off of social media or news sites more in the last couple of weeks. News’ll make me depressive, social media bores me. Then again, more time for hobbies!

Say no to shorts on every platform.

As someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s I disagree.

They remind me of the d nickelodeon pictures that actually cost a nickel. I think you youngins should salute your shorts. It’s fun to watch wild and crazy kids doing stupid bottle tricks. Legends of the hidden temple in some state park nearby. It’s just cool stuff and you can’t do that on television.

I might agree with you if the shorts player wasn't ass. Everything about it works differently to the video player, and everything about it pushes you to more shorts. Even on the video player I disable autoplay and the prev/next buttons, having a player built around those was DOA for me.

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I find YouTube is less attractive than a year ago. Ads are more invasive and more difficult to remove. Recommendations skew heavily to the rage-inducing, e.g., I watched one late night comedy sketch making fun of Jordan Peterson and then my feed was full of clips of him spewing his hot trash for weeks.

I gave up on reddit earlier in the year when all the API / sub blackout / forced mod removal stuff was going on.

Freemium apps seem to be pushing ads more and more, which makes me more resistant to using them.

If what I read online is true, the days of investors throwing money at anything tech related are slowing down. Which means some companies that have never had to be profitable before now must find a way to do so. Which means tightening up subscriptions and/or more ads.

I try to spread this tip everywhere i can: If you ever find that you've watched one of those videos that fucks up the recommendations, go to your watch history and delete the video. It really works.

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I’m feeling the opposite lately. YouTube recommendations suck. I often open the app/page for the quick dopamine rush, but few of the recommendations interests me, so I just bounce off. For me, YouTube is mostly for long form content nowadays. Something I can put in the background while cooking/doing dishes.

Instagram is turning more and more like TikTok. Sometimes it recommends me something fun (like cat videos), but often it’s just nonsense. So I bounce off quite quickly there as well.

I feel happy about it.

shorts are designed to be addictive. just don't use them. otherwise, the platform hasn't changed, you have

Shorts are new-ish to the platform. Like others that saw the success of TikTok (e.g., facebook with their reels, presumably instagram has something similar) they pumped out their own version to better trap people on the platform.

Same idea as ever but more addictive than before.

Recently? No, but maybe I'm in my own bubble. I've made my phone more boring intentionally. Getting rid of Reddit made me get off my phone a lot more. I really just mindlessly browse Lemmy and Mastodon now, and I run out of content on those.

Shorts made it less addictive, they're awful to watch and I invariably stop at one.

Perhaps you are experiencing a spike in your own addictive behaviour?

same with me. they're awful and the content quality is depressing. but i think for many people shorts are the addiction

Oddly enough, there's specific content only available through shorts that I would love to see (Scott Manley in particular does fantastic shorts), however I never see them because the shorts player invariably kills any enjoyment I may have be having at the time.

No matter what content exists on shorts, I will go out of my way to disable shorts altogether. If I could block the URL I would.

I'm getting bored with my smartphone. Stuff like YouTube I never watch on my phone anyway, but imo YouTube has gotten much worse over time and I barely watch it at all now.

I honestly think that content on YouTube has gotten better and better. Not the systems of YouTube, mind you, just the stuff that people create. But maybe that's because in the last year or so I've been watching and discovering a lot more educational YouTubers (think Tom Scott, Münecat, Real Engineering, etc). among the exclusively funny stuff.

I feel the exact opposite about you tube. I feel like there is nothing interesting to watch any more unless one of my follows post a new video

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I don't think it's really changed, maybe it's just your perception of it. It's just as addictiv today as it was last year as I see it.

If anything I'm less addicted to my smartphone now that Reddit got rid of the 3rd party apps.

Their algorithm is specifically designed to keep you entertained. Kind of a curse or a gift depending on who you ask. Think the worst cases are children tbh it was insane my first time seeing a tablet kid out in the wild. Faced glued to the screen being walked by their mom

Smartphones are too stimulating for young children. Their brains are wired to really take in the lights, sounds and interactiveness of it all. This is kinda dangerous because this is also when a lot of learning is going on, they will develop socially based on the content they consume.

I've heard that some toddlers/babies recently began mimicing the action of pulling a mobile device from a pocket and looking down at the screen. They've seen others do it so often that they are learning it as a nearly instinctual action.

Almost correct.

The algorithm doesn't give two shits if you are entertained. It only drives engagement. You don't need to be entertained to be engaged. In fact, most engagement comes from outrage.

THIS is what's killing the modern internet.

Saw a toddler with a phone in hand today, maybe a year. Couldn't walk yet, but had no trouble scrolling.

No? The opposite of anything, I consume media much more on my TV, PC and via my ereader recently.

My smartphone has mostly been relegated to a communications device the recent 3-6 months as I've lost the will to try to go through media on a needlessly tiny screen. Luckily though, I don't have a commute any more. But when I did, I read books on the ereader during the train travel instead of being on the phone.

Same here, I really also switched media consumption to the TV with a nice sound system and only use the phone for communications and podcasts, oh and navigation and music in the car.

I've been considering just getting a dumb phone and maybe a kindle for entertainment

Problem is I want to be able to run apps like signal, WhatsApp, discord etc

It's the opposite for me. I never consume shorts/tiktoks because they simply don't interest me. Most of the things I watch are very in-depth (Flaw Peacock's video essays are between 5-7 hours a piece).

Since I almost exclusively go for this long form content, I feel I have a lot more "say" in what I consume online.

If you can stay at this side of the fence concerning short form content you'll be golden.

Big tech writes the equivalent of digital heroin.

The longer they can keep you on their platforms,
the more they can data-farm you,
the more data they have on you,
the more they can sell about you / earn on you.

Detox yourself from your bad heroin addiction,
by switching to fair FOSS (Free Open Source Software) alternatives.

E.g. Use Invidious, Grayjay or NewPipe instead of YouTube.

I downloaded freetube, is that one ok?

The problem is that most people aren't aware that shorts / stories are made to be addictive.

If you keep pointing out to your friends and family how much time / battery they waste watching them they may start to take action though.

I'm well aware how much time I'm wasting, I've got a screen time monitor setup and have even gone so far as writing my own script that takes me to youareanidiot.org if I try to open YouTube before 10am but it still didn't stop me for a good amount of time

I think I might've just about kicked it at this point but now I'm spending loads of time scrolling Lemmy and talking to strangers instead which I suppose is marginally better

I have the same problem with YouTube! Between work + school I don't have free time until 930/10, so I unwind watching documentaries on YouTube and it's 2-3am before I know it :(

I recently ordered an EReader and if books can't replace that YouTube urge I might have to go the same route as you and redirect myself after midnight.

I give myself a pass for Lemmy though. It's not sucking me in, rather I open the site specifically for news for sites that don't offer RSS feeds. (RSS helps a lot with eliminating the news -> distraction scenario)

If you find yourself suddenly grasping for more and more time escaping reality consider seeing a psychiatrist.

You could have major depression: it was one of my symptoms.

Jesus Christ lol make a comment about social media on the internet and immediately get diagnosed with depression

It's not a diagnosis it's encouragement to see someone about an issue you've expressed.

Therapists are gonna be pretty busy then because it's a good proportion of people I know that have been sucked into this kind of content one way or another more than they'd like

There's definitely negative psychological effects to having a skinner box in your hand at all times.

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I've noticed the recommendations suck now. It that's their attempt at sucking me in?

Idk I am pretty addicted, but it's like Netflix where I spend more time selecting than watching nowadays.

Kinda looking forward to Google making me fight for ad free YouTube. There is a 0% chance I will continue to use YouTube if there are any ads in my way. Even a stationary suggestion in my feed? Nope, fuck that. As soon as revanced is toast I'll leave YouTube like I did reddit.

But the recommendations are God awful now.

Not really. I never got into mobile gaming, tiktok, reels, shorts, instagram, snapchat etc. so I mainly use my phone for podcasts, maps and browsing lemmy while on toilet. While on my computer I spend 95% of my time on YouTube but I feel like even that has gotten worse lately. I've been getting suggestions about videos with like 19 views constantly and no matter how many I mark as "not interested" or "don't recommend channel" they just keep coming back. Apparently because I like watching TheRunningManZ I must also like every other DayZ streamer that no one has ever heard about.

This just put me off YouTube, I get that they are trying to copy Tiktok's addictiveness but I just don't get anything out of short-form video content.

Use revanced and remove shorts

If I were going to use anything I'd probably use piped as a PWA, but the problem is none of them seem to do recommendations and I just get generic content on the front page which doesn't really interest me

YouTube just annoys me lately because the search function is so shitty. I go looking for videos of drag queens and they try and get me to watch Madonna videos.

...and less effective, and more proprietary, and more homogenous.

Which, IMO, makes the smartphones less appealing and less addictive.

I speculate perhaps the-powers-that-be are making our smartphone experience incrementally shittier so we become less addicted to them, So as not to interfere with our work ethic being capitalist slaves.

"Git off yer damn phones and git back to work!!"

I've never found anything about those short video platforms appealing, yes there's some creative people making great content on them but everything else is pretty much garbage.

My phone gets maybe an hour of use on a regular day and most of that is searching for music to listen to on Tidal.

It's been the opposite, I feel like I have to put in huge amounts of effort just to find something interesting. Most of the YouTubers I follow barely post anything anymore.

Strangely, the opposite for me. Recently (and I mean a couple months ago), I've been noticing that YouTube's recommendation algorithm changed in some way. It's now recommending me things that I'm not particularly interested in, or things that I would click away from more readily. I used to like educational channels (SciShow, PBS Spacetime, Deep Look, PBS Eons, etc.) and I'm noticing that these videos are almost never recommended to me anymore. I have to go to their channel to even see that they posted a video.

Lately I've been more conscious of my decisions to watch trash on you tube. You watch a few traffic cam videos and pretty soon that's half your feed. So I'm finding myself thinking twice before clicking.

Shorts I mostly avoid because I feel that feature is toxic clickbait.

I had to get YouTube revanced to disable the shorts player for me, and then had to disable notifications. It's a place of no return.

Not really.

Just stay away from garbage content like TikTok and shorts. But you can't blame your shitty media consumption on the smartphone.

You can't blame 100% of your media consumption on the snartphone but I think it is counter-productive to treat it as not a factor in media addictions. Smartphones made media and content more accessible than ever, especially as mobile data rates got cheaper.

Shorts (tiktoks, reels) are designed to do just that, hook you in and keep you scrolling.
It's like a constant rolling cliffhanger.

Has its good sides - not everything can or should be a long format video. However, I think the scale is tipped too much towards shorts recently. There is not enough time in shorts to formulate a proper statement, so they need to stretch over multiple parts.

My biggest dislike is the separation of context - shorts and longs are completely separate in Youtube even by the same creator, and the most popular platform TikTok, doesn't even support longer videos.

Personally I think the problem is that YouTube promotes them so much harder than normal videos

If you look at the homepage of YouTube on mobile you get one normal video, then a row of ~6 shorts, then another normal video and so on

Much more likely to pique your interest showing you so many more shorts vs videos and once you're in it's difficult to break free

TikTok supports up to ten minutes and 15 minute videos for some, but they are far from the norm. A lot more creators are doing videos longer than the old three minute limit though.

I think this is mostly because the multiple parts are annoying and their UI makes it difficult to find subsequent videos unless they are new.

It’s interesting to see them going longer while other services are clambering for the shorts and doing a mostly shitty job of it.

I just avoid shorts or reels or whatever personally. They're short and engaging making it easy to lose track of time.

But yeah you're 100% right my parents (late 50s) have started doing it a lot. I've noticed a lot of teenagers do as well.

My wife's attention span has gone to shit thanks to short form videos like that. From vine to ticktock to whatever Facebook version she uses now, I've gotten to the point where if she picks up her phone while we're talking, I'll just stop talking until she looks up. If we're whatching a new movie or show, I'll pause it until she puts the phone down.

Sometimes it takes her several minutes to realize what she's doing.

I'm so fucking tired of having to pause things to explain what we just watched because she was too busy watching some asshole drop a glass of milk onto the floor for a joke. I'm tired of having to repeat myself because she "needed stimulation" and decided the conversation we are were actively having isn't good enough.

So now I just don't bother. If she's interested, she'll ask. If it's important, I'll tell her to put the phone down because it's important.

Me too. I've seen my partner on them and it's like a really bad version of tiktok only you don't get to train the algorithm properly. No thanks.

It seems to also be a switching task issue in our minds. These changes of states takes more effort than playing the next video does or just keeping on what we are doing. It's so much easier for us to keep playing the digital dopamine slot machine that, TikTok, instagram reels, Facebook and YouTube short videos provide.

From a business sense they want to keep your attention, from a biology sense we are safe and don't see a need to move with the random rewards another quick video offers.

It's amazing how well they have refined getting and keeping our attention. We also get rewarded with dopamine from the anticipation of the next story or short video. It gets we don't even really need the next video, just the anticipation is enough to reward us with more dopamine.

I've read doing a simple reverse mental countdown of 5-4-3-2-1 blast off helps us switch gears from another part of the brain. It can also help us get out of bed or off the couch.

No, not at all. And there are more tools than ever to monitor, track, and notify high usage.

PEBKAC or whatever the modern equivalent is these days.

Can't say I agree with your example, but I agree in general with the idea. Shorts suck.

This reminds me of "Gum's Gotten Mintier Lately. Have You Noticed?"

Hey, if it's fun/interesting/informative it seems fine to me. If you're turning into a drooling maga zombie watching rage bait then that's on you.

It's entertaining but it's a massive waste of time that puts my brain into a state I don't like.

I'll happily waste hours on videogames, watching long form content, tinkering with my laptop etc because I at least feel like I've come away with something at the end of that whereas shorts the moment I stop I feel like I've just completely wasted 15 minutes of my life

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I spend way too much time on Lemmy and YouTube, but I'm not mindlessly scrolling. I'm hunting for specific content.

I've found I've used my phone a lot less, but it might be because I prefer either longer, more essay structured videos, or a good half hour unscripted comedy bit (podcast, video game, whatever). I don't even bother with a lot of stuff under 10 minutes unless it's something like an animation or a skit where that time would be unreasonable. Still though, they're from channels I know, and aren't ones I'm randomly being served. I've gotten more into TV recently because if it, and I read manga when I have a little bit of downtime.

Still though, the way popular web video has gone, it's funny remembering YouTube nuking short videos a decade back when they changed the revenue structure. They already had the videos being made on their platform and actively discouraged them.

I don't watch shorts, for this reason. I tried them when they first started and noticed I was just scrolling video after video, so I stopped watching them. I don't have addiction issues, though.

Install Youtube ReVanced and disable shorts altogether! Doing that saved me years of lifetime haha

I'm constantly having to recheck for updates on revanced because they are constantly changing YouTube and shorts keep reappearing.

Nonroot device so I can't do it automatically, unless I've missed something.

That's weird! My phone isn't rooted either (Moto G100) and I've only manually updated Revanced once since it was released. I don't think it has ever lost my settings either. Is the option "Auto Update Patches" checked in your Revanced Manager?

The patches keep themselves up to date, and I have to hit the update buttons manually for the revanced manager itself, but the YouTube app I get told "this is a split apk" and apparently you can only mess with those on RvM if your device is rooted, according to the popup.

I just have to find the recommended app version on apkmirror and choose my patches if they haven't saved from the previous time.

It's just a little annoying to have to find the apk and do all the extra steps, but that's what I get for not rooting. Partly because the phone is still under warranty and partly because I don't trust myself to not brick it.

Even with every negative piling on at once, it's still lightyears ahead of youtube base. And it's not bad by any stretch. All the negatives I've experienced are partly my own doing.

Hmm, maybe ReVancedExtended would solve your problems? I know my RvM has no issues with custom patches even without root, but it might just be a device/os version weirdness. I've heard RvX is overall better with the non-root support, but I've never used it personally

100% agree. Same experience here with YouTube and YouTube shorts. I waste far too much time there.

My dad, a boomer, has been watching videos, reading news and listicles, and playing games on his phone more and more lately. 10 years ago, he was still using a flip phone, and just a few years ago (and tbh even still today) needs help using/navigating his phone and there internet.

But yeah, I’ve noticed him getting sucked into it - he probably uses his phone more than I use mine, since I’m on my computer more than my phone (unless we count my phone playing my music in the car and while at work, but that’s not exactly the phone use we’re talking about, so I wouldn’t include that rn).

Similarly, my grandparents, also boomers, are doing more on their phones all the time. For boomers specifically, it could have a little to do with retiring during this age of technology and finally having the time to explore something that seems more difficult for them to grasp.

TLDR: big word dump to echo the sentiment and show that I’m experiencing the same things as you.

When I watch videos on my phone, I mostly just watch downloaded TV shows using VLC. I never use the youtube app. If I watch a youtube video, I use Firefox with uBlock origin.

I hate using a small screen, so I watch 99.9% of my videos on my laptop and desktop. I can't stand youtube shorts, so I use an addon to block them.

I tend to like watching YouTube on my phone every now and again, I don't have a problem with proper full length videos. It's the fact that I'm bombarded with so many shorts in the UI and can't get rid of them on mobile

Obviously newpipe and piped are a thing but they both are somewhat lacking compared to the official app in user experience

I had never used Instagram reels until recently but also found it pretty damned addictive once I did try them. The ease of access and variety of content is pretty compelling. Of course, it's information junk food. Very little of intellectual value comes with it, and it's quite mentally passive, so it's a good idea to limit how much time you spend on it.

I don't watch shorts, but the algorithm became absolute trash for me recently.

I am using

  • Mull + adblock
  • greyjay
  • jerboah
  • several Discuss webapps
  • internet searching
  • antennapod for podcasts

This is already enough to get me addicted and its not even typical social media

Yeah as much as I hate shorts or reels in theory it's so easy to get sucked in to scrolling for hours. I had to delete instsgram and install an extension that blocks shorts because of it